Fire & Resources Strategic Issues Update Satellite Course 1730-14

**\
A Telecast Originating**

**from the**

**BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona**

**May 12, 2005**

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast.

It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

Announcer: The Renewable Resources and Planning Directorate, The Office
of Fire and Aviation and the National Training Center Presents live from
the BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona, \"Fire & Resources
Strategic Issues Update, Interactive Satellite Training Course
1730-14.\" And now the host of your program, Roy Johnson.\
\
R. Johnson: Good morning and welcome to our interactive discussion on
recent DOI and Bureau initiatives that were designed to help us more
effectively protect communities, the environment and provide economic
opportunities for rural communities. We will be focusing on the
President's Healthy Forests Initiative, Healthy Forests Restoration Act,
Stewardship Contracting Authority, and the Bureau\'s Biomass Strategy.
In this program we will have the opportunity to share information, our
experience and ideas on how we can most effectively use the new
authorities and tools.

With me this morning to talk about the Healthy Forests Initiative is Ted
Milesnick. Ted Milesnick, Chief of Fire Planning and Research from the
Office of Fire and Aviation in Boise. Welcome, Ted. You\'re thinking
these guys are looking pretty casual, but I have to tell you that
you\'ve come to expect folks on the broadcasts to be wearing dresses and
suits and ties but these guys have had a real struggle with us. We came
in with whites and camp bust \'ems and suspenders. They\'ve helped us a
lot. Joining us today is a talented panel of folks. Ted Milesnick from
the office of fire and aviation, chief of Manning and Research will be
discussing Inc. the healthy forests initiative.\
\
T. Milesnick: Thanks, Roy. I\'m glad to be here and share some our
experiences with you, and also to interact with you in the field on your
experiences with them. Thanks, Roy.\
\
R. Johnson: Also with us this morning from the Washington office,
renewable resources and planning directorate is Rick Tholen who will be
covering the healthy forests restoration act.\
\
R. Tholen: Thanks, Roy.\
\
R. Johnson: Joining us later in the program is Scott Lieurance. Scott
will address stewardship contracting authorities and the BLM biomass
strategy. And thank you for taking time from your busy schedules to join
us today. We had originally planned to visit each state and sit down and
discuss the use of these tools, but as you know, time and money are
short. So we decided to trust this technology. So here goes. At the end
of the session we want participants to have a better understanding of
the new tools, their effective use and to help us set a reasonable
expectation for their use in BLM. The bottom line, as you know, is
demand is high, funding low, and we need to increase our efficiencies.
But maybe pour important is your expectations. Let\'s take some time
here to go to \-- let\'s say, hide owe, John foster, are you there? Can
you give us a little idea what your expectation of this session would
be?\
\
Caller: Is this working?\
\
R. Johnson: It is, John. Thank you. John, did you have a response for us
on your expectations of the session today?\
\
Caller: Sure, Roy. We\'ve had some really good successes here in Idaho
so far with the stewardship contracting and trying to move in the
direction of both the healthy forest initiatives and the act. But we\'ve
had some real questions in terms of clarifications with HFRA,
particularly in terms of the wild land urban interface where we have
communities that haven\'t necessarily delineated a boundary for the WUI
and trying to apply some of the distance criteria that\'s in the act
itself. We need some help understanding that. We also need some help
with some of the criteria and how tightly we need to take a look at that
in HFRA and the interpretations. I know there\'s some discussions with
some of the solicitors in Washington on that. We have some issues on the
ground where we have land use plans that have specific restoration
requirements, trying to tie that in with HFRA. It\'s in the spirit of
the act but maybe not necessarily within the letter of the way the
criteria is laid out. So we need some help understanding that.\
\
R. Johnson: Great, thank you, John. Let\'s jump over to Montana. Anyone
in Montana that could share with us there expectations for today?\
\
Caller: Hi, Roy. This is Bill Hensly.\
\
R. Johnson: Hi, bill. Thanks for joining us.\
\
Caller: We\'ve had some pretty good successes with our stewardship
projects also and I think along the same lines of Idaho, there\'s some
questions out in the field for clarification on doing NEPA and probably
doing some of the other stuff under the acts themselves, the decisional
authority processes and protest appeal processes.\
\
R. Johnson: Okay. Thank you, bill. Let\'s grab one more. How about Utah,
anybody in the Utah state office?\
\
Caller: Good morning, Roy. This is Sheldon. We got you covered here?\
\
R. Johnson: Sheldon, thank you. Any additional expectations you may
have?\
\
Caller: I think we have an opportunity here this morning to integrate
fire and resources in the programs \-- and what the programs entail and
we\'ll have an opportunity to share, I think, between states and with

Your experience issues that need clarification, and I think that\'s what
our expectations are this morning.\
\
Great. Thanks for sharing with us. Thank you for helping us focus on
your expectations for the workshop. We\'ll make every effort to meet
your expectations either through the workshop, answering your questions,
or through follow-up documentation. Our sessions will last approximately
three hours, and we\'ll follow the agenda on page 4 of your
participant\'s guide. We will share information, break for offline
exercise and discussion and then join online for questions and
suggestions and recommendations. We look forward to sharing your
concerns and addressing your questions. If you\'re using the
push-to-talk system, here\'s a few things to keep in mind.

When you have a question or a comment, first, let us know who you are
and where you\'re from and to whom you\'re directing your question. When
you\'re finished speaking, please remember to release the button on your
microphone, otherwise you won\'t be able to hear the response. This is
good technology and I want to encourage you to use it, but for those of
you that don\'t have the push-to-talk system in front of you we want to
hear from you. So you can still fax or phone in a comment or a question.
The fax number here at the training center is 602-906-5713. If you want
to phone, the toll-free number to call is 1-877-862-5346. Again, your
involvement is important to the success of today\'s workshop. We urge
you to participate.

Now that the announcements are out of the way, let\'s get started. Ted
Milesnick will kick it offer with a brief discussion on several of the
healthy forest initiative tools. You can follow along on page 5 of your
participant\'s guide. Ted, you\'re on.\
\
T. Milesnick: Thanks, Roy. I appreciate that. The healthy forest
initiative tools we\'re going to be looking at today in a little bit
more detail are the categorical exclusions is the CEQ EA, the joint
counterpart regulations and the full force and effect authority. These
tools are laid out in detail \-- in summary form in the healthy forest
initiative, healthy forest restoration act field guide. I encourage you
to become familiar with the guide because it\'s a good guide that has
some good flow charts on when appropriate use of them would be. In the
first two I would like to talk about is categorical exclusions.

The Department of Interior and Forest Service identified two new
categorical exclusions in June 2003. These are for \-- one was the
hazardous fuels reduction activities and the other was for post fire
rehabilitation activities. The reason we\'re using these primarily is a
time and money saver mechanism. They\'ve been the most effective and
efficient tool of all the HFI tools. The categorical exclusion, we did a
recent request at the field on kind of cost savings for using it.

Most of the offices were reporting in the neighborhood of three to
\$5,000 per project. In Idaho, they reported they were saving 70 to 80%
on their funding and manpower requirements to complete the CXs over the
traditional EAs. In Oregon they had one project in which they saved over
\$40,000. So you can see there\'s some significant savings that can be
realized. The new CXs we have just gotten have additional restrictions
that some of our other BLM CXs don\'t have and the reason was during the
process of developing them and responding to public comments on their
use we\'ve identified some sideboards in order to protect the
environment and ensure they\'re being applied properly. For the
hazardous fuels reduction activities, prescribed fire cannot exceed 4500
acres. More mechanical treatment we can\'t exceed 1,000 acres and
limited of the tools to the WUI and if you\'re outside the WUI to
condition class II and III or fire regime\'s I, II or III. The post fire
activities can\'t exceed 4200 acres and both of the new CXs must also be
consistent with land use plans, not use herbicides or pesticides and we
construct new permanent roads or other new permanent infrastructures
within them. One of the things we\'ve heard back from the field when
they\'re using these CXs is whether or not they can do the CXs on
individual treatments in order to break the project into smaller acres
to meet the acre limitations. This is something we determined to be
piece mailing and it\'s not aloud within the CEQ regulations.

The bottom line is we need to do these and apply them at the project
level, not the treatment level to make sure we\'re following the CEQ
guidelines. There\'s some documentation requirements for the new CXs,
which is different than the other CXs. When the CXs went into effect,
the department identified a format which lays out what the CX is,
addresses use of the exceptions, identifies the decision and appeals
process and these are outlined in the instruction memorandum 2003-221
change 1. I encourage you to pull up that instruction memo and look at
it. We\'ve done a recent field review of some of the field offices and
found we\'re not very consistent in using that new format and reporting
requirement. Also for reporting the use of the categorical exclusions
we\'re reporting the use in the national fire plan operations and
reporting system which we fondly refer to as NFPORS.

Within this NFPORS system the activity type for reporting the use of the
CX is NEPA HFI CX. There\'s another CX in there for just NEPA CX but
that\'s the traditional \-- that\'s our traditional CX for forestry
which is limited to thinning and other small projects. So when reporting
and using the CX we should be using the new fire CX and reporting it as
HFI CX in the NFPORS process. For more information on use of the CX you
can contact myself or Jordan Pope who is senior NEPA specialist in the
Washington office. The second tool I would like to talk a little bit
more about is the CEQ EA guidance which is guidance from the chairman of
CEQ to the secretaries of agricultural and interior that came out in
mid-2002. The purpose of this guidance was to achieve shorter and more
concise EAs which will benefit reviewers, benefit the decision maker in
a making a FONSI determination and increase the defensibility of the EAs
we prepare. As far as the funding and time savings, the feedback from
the states is they\'re not nearly, I guess, as time and money savers as
the CX is but we were seeing some increased savings, so we are
encouraging offices to use them as a cost-saving measure even though
they aren\'t quite as good as the CXs in that regard.

These EAs should be used as the appropriate kind of NEPA format where an
EA is appropriate for fire plan projects and that\'s been issued in
guidance from our national office. I would like to just briefly go over
the basics of the EA and the guidance that we got from CEQ is that they
should be concise documents approximately 10 to 15 pages and also that
the focus of the EA should be in determining whether or not there\'s
significant impacts. We have a tendency to put a lot of material in EAs
that really isn\'t related to making that determination. So by focusing
on that, that allows us to keep the EAs shorter and to serve the purpose
for what the EA was intended. In terms of EA content, there\'s only four
required measures that need to be in the EA. One is a statement of the
need for the proposed action, which we determine purpose and need. Two
is the description of the proposed action and alternatives. Three is
environmental impacts of those proposed actions and alternatives. And
four is a list of agencies and persons consulted. So if we follow these
four points and do a good job of documenting it, what we\'re hearing
from our solicitor\'s office and CEQ is those EAs are going to be
sufficient if challenged or have a better chance of them being
sufficient is challenged. When the new guidance came out, bureau piloted
the new guidance in seven EAs across the bureau and these are posted on
BLM\'s NIFC web site which should be showing, I think, at the bottom of
your screen and I encourage you to look at that web site, because
that\'s a good source of information for both the CEQ guidance and to
look at the pilot EAs and look at techniques they used for achieving the
page limit that CEQ had established and also on how we can most
effectively incorporate by reference.

I would like to take a little time and talk about the lessons that we
learned from these pilots. One of them is that scoping is key to the
process. We need to involve the public early on in the process and to
the extent practicable. Also we need to do a better job of developing
the purpose and need which describes existing and desired conditions and
how the proposed action would achieve those desired conditions. Both the
scoping process and the purpose and needs section are effective means of
focusing the EA on the issues that are pertinent and also to eliminate
alternatives that either don\'t meet the purpose and need or don\'t
resolve issues that the public has identified. Again, these are
mechanisms for preparing short, concise EAs. Also the EA document must
clearly support the FONSI. We shouldn\'t just state and come to
conclusions without any supporting rationale. So we need to \-- our
documentation must need to \-- lead the reader to a logical conclusion
regarding the significance of impacts.

As far as the no action alternative a no action alternative is not
required, and in the guidance from CEQ that was highlighted. However, if
there\'s controversy over the proposed action or disagreement about
whether we should implement it, we recommend that you do do a no action
no alternative. If you prepare a no action alternative, you should
describe a reasonable wildfire occurrence scenario that might occur if
we don\'t implement the project. This is a good mechanism of being able
to contrast impacts of doing the project or not doing the project. Also,
we need to do a good job of incorporating material by reference for
material that\'s available off-site or on a web site or else include
material in the appendix of the EA. One thing on the final lessons
learned, I guess s regarding the FONSI, and one thing that we found, and
that we haven\'t done traditionally in the BLM, and that\'s to address
the context and intensity factors that are identified in the CEQ
regulations, and these are identified at 40 CFR 1508-27. By doing this,
we think that we can increase the defensible of our EAs because we\'re
addressing whether the intensity factors or context is met would that
trigger a significant impact and therefore would lead you to an EIS.

Traditionally in BLM we have made a statement of FONSIs that none is
there but we recommend you go beyond that and look at the intensity and
context factors. We\'ve had quite a few questions that have come in from
the field regarding use of the short form EA that\'s laid out in BLM\'s
NEPA handbook which is our 1790 handbook, and I guess what kind of
guidance and recommendation we\'re making regarding that is that if
you\'re preparing EAs according to the handbook, the short form in the
handbook, and that they\'re concise documents, say, 15 or 20 pages,
we\'ve relaxed our standard a little bit from what CEQ recommended of 10
to 15. We\'re looking at 15 to 20 pages as still qualifying as a concise
EA that meets the CEQ guidance. Interesting, in the short form EA in our
handbook, NEPA handbook, it\'s basically equivalent to what the NEPA EA
requirements are for the healthy forests initiative. So for using that
guidance, we can go ahead and report those as HFI EAs. We\'re also
entering use of the CEQ guidance into NFPORS, and we\'re entering that
in NFPORS under the NEPA EA HFI EA activity type. So there is a NEPA, a
NEPA EA type in NFPORS which shouldn\'t be used if you\'re using the new
guidance. Remember to use the HFI EA when you\'re entering into NFPORS.
So for more information on use of the CXs you can contact myself or
again Jordan Pope who is our senior NEPA specialist in the Washington
office.

Again, I encourage you to visit the BLM web site which has the pilot EAs
listed on there. The third tool I would like to talk a little bit more
about is the joint counterpart regulations, and these are regulations
that allow BLM to expedite the T&E species process for consultation
actions that support the national fire plan. The National Fire Plan
project is one that\'s determined by the administrative official, which
is typically our field office manager to be within the scope of the
National Fire Plan. Joint counterpart regulations were developed by Fish
& Wildlife service and NOAA fisheries to allow BLM to make not likely to
adverse effect determinations for listed species or for designated
critical habitat without consulting with the agencies or obtaining
written concurrence from NOAA fisheries and wildlife service.

Prior to regs we had to do not likely to adverse affect regulations and
we were required to consult and receive a written concurrence. So we no
longer have to do that. If we make a determination that our actions may
likely affect a species, then we still have to go through the normal
consultation process that we always did. The reason that we\'re trying
to encourage use of these new regulations is that it speeds up the
project planning process and approval process and also it reduces the
Fish & Wildlife and NOAA fisheries workload in clearing national fire
plan projects. Now, we have an agreement with these agencies to do
expedited consultations, and this is currently costing us over \$3
million annually to do the expedited consultations. So if we use the
joint counterpart regulations for not likely to adverse affect actions,
that\'s going to reduce the funding commitment and requirement for those
actions \-- or for those agencies to do the clearances. The bottom line
is it results in dollar savings us to and more projects on the ground.

Now, with the new regulations, there are some process requirements many
BLM is committed to doing in accordance with the consultation agreement.
First is that biologist and approving officials which is generally the
field office manager must be trained and certified. And this
certification process is an online process through the internet that\'s
maintained here at the training center, and for BLM, we have over 400
individuals who are currently certified to do the clearances and
consultations. One of the requirements is that the responsibility of the
field officer to document and justify that the project is a National
Fire Plan project and field offices must also maintain lists of current
T&E species and critical habitat. Offices must also maintain a list of
fire plan projects that are using the regulations and submit to the
state office by March 1 use of the regs. We must also document the
analysis, use in making the not likely to adversely affect determination
in the biological assessment or biological evaluation and this is
typically included as part of the environmental assessment process. With
the new regulations, BLM is also now responsible for creating and
maintaining the administrative record to demonstrate consistency with
the action with the National Fire Plan, use of the best available
scientific and commercial information, and compliance with endangered
species acted. Even though we\'re allowed to use these new regulations
and consultation procedures, Fish & Wildlife service and NOAA fisheries
are going to continue to provide oversight into the program and on a
consultation process and is going to be conducting periodic reviews. So
they can, based on these reviews, recommend that we pull use of the
regulations authority away from an individual office or to terminate the
agreement overall if they so choose. So, anyway, I encourage offices to
use it, but recognize that Fish & Wildlife service are going to be
working with us in reviewing our use of that.

Tracking of the joint counterpart regulations again will be accomplished
through use of the NFPORS system and we\'re currently modifying NFPORS
in order to track that and we envision that the National Fire Plan
projects will be entered probably by the fuels people who are doing
those and be given information from the biologists regarding the T&E
species consultation process. Hopefully that will be entered in \-- will
be completed and entered in at the field office level. What will be
recorded is the project name, the activity type, which is joint
counterpart regs, the initiation date of the consultation and the
completion date of the consultation. For more information regarding use
of the joint counterpart regs, you may contact Peggy Olwell, who is a
senior endangered species specialist in the Washington office or myself
here at the fire center. Also there\'s two IBs, 2004-88 and 2004-178,
which also have additional information on the use of the authority.

The last tool I would like to talk about in detail here is the full
force and effected authority, and this authority allows BLM to make
wildfire management decisions effective immediately when vegetation,
soil or other resources are at substantial risk of wildfire due to
drought, fuels buildup or other reasons, or lands that are at
substantial risk to erosion or other damage due to a wildfire. In
layman\'s terms, what does this mean? It means that we can implement
fire management decisions and stabilization decisions even though they
may be appealed to IBLA. Unless IBLA grants a stay process. I would like
to highlight that use of the full force and effect authority is
discretionary, and the field office manager can either apply it or not
apply it. The provisions for the full force and effect authority are
laid out in the grazing regulations at 43 CFR 4190 and in the forestry
management regulations at free CFR 5003. I encourage you to take a look
at those regulation sections.

The wildfire management decisions that are affected by these regulations
include fuels treatments such as prescribed burning, ma cab cull
treatment, chemical treatment and thinning. Also I would like to mention
that these treatments can be applied to removal of products that would
be off-site removal, which is sometimes \-- which has sometimes been an
issue with our fire management projects. Also, they\'re utilized for
fire stabilization and rehab projects. Several requirements for the use
of the joint \-- of the full force and effect authority is that we need
to engage the public, our partners, government, local governments, in
the NEPA process to the extent practical and one of the reasons for this
is because we don\'t typically go into the normal appeal and stay
process. So we need to involve the public early on in the process, make
sure that we\'ve considered their input into the EA process. In the
project file, which is typically made up of the EA, must document what
resources are at risk and the factors per putting those at risk. And the
decision document must include appropriate full force and effect
language.

One point I would also like to make is that use of the full force and
effect authority is not tied or related to the type of NEPA document.
Some people I know are confused in this regard and think if we\'re using
full force and effect we have to use a particular type of NEPA but
that\'s not true. It can be applied to whether or not it\'s a CX, an EA,
an EIS or other NEPA document. One other point that\'s also been
somewhat of question to the field or in the field is regarding full
force and effect decisions that affect other uses such as recreation,
grazing permits or rights-of-ways. And because our wildland fire
decisions can affect these, it\'s important we coordinate with these
other programs when we\'re using full force and effect authority.

If our decision does affect more than wildfire decisions, we can issue a
single decision that affects both wildfire and the other resource
decisions being affected. When that happens, the appeals for that
decision would go directly to IBLA and would not be subject to any
protests and appeal procedures for other programs. So, anyway, that\'s
about the highlights for the full force and effect authority. If you
have questions, you can contact myself, Jack Hamby, who is emergency
stabilization and rehabilitation coordinator in the Washington office,
or Rick Tholen on the planning and renewable resources staff. Roy,
that\'s kind of a summary of the highlights for the four tools for the
healthy forests initiative. So I\'ll go ahead and turn it back to you
and appreciate the time and \-- that we\'ve been able to spend on this.
Thanks, Roy.\
\
R. Johnson: Thanks, Ted. That certainly is a wealth of information. What
that does is gives us a chance to establish a common understanding that
we will able to spin off and use for the next part of our program. Now
we have Rick Tholen who is going to address the healthy forest
restoration act. Rick?\
\
R. Tholen: Thanks, Roy. As some of you indicated in your comments early
in this broadcast, the healthy forest restoration act is a fairly
complex law and is sometimes difficult to understand. So I hope that
this presentation and the follow-up questions and answer questions will
help you understand how to use the act. The healthy forest restoration
act or HFRA, as I\'ll refer to it from here on out, is a law that was
enacted in December 3rd, 2003. It was in part in response to testimony
and a legislative proposal submitted to the Congress by the secretary of
interior and secretary of agriculture. The secretaries told Congress
that the agencies they oversee were constrained by procedural
requirements and litigation that delayed actual on the ground
implementation of hazard fuel reduction projects. A by product of this
legislative proposal and the bipartisan compromises made on the hill is
the healthy forest restoration act. It\'s intended to do help you reduce
the amount of analysis and documentation required to make a decision to
implement a hazard fuel reduction project and to expedite judicial
review of any challenges to such a decision. HFRA contains six titles.
I\'m going to focus my presentation today on title I which is called the
hazard fuel reduction on federal land. The other titles in HFRA include
biomass, watershed forestry assistance, insect and disease, healthy
forest reserve program and miscellaneous other forest health programs
mostly being implemented by the Forest Service. HFRA can be used to
reduce fuels on forest, woodlands and rangelands even though the title
is somewhat misleading.

A field guide has been prepared to help you navigate your way through
HFRA. There\'s decision diagrams, as Ted mentioned, that will help you
determine if your project qualifies to use the HFRA authority. So what
are the benefits of using title I authorities versus our traditional
authorities? HFRA contains special NEPA provisions to help reduce paper
worked an unnecessary analysis. Because of that, you must follow the
NEPA provisions contained in HFRA when using the authority. A
categorical he can collusion is not part of the HFRA authority. So it
shouldn\'t be used. HFRA provides relief from developing additional
alternatives in addition to the proposed action when preparing an EA or
EIS. The degree of relief depends on the type of project and its
location to the wildland urban interface of an at-risk community. It
provides an expedited and judicial review process \-- that\'s hard to
say \-- and I\'ll talk more about that later. HFRA did not make any
changes to BLM\'s administrative review process. However, it did alter
the Forest Service\'s process. Objections to Forest Service HFI raw
proposals must be made prior to the final decision to have standing to
appeal. What are the limitations of using the HFRA authority?

These limitations should be reviewed when you\'re initially considering
whether to use the authority for a project. HFRA projects must be on
federal lands. They must conform to the existing land use plan. They
cannot be within congressionally designated wilderness or wilderness
study areas. And they must be developed collaboratively. How does a
project qualify to use the HFRA authority? A project must be tested to
see if it qualifies. The test is diagramed on page 13 of the federal
guide. A project using the HFRA authority must meet one of the four
following situations to qualify: The project area must be within the
wildland urban interface of an at-risk community as defined by HFRA in
the definitions section. The definitions section contains four
definitions of the wildland urban interface. The first definition is an
area within or adjacent to an at-risk community identified in a
community wildfire protection plan. The next definition is an area
extending one half mile from the boundary of an at-risk community. It
also contains the definition of it is an area extending one-and-a-half
miles from the boundary of an at-risk community if the land has
sustained steep slopes, a geographic feature that aids in creating an
effective fuel break or is in condition class 3 lands. Finally, an area
that is adjacent to an evacuation route of an at-risk community.

The definition section in HFRA also contains two definitions of an
at-risk community. The first definition is a community identified as at
risk to wildfire in the Federal Register notice published in 2001. A
second definition is a group of homes or other structures within or
adjacent to the federal lands that is at risk of a large-scale wildfire.
These two definitions should cover most situations where BLM lands
adjoin the interface. The second situation and for which a project can
qualify to use the HFRA authority is if it is in or near a municipal
watershed and is in condition class 3 or condition class 2 for fire
regimes I, II and III lands and the project proposes to reduce the risk
posed by wildfire to water quality or maintenance of the water supply
system. HFRA didn\'t supply a definition of a municipal watershed, so
the agencies have adopted the safe water act \-- safe drinking water act
definition as shown on page 19 of the field guide. I recommend that you
review the guidance for documenting it is a significant risk to a
municipal water supply as contained in the field guide.

The third situation that a project can use to qualify to use HFRA is if
it is in an area of blowdown, windthrow or ice damage, or an area where
an insect and disease epidemic has been declared on federal lands or on
adjacent private lands. The agency line officer will make the
determination if an epidemic exists. However, I strongly advise the
managers to seek input from forest health specialists such as with the
Forest Service forest health protection office in your area. The
Department of Interior and the department of Department of Agriculture
have an interdepartmental agreement for the Forest Service to supply
this expertise to the BLM.

The fourth and final way a project can qualify to use the HFRA authority
is if it is in or near T&E species habitat where fire is either
important in maintaining that habitat or threatens that habitat and the
project would provide enhanced protection. The project must be \-- all
HFRA projects must be consistent with any T&E species recovery plans. So
these are the four situations under which a project can qualify to use
HFRA. I recommend that you document how the project qualifies to use
HFRA in the scope \-- public scoping documents, at public meetings, in
the NEPA document itself, and in the decision record or record of
decision.

So what are the benefits of using the HFRA authority? The greatest
potential savings is for projects within the wildland urban interface.
Wildland urban interface projects that are within one-and-a-half miles
of much an at-risk community only need analyze the proposed action. No
formal alternatives, including the no action alternative, are required.
Projects in the wildland urban interface but farther than one-and-a-half
miles from the boundary of an at-risk community must analyze the
proposed action and one additional action alternative. If your project
is outside of the wildland urban interface, HFRA requires that you
analyze the proposed action, the no action alternative and one action
alternative if it\'s proposed by the public during scoping and it meets
the purpose and need for the project. HFRA provides several benefits to
the agency if a project is challenged in the Federal District Court.

First, lawsuits must be filed in the U.S. District Court where the
project is located. HFRA limits injunctions to 60 days subject to
renewal. And it encourages the court to expedite judicial review and
balance the impacts of short and long-term effects of taking the action
versus not taking the action. While the no action alternative isn\'t
required in a wildland urban interface project, the project clearly
should state the need for the action and the consequences of not taking
the action in the purpose and needs section of a NEPA document. Other
requirements must be fulfilled when using the HFRA authority. First, you
must \-- HFRA requires that we manage old growth, both forest and
woodlands, to maintain or restore the structure, composition of old
growth stands according to the pre-fire exclusion condition
characteristic for that forest type. HFRA doesn\'t require that we amend
our land use plans to be consistent with that language, but if we do
not, and a project is identified as being in old growth during the
public scoping process, we would be required to drop that stand from the
project if you have not amended your plan direction, your land use plan
direction.

Agencies also are required to follow the large-tree retention
requirements when managing outside old growth and where there is no old
growth direction in our land use plan, which is the case of most BLM
land use plans. The large tree retention requirement section says we
should focus our projects on small diameter trees, thinning,
constructing strategic fuel breaks and prescribed fire to modify fire
behavior. While the section says that we\'re to maximize the retention
of large trees as appropriate for that forest type and to the extent
that those trees promote a resilient stand, we do not have to leave all
large trees. What is meant by maximizing the retention of large trees is
covered pretty thoroughly in the field guide. As I said, we do not have
to leave all large trees but instead should focus on how the large trees
promote a fire resilient stand and a healthy properly functioning
landscape. I should note that projects that qualify to use the HFRA
authority because they\'re in blowdown, windthrow, ice storm damage or
insect and disease epidemic areas are not subject to the old growth and
large tree retention requirements in HFRA. HFRA also has public notice
requirements. It requires that we encourage a meaningful public
participation in project development. It also requires that we hold a
public meeting. I recommend that this meeting be held early in the
process in developing a project and that you clearly articulate how the
project qualifies to use the HFRA authority. You should also state how
you intend to comply with the old growth and large tree retention
requirements at that meeting.

Finally, HFRA directs the agencies to establish a multi-party monitoring
process when significant interest is expressed by other groups or
individuals. And it requires that the agencies monitor a sample of
projects, a representative sample of projects, to see if the goals are
being met and if not to adjust future treatments. So that pretty much
concludes my presentation. I hope to get in more depth into what\'s in
HFRA and how to use it in the question and answer period, but just for
reference, for more information on the use of HFRA, I\'ve advised you to
look at the field guide. I think it\'s your best reference. And the web
site showing on the screen now so you can write that down. The act
itself is also located on the internet at www.healthyforests.gov under
what is HFI and then under legislation. The Forest Service has developed
a list of frequently asked questions that may also be helpful. They can
be viewed at the web site on your screen now. Keep in mind that these
questions and answers reference specific Forest Service policies and
regulations that may not apply to BLM. We\'re also intending to post the
questions and answers from this session on the training center web site
in the near future. So those should be helpful as well. Or as a last
resort, but I welcome \-- openly welcome that you contact me. So thanks
a lot and we\'ll wait for the questions and answers later.\
\
R. Johnson: Thanks, Rick. Thanks, Ted. You both have given us an
excellent overview. Our panel just outlined a suite of tools designed to
help expedite treatments on the ground. How does this fit together and
how do we decide which authority to use? Good question, you say? That\'s
where you come in. For this next session, please follow along on page 19
of your participant\'s guide. At this point, we\'re going to take a
20-minute break. During this break, we\'d like you to discuss in your
viewing groups, and when you come back, we would like to hear your
responses from the questions that you find in your participant\'s guide.
We hope to hear what might be done to improve the use of these
authorities and you\'ll have a chance to ask questions of our panels.
And, we will be hearing from Scott Lieurance who is going to talk about
stewardship contracting authorities and the BLM\'s new biomass strategy.
So there\'s a lot to come. We\'ll see you in 20 minutes.\
\
R. Johnson: Welcome back. As you can see, Scott Lieurance has joined us,
the group now. Scott, well cull.\
\
S. Lieurance: Thanks, Roy. Appreciate being here.\
\
R. Johnson: This is the time when we hope to hear from all of you. What
ideas do you have to improve the use of the tools and any questions you
may have for Ted and Rick as we\'ve come to know it as stump the chump
hour. So if you have a question or a comment for us, please use your mic
or give us a call or you can send us a fax. Again, those phone numbers
and faxes number are 602-906-5713 for the fax and if you would like to
call us the number is 1-877-862-5346. Okay. Let\'s go to the lines now.
Do we have any questions?\
\
Caller: I\'ve got a question for Rick.\
\
R. Johnson: Okay, for Rick, go ahead, please. Could you identify where
you\'re from?\
\
Caller: Yeah, Rick, this is Mike out of Montana. I have a question about
HFRA. When you were going through your presentation you seemed to skip
over CWPP, the community wildfire protection plan, and I thought that
there was some significance between the plans and the projects that
we\'re identifying.\
\
R. Tholen: Good point, Mike. There is a section in there that talks
about a different scenario in terms of the number of alternatives
required if \-- if the agency is implementing an action that is
different from the action that\'s recommended in a CWPP, HFRA requires
that you analyze the alternative from the CWPP as well. Because you
normally, with the WUI, you wouldn\'t have to analyze any other
alternatives but in the case where we\'re not following the
recommendations in the CWPP, you have to do the \-- analyze that
alternative. I don\'t think there will be many cases where BLM proposed
to do treatments following the completion of a CWPP where we\'re not
taking those recommendations and following them. So that\'s why I left
it out of the presentation, but you\'re correct, Mike.\
\
T. Milesnick: One other thing regarding the use of the CWPP that\'s tied
to HFRA, and that also is that HFRA identifies that the agencies give
priority to those projects that are identified in the CWPP. So that\'s
just another item there to be aware of regarding completion of CWPPs and
why we\'re encouraging offices to assist communities in developing those
to help us with the process.\
\
R. Johnson: Thanks, Mike. Did that answer your question?\
\
Caller: Yes, thank you very much.\
\
R. Johnson: Okay. More questions?\
\
Caller: This is Christa from Idaho. I have a question for you.\
\
R. Johnson: Okay, Christa. Go ahead, please.\
\
Caller: This also has to do with identifying the wildland urban
interface and also the community wildfire protection plan. As we
understand it, that first tier is using your CWPP to identify the
wildland urban interface, but we have a lot of instances where the
community wildfire plan identifies and at-risk community but doesn\'t
clearly identify or map the extent of the WUI in miles. So would the
distance be there that you would use?\
\
R. Johnson: Thanks, Christa. Rick, have a response for that?\
\
R. Tholen: Yeah, sure. I think where CWPP doesn\'t identify the WUI
boundary, WUI area, that you should, if you\'re using the HFRA
authority, Christa, you should fall back \-- as I mentioned there\'s
four definitions of WUI, one of which \-- in HFRA, one of which is that
identified in the CWPP. If the CWPP doesn\'t identify the WUI boundary
or the WUI area and you\'re going to use HFRA, I would fall back to one
of the other three definitions in HFRA, which would require that it
either be within a half mile or up to one-and-a-half miles if you\'re in
steep terrain, which most of the projects \-- well, probably a lot of
the projects in Idaho would qualify to use that one-and-a-half mile
distance.\
\
R. Johnson: Thanks, Rick. Thanks, Christa. Did that cover your
question?\
\
Caller: Yes, thank you.\
\
R. Johnson: Ted, we have a couple faxes. How about one from Elie. \--\
\
T. Milesnick: Sure, we got a fax from Shane from the Ely office. He has
five points it to. I\'ll just go ahead and address maybe a couple of the
points and then maybe we can come back if we have time to address the
others. Shane, if we don\'t get to all these on the air, our intent is
to respond to these and to provide feedback to you. I\'ll just read one
of your points here. Issuing decisions our own solicitors do not support
the idea of a single wildfire or livestock decision because one
authorities are different and, two, administrative review paths are
different. I guess our response to that, when we sent out our
clarification memo for full force and effect authorities, we wrestled
with this. We had the benefit of two recent IBLA decisions, and the IBLA
decisions were pretty much supportive of the single decision concept, in
fact, they were very specific in saying that wildland fire decision
covered both of those program areas and that it pretty much waived the
protest and appeal provisions for those other program areas. So that was
kind of the basis that we used in making that determination that the
single decision would be sufficient, and we kind of identified and laid
out those two IBLA cases in the instruction memorandum. So let me read
that instruction memorandum number. It\'s I.M.2004-224. It has the two
IBLA decisions that support this single decision concept, and so I
suggest sharing with that your solicitors and also we work with the
Washington office solicitors in preparing the language and guidance for
the single decision concept. So at least from our standpoint, we were
getting what we thought was good support from IBLA and the Washington
office, solicitor\'s office, on that. Shane, does that address your
concern regarding that?\
\
R. Johnson: Ted, I\'m guessing since Shane faxed that in, he probably
can\'t respond. Shane, we do want to say all the questions we get in
will be responded to and we\'ll post them on the web site. We do have a
call. It\'s from Neal from Wyoming, I believe. A question for Rick?
Neal, go ahead.\
\
Caller: Yeah, hi, Rick. It\'s Neal Shooky from Wyoming.\
\
R. Tholen: Hey, Neal.\
\
Caller: I have got kind of an interesting question here regarding the
various titles of the healthy forest restoration act. You did speak
about title I and that has to do with hazardous fuels reduction,
however, I\'ve been reviewing the act, and title IV is interesting, and
what it really applies to is we\'re faced with a situation of a severe
beetle epidemic in a wilderness study area in the wind river mountains.
We are analyzing the area this summer to see what type of alternatives
we can come up with to create a healthy landscape. Title IV, it appears
that section 403 of that title, would allow us to conduct some
information gathering under the healthy forest restoration act within
that wilderness study area. So that may be an exception in terms of
using the act within wilderness study area.\
\
R. Tholen: You\'re right. I don\'t believe that the other acts \-- or
other titles, excuse me, are constrained by the wilderness and WSA
restrictions. So I think you\'re right. Title IV, that section that you
mentioned, section 403, basically says that the secretary of agriculture
acting through the Forest Service \-- or the secretary \-- both
secretaries acting through the Forest Service and USGS should implement
that particular section of the title. So I think you should work with
the Forest Service and USGS but probably the more Forest Service in your
area if you\'re interested in pursuing that. I think you\'re right. I
don\'t think the wilderness restriction applies to that title.\
\
Caller: Right. Rick, under section 404, however, it does address applied
sieve cultural assessments. The definition is quite interesting in that
it does mention ma can come treatments and prescribed fire. What we\'re
trying to analyze is the use of planned ignition within this wilderness
study area to meet objectives that fall within the non-impairment
criteria however still would result in a healthy forest landscape. So
it\'s kind of an interesting approach we\'re taking. We have an 8,000
area that\'s inundated with the bark beetle. This approach to be one we
could look at. This is what we\'re looking at this summer with a couple
interns. I thought the audience might interested in that.\
\
R. Tholen: That\'s great. \'We do wanted people to share some
experiences here. I have to admit I\'m not an expert on the other
titles. I think you\'re right, though, I think that will be a good title
to use to do what you\'re talking about, Neal. So thanks for bringing
that up.\
\
R. Johnson: Let me thank you, Neal. Also that\'s one of the major
reasons for having the session, to not only ask questions but also share
information and experience you have. So thank you, Neal. Other calls?
Excuse me. We\'re \--\
\
Caller: We had a question about collaborative efforts and we were
wondering if you could \--\
\
R. Johnson: We\'re going to have to go back. We had three offers come in
about the same time. Let\'s try Roseburg. Roseburg, you\'re on the
line.\
\
Caller: This is Dan from Roseburg, Oregon, we first want to give a big
hello to Bill Hensly in Montana. The question that we have has to do
with the doing density management and late succession reserves,
second-growth stands in western Oregon and whether the healthy forest
initiative act applies to doing commercial thinning to change the fuel
levels and whether we can apply that to the kinds of things we\'re
trying to do. This is probably specifically to Rick.\
\
R. Johnson: Thank you. Rick?\
\
R. Tholen: Well, Dan, I don\'t see why it couldn\'t. If the project is
intended to do reduce hazardous fuels as opposed to, you know, creating
late successional or expecting late successional habitats, I don\'t see
why you couldn\'t use it. But you would have to make sure the project\'s
primary purpose was hazardous fuel reduction and showing that the
project would reduce wildfire risk to one of those components in the
act, and I assume that you could use the T&E species part of HFRA to
qualifier a project, but you\'d have to be very specific that the
project was intended to reduce the risk of fire to the \-- to like
spotted owl habitat. Does that answer your question, Dan?\
\
Caller: Yeah, I think so.\
\
R. Johnson: Thank you, Dan. Lines are open again.\
\
Caller: J.W. \--\
\
R. Johnson: Let\'s go to Missoula, Montana, and then we\'ll go to Nevada
state office.\
\
Caller: We are I trying to better understand the issue of a
collaborative effort. We were wondering if one much you could elaborate
on what constitutes a collaborative effort or collaboratively selected,
especially in the absence of completed CWPPs.\
\
R. Johnson: That\'s a good question. Let me give that a start and I\'ll
ask Rick to finish up on it. Collaborative effort has been defined
through documentations as relates to the national fire plan. As a
process that includes the states, counties, local states, tribal
offices, and it identifies a process which we\'re required to go through
for identifying, selecting and prioritizing projects for funding.
That\'s one of the new additions to the collaborative process. And,
Rick?\
\
R. Tholen: I would add that I think \-- people ask me this all the time
is what\'s the difference between the collaboration required in HFRA,
for example, and what we normally do in public involvement for a
project. I think the way I describe the difference is that \-- the
involvement we\'re looking for is much earlier in the process than we
typically use for projects. We typically go \-- in the past have gone to
the public with a proposed action pretty well figured out and maybe even
some alternatives. And we go to them fairly late in the process where
we\'ve got a considerable amount of work done, maybe not on the ground,
but certainly in the office in terms of figuring out what we want to do.
I think what we\'re talking about here \-- I know with a we\'re talking
about here id to appear lot sooner in the process, to involve our
publics, a lot sooner in the process in deciding where the wildfire
risks are and then what kinds of activities could be done to address
those wildfire risks. So I think, Roy, that part of the answer is to
involve our publics sooner in deciding where and when we should be
looking at doing projects rather than waiting until we have a project
pretty well scoped out or pretty well designed and then asking them for
their comments on it.\
\
R. Johnson: Good. Thanks, Rick. Missoula, does that answer your
question?\
\
Caller: Yeah. What about \-- so that applies to using the cat X
authority as well?\
\
R. Johnson: Ted?\
\
T. Milesnick: I think there would be similar requirements for the \--
involving the public in collaborative process as Rick and Roy describe
for the CX projects as well because that is one of the requirements for
using the CX and that\'s different than our other BLM CXs that we have.
So I would say yes to that.\
\
R. Johnson: Let\'s go to the Nevada state office. Do you have a question
for us?\
\
Caller: Good morning, Roy. This is \-- I have kind of a statement and a
question. The statement has to do with the acreage limitations imposed
in HFRA and HFI. I just want to clarify that that only applies to the
use of the CX, not the tools that are \-- that have been discussed this
morning; is that correct?\
\
R. Johnson: Thank you, Butch. Ted, you want to handle that?\
\
T. Milesnick: I\'m just trying to think in my mind here if there\'s
other acre restrictions. The CXs both for the fuels treatment CXs and
the rehab CXs have acre limitations, and correct me, Rick, if I\'m
wrong, I think that\'s the only HFI tool that has acre limitations or
does HFRA have acre limitations as well?\
\
R. Tholen: HFRA has a total acre limitation for the agencies of 20
million acres. It doesn\'t have be an individual \-- an individual
project size limit.\
\
Caller: Thank you. That\'s good information. The second \-- I guess the
comment is, the use of all of these tools that you\'re explaining to us
really seem to almost penalize people that are trying to do landscape
level treatments because of the acreage limitations and because of some
of the other restrictions and yet the emphasis from the administration
seems to be twofold, it seems to be use the tools we\'ve given you but
we still want large land scale level treatments. I\'m confused about
where the emphasis is. Is it truly a penalty or is it the way it is?\
\
R. Johnson: Ted \-- good comment.\
\
T. Milesnick: I\'ll take a stab at that. We recognize that is kind of a
dichotomy because we are being encouraged to do more but we have the
restrictions on acres, and I guess to maybe explain that just a little
bit is to get some background when we developed the categorical
exclusions. Our initial proposal to CEQ and the public did not have acre
limitations, and during that process for getting the new CXs, we got
responses from about 39,000 people, and in responding to those responses
and comments, there was a compromise process that we worked out with CEQ
and the other agencies and came up with acre limitations. So that was, I
guess, what we needed to do to get the CXs in place. So I recognize that
for states like Nevada that have large fires, large projects, that\'s
kind of working against that concept, but unfortunately that\'s what
we\'re right now stuck with and we\'re going to have to live within
those acre limitations. Anyway, that\'s kind of why they came about. We
recognize it. There\'s really not too much we can do about it.\
\
Caller: I don\'t object to the acreage limitations. I just want to make
sure it\'s not a criteria for preferential funding, because \-- because
we\'re not able to use some of those tools, and that\'s been discussed
in some circles, I\'ve heard.\
\
T. Milesnick: I hope that\'s not how we\'re using them. I hope it\'s not
being looked at that way. So that\'s a good point, and we\'ll certainly
elevate that and be aware of that. So thanks, Butch.\
\
R. Johnson: Just another response to that, certainly there\'s priorities
and goals of use of the tools to expedite some of our projects, and
certainly we\'ve heard that, that those projects that use the tools get
more attention and possibly could get funding but it isn\'t a priority
we fund from at the national level, just an emphasis we place on it.
Other questions? I\'m sorry, two callers. I heard Wyoming.\
\
Caller: This is Neal from Wyoming calling again.\
\
R. Johnson: Neal, go ahead.

Caller: Another tough question for Rick here. I agree with your initial
statement that there\'s no direct appropriation attached to title I of
the healthy forest restoration act however, title IV once again, there
is an authorization of appropriation there, and the language reads that
\-- as necessary to carry out this title for the fiscal years 2004
through 2008. The question is\... with forest health and recovery fund,
our 5900 fund, is money being appropriated by Congress under the healthy
forest restoration act and the healthy forest initiative? Or when
they\'re appropriating this money, what acts are they thinking about
when they\'re appropriating this? Because specifically I\'m thinking
about when we initiate a project, particularly under this title IV where
there is language about authorization of appropriation but no specific
dollar amount, will this be picked up in our appropriation from Congress
and our 5900 forest health and recovery fund?\
\
R. Tholen: Neal, as far as I know, Congress hasn\'t specifically
appropriated any money for the individual titles in HFRA. I could be
wrong on some of the titles other than title 1 since I don\'t follow
those as closely, and those are being implemented mainly in the Forest
Service. But clearly the Congress and administration intends us to
implement HFRA through our normal appropriations, and whether it\'s 5900
or other forestry money or fuels money or wildlife money or range money,
those \-- they didn\'t appropriate separate money to do these titles. So
I would encourage you to work your project that you\'re considering even
if it\'s under title 4 into the normal bureau budget process, whether
that be through the BPS system or through NFPORS if it\'s a fuels
project. I don\'t think there\'s any restrictions on using appropriated
funds that aren\'t specifically appropriated to implement HFRA in these
different titles. So that\'s what I encourage you to do.\
\
Caller: Thanks, Rick.\
\
R. Johnson: Another question, please?\
\
Caller: Eric from Klamath falls. We\'re a bet incredulous when you
mentioned 10 to 15-page EAs, then over the break we looked at those
mentioned on the web site and we couldn\'t find any that were within
that. Most were 100-plus pages. Is there any really good EA that would
be a good example of one under 15 pages.\
\
T. Milesnick: Let me respond to your reference on the web site. Those
were done in conjunction with CEQ and represent BLM\'s pilots for the
CEQ guidance. If you look at those EAs, I think all of them are between
10 and 15 pages in terms of the body of the EA. Now, if you add in the
appendices and kind of lists of individuals, agencies consulted, you\'re
getting into some larger EAs. Those EAs still qualify for meeting and
achieving the CEQ guidance of short and concise EAs. Like I said earlier
in the broadcast, we have relaxed the CEQ guidance somewhat from the 10
to 15 pages to 15 to 20 pages or somewhere in that ballpark and we\'re
just looking at the body of the EA, four required chapters of the EA,
not necessarily the appendices or attachments to that EA. So even though
those look big, they still qualify. I think preparing EAs that
incorporate by reference and append material is a good mechanism to make
the body of the EA concise and readable both for the public and the
decision maker, and so that\'s what we\'re encouraging.\
\
R. Johnson: Thank you, Ted. We have time for about two more questions.
So questions there?\
\
Caller: This is Christa again from Idaho. I have another HFRA question
for you.\
\
R. Johnson: Let\'s go to Idaho, a Larry Kaiser, please.\
\
Caller: Good morning,. I have a HFRA question for Rick. Has to do with
the definitions of the at risk community. In that definition, how are we
to determine when conditions are conducive to a large scale wildfire and
also how do we demonstrate that there is a significant threat to human
life or property?\
\
R. Johnson: Rick?\
\
R. Tholen: Larry, fortunately, I think, Congress didn\'t tell us how to
do that, and so there\'s some discussion there in how we go about doing
that. I think that using some of the modeling tools that show that the
area of the vegetation around the community is conducive to crown fire
or would prevent firefighters from effectively protecting the community,
such as far sight and some of those models, I think if those are
available and the data and information is available, I think that could
be used to show that the area is conducive to a large-scale wildfire. As
far as the risk to human safety, health and safety, I think once again
if you could show that fire behavior in the interface would be such that
firefighters could not safely get in and protect the community that that
is probably adequate to show that there\'s a significant risk to the
public. So I\'d say, once again I would summarize, saying it\'s
fortunate they didn\'t tell us how to do that. I understand and
certainly understand in Idaho on some of the recent litigation that
it\'s a path that we have to figure out how to get down, but I think
we\'re better off trying to figure out that path without being told how
to do it, and I would use some of those models and tools that I
mentioned to show that the area would be susceptible to a large fire and
the public would be at significant risk.\
\
R. Johnson: Thank you, Larry, for your question. Time for one last
question.\
\
Caller: This is Christa in Idaho.\
\
R. Johnson: Christa, you got in under the line. Go ahead.\
\
Caller: My question is HFRA related again, and it has to do with
monitoring an assessment, and I\'d like to know if all HFRA projects
require documentation of changes in the fire regime condition class, or
if the FRC determination only applies to that representative sample of
projects that they refer to in section 102 of the act?\
\
R. Johnson: Excellent question, Christa. Rick?\
\
R. Tholen: There\'s two places in title 1 that talk about monitoring,
and one place is where the Congress directs us to monitor a
representative sample of our treatments, and I believe that that section
is sort of our national monitoring strategy that\'s being developed by
WFLC, and that particular process will likely use the fire regime
condition class as one of the variables, but I don\'t think on its own
that that particular provision requires that all HFRA projects do that.
However, there\'s another section that deals with monitoring an
assessment in HFRA, and that section, Christa, does say that monitoring
will include the fire regime condition class pretreatment and post
treatment assessments, and so I would view that as meaning that all HFRA
projects should \-- or must assess the pretreatment fire regime
condition class and then do a post treatment fire regime condition class
when we\'re doing our monitoring of that project to show if the project
was effective in meeting the project goals. For those of you that are
not as familiar out there at using the fire regime condition class
process, there\'s a guidebook on the web \-- on the FRCC.gov web site
that can help you figure out what those protocols are, but, yes, I would
say that you should use FRCC both pretreatment and post-treatment for
HFRA projects.\
\
R. Johnson: Thank you, Rick. Thank you for your good questions. If you
have some burning questions or issues or things you want to share with
us, hold them for a little while. We\'re going to break again and at the
end of that question answer we will address them. Thanks again. Scott,
let\'s talk some stewardship biomass.\
\
S. Lieurance: Thank you, Roy. If you could turn to page 20 in your
participant guide, that\'s where we\'re going to talk about stewardship.
Now, stewardship contracting was first approved for the forest service
in 1999 under a pilot basis, and that authority basically gives the
Forest Service the ability to offer contracts or agreements up to a
period of 10 years. Prior to that, the authority for a contract or
agreement was limited to a five-year contract. Also combines a service
contract and a \-- under a single contract, and that is really critical
to what stewardship does, because, at least within the BLM, we can only
dispose of forest products under our forest product contract and the
authorized managers or field manager. Under a service contract we can\'t
dispose of forest products. The Contracting Officer has no authority to
do that. With stewardship we can now do that. Another thing it allows us
to do is use forest products, or the value of them sold, traded or
offset to help offset the contracted cost of services if there is any
value in that material.

One other item associated with it, it requires the use of best value as
a basis for award. Now, that in the \-- a service contract is probably
nothing new to people who award and evaluate service contracts, but in
the realm of forest products, we\'ve been limited to giving our forest
contracts to the highest bidder unless it\'s a negotiated sale. So being
able to do something on a best value basis is a really big leap. And the
best value could include a lot of things. It can include items such as
national fire plan, local communities, a variety of things. What\'s good
for the government, what\'s good for the community. One other item
associated with stewardship, it allows you to use the excess receipts
not subject to revenue sharing provisions. In the public domain outside
of western Oregon, 75% of the value of all of our forest products goes
to the Bureau of Reclamation. With the stewardship project, we\'re
allowed to keep that money, put it into a new subactivity, 5921, and use
that on other approved stewardship contracts. Now, in 2003 the original
legislation was amended, and it changed to pilot authority from the
Forest Service and included to end December 30th 2013. It also included
BLM in that legislation and changed the monitoring to a programmatic
monitoring rather an project-level monitoring. In January 2004, our
secretary, assistant secretary of lands, Rebecca Watson and
undersecretary in the Forest Service or Department of Ag, Mark Ray did a
rollout of our guidance and the Forest Service guidance. Included in
that rollout was a news release that that talked a little about
stewardship, what does it, there was a guidance that issued our
guidance, which is a 9-page document and also issued the Forest Service
guidance and included questions and answers which we expect to be gotten
from our public\'s and our contractors and industry. It has a fact sheet
about what stewardship does and does not do and also a Federal Register
notice. Within the web sites that went out with that was the link to our
sister agency web sites and some map of some of the projects coming up.

Now, the objective of stewardship is via agreement or contract we would
enter into stewardship projects with public and private entities. Now,
with than that, it also allows non-governmental organizations, private
individuals, and even other government agencies \-- it allows us to
perform services to achieve land management goals that are identified in
your land use plan. And to meet local and rural community needs. That\'s
kind of the heart of what stewardship is, meeting our land use plan and
goals a our local and rural community needs. Now, the seven goals of
stewardship contracting are road maintenance, trail maintenance are for
water quality improvement. The second one is soil productivity for
wildlife habitat and fisheries, a third one setting prescribed fires to
improve conditions, and removing vegetation or other activities to
promote healthy forest stands, reduce hazards and achieve other land
management objectives. Watershed restoration and maintenance.
Restoration and maintenance of fish and wildlife habitat. The last one
is control of obnoxious and exotic weeds.

Where in stewardship does it talk about getting the cutout if you\'re
\-- your object sieve to harvest timber and remove timber, then it\'s
not a stewardship project. It deals mostly with wildlife objectives,
fuels objectives, forest and woodland health objectives, land health
objectives. That\'s what stewardship is about. Now, what stewardship
contracting is is a tool to perform services to achieve land management
goals. We talked about those goals. It promotes active collaboration
with local, rural, tribal and other groups, very similar to community
wildfire protection plans, what we do with NEPA. It allows agencies to
trade goods for services and retain excess offset values.

Now, what stewardship contracting is not, it is not a replacement for
existing timber sale programs or a grazing program. It is a mechanism
\-- it is not a mechanism to remove the \-- reduce the public\'s role.
On the contrary, we want you to talk to the public and find out what the
needs are in the local community. Talk to your stakeholders, that
includes industry. They are the ones can that help you get a good
project together. There\'s also not a relinquishment of decision making
authorities or management responsibilities. The people who make these
decisions are field managers as always. You are the responsible party.
The Forest Service in their first four years of stewardship, they
approved 84 projects, and they had 98 contracts or agreements come out
of that. In 2004 they approved 46 contracts or agreements and they were
awarded. In 2004 for BLM we had a target of 35 projects and 22 actually
went to contracts. Some of the accomplishments for 2004 in our 22
contracts or agreements, one actually was an agreement, we had 36 \-- or
3.6 million dollars in service costs, approximately 15,000 acres were
treated under \-- or will be treated under these contracts, and it\'s
generally WUI treatments, fuels treatments outside the WUI, forest
health treatments, but in addition to that there was a lot of rangeland
health treatments done, some riparian activities were accomplished, some
riparian fences were constructed. We put roads to bed, did some
maintenance, things like that. Out of that also, there was 1.7 million
dollars of product value. But product value has to be secondary in all
our every stewardship contracts. Roughly \-- 14 million board feet of
timber, 12 hundred CCF, a thousand cords, 27,000 tons of biomass. These
are all buy products. Any for \-- any product removed knees to be the
byproduct of your primary activity you\'re doing. As you would expect,
we had more success in the northwest. That\'s because we have a lot of
existing markets up there. We had a lot of folks in place who were able
to do the service contracts in the forest products and put those
projects together.

A lot of our projects were off the shelf. We had expected that. And in
the northwest we had a lot of infrastructure in place already. We had
some problems that occurred in the southwest, but that\'s because
there\'s not a lot of people out there that know how to do this. We
don\'t have the contracting community, the infrastructure is no longer
there. That\'s where with stewardship and a long-term contract we\'re
hoping we can get some industry going to help us meet our needs and the
needs of the communities. In 2005 we were trying to get 70 new projects
awarded this year. We\'re 25 thousand \-- in 2006 we\'re looking at
fewer, bigger, longer contracts and projects that are developed and
contracted at the watershed scale. This is where you get real impacts,
real effects, get a lot of stuff done out in the \-- where we manage our
lands and in our local and rural communities. Some of the lessons
learned that we have, one of the big ones, can\'t push a rope uphill.
What does that really mean? Do stewardship where it fits. If you are
trying to cut timber, get money, that\'s not stewardship.

Another lesson learned is allow contracting to be done at the local
level. Too much overhead from the national office shooting us in the
foot sometimes. We need to make it simpler for the people in the field
to get the job done. When we get our initial rollout, we limited
everything above 100,000 to be a performance based contract, everything
under 100,000 was a normal simplified acquisition. Our first year we did
everything performance. In \'05 we\'ve changed that. We\'re able to do
things in a simplified acquisition and looking at using the IDIQ task
order. Another lesson we learned is making the collaboration fit the
project. We talked about collaboration under HFRA projects, community
wildfire protection. Everything we do we need nude a collaborative
manner with our public\'s, our stakeholders, the people we affect out
there. We need to perform adequate outreach to see if there\'s a market
for what is going on and to help develop markets. And we need to listen
to the stakeholders. When we do that we\'re table to develop a
contracting package that meets our needs and helps meet the needs of the
local and rural communities we\'re serving. And when we involve our
contracting officers, not only in just developing in the contract but in
our public meetings, they\'re the ones who know how to modify a contract
during the solicitation, because a lot of people out there, they know a
better way of doing business than what we do and they can help us put a
good package together so that we can get things done. And also we know
that cost of removal of biomass material often exceeds the value of the
product. That\'s obvious. Out of our 20 some odd projects we did, I
think only two of them generated excess receipts. The majority of them,
by the biomass was of little or no value, even negative value. But the
point is, we knew that going into it.

Stewardship is a way to merge the service aspects of the contract with
forest products removal and to help generate some economy out there.
Some of the things that were done up in Oregon, they used some IDIQ
formats for longer term contracts and they weren\'t \-- didn\'t have to
have all their money up front and we\'re hoping to be able to do that in
other parts of the country. One thing we also need to be very cautious
about is when we\'re requiring bonding. When we put out the guidance in
the January \'04 we said we wanted some performance bonds and we wanted
also the payment bond, or conservation credits. When we do excessive
bonding on our contractors, and these are some of the things people told
us out there, is that it\'s difficult for a small mom and pop to get
bonding. We need to be sensitive to the needs of cash flow for our
contractors out there, and we can use the flexibilities within the
federal acquisition regs and the bonding to be able to meet our needs
and to be able to get a good contract and get work done.

One other aspect of the national \-- or of stewardship which was talked
about before was the best value award. Now, in the original delegation
we got from the assistant secretary\'s office, if we were using national
fire plan funding or we were going towards national fire plan goals, we
could include evaluation criteria which specified local hiring, and
that\'s part of what stewardship is about, is developing contracts that
meet the needs of local and rural economies, and that\'s jobs. So if we
get a good offer or a proposal from a contractor in that local area, we
can give a certain amount of priority to that, towards our award. One
thing we learned last year, and hopefully it\'s not going to happen this
year, but is that we put a lot of contracts out on the street at one
time, contractors weren\'t able to go and look at them to put in bids
for more than one contract. This year the same thing may occur because
of some of the changeover to FBMS, but hopefully in the future we\'ll be
able to get some of what an even flow of these things and giver the
contractors out there enough time to look at a project in \-- to be able
to put a good proposal together.

Now, Washington office, we have listened to the lessons learned. This
year we had the Northern Arizona do an external survey of \-- they
talked to our staffs, they talked to a lot of our contractors, some of
the results was of this was that they did like stewardship contracting,
the idea of joining the two contracts together. What they didn\'t think
was working too well was the markets. Hopefully with longer-term
projects and contracts we\'ll be able to develop some of these markets.
Now, we\'ve changed some of the things that \-- some of the delegations
we had in our original rollout. What we\'re doing here soon is we\'ve
requested from the assistant secretary the approval to be done at the
state director level in the original rollout it had to come to
Washington, and then on up to the assistant secretary. Most of the
projects have been approved with little or no modifications, so they\'re
going to allow that here for \'06 projects. We haven\'t received that
yet, but we should soon. Also, for projects that are under \$100,000
worth of service costs, we just recently redelegated to that some of the
state contracting officers that have attended our trainings. This is
going to make it much easier to get your contracting office involved in
the public outreach that occurs, and I think that\'s where marrying up
with the contracting office and using the flex bill tease of the federal
acquisition regs is a way to get a good contract together that meets our
needs and meets the needs of the local and rural economy.

We\'re also recently allowed the use of forest product sales
instruments, but we want to make sure that we\'re not doing that just to
cut timber. Any material taken needs to be a byproduct of our
activities. The forge, we\'re looking at issuing some guidance with
forage. There are some things we have to be very cognizant of. If your
project is talking about existing AUMs that are adjudicated under
existing grazing lease, those leases are intended for \-- to graze with
cattle to get AUMs and to \-- for the primary benefit of is that to
remove grass. We need to make sure that any activity, the byproduct of
the vegetative material, is what we\'re going to do with the \-- do with
the stewardship contract. Now, for more information on our \-- you can
get it at our web sites, blm.gov \-- okay. I did have a web site that
was going to come up. Unfortunately, it is unable to do it, but you can
go to our BLM front page at www.blm.gov, scroll to the bottom and go to
a link of our stewardship contracts and that will take you to our
stewardship web page and on that web page is a copy of the rollout
material, our guidance, it has a link to the Forest Service web page
where you can find similar things about their rollout, their guidance,
their Q&As, et cetera. There\'s also a map on the right side of the page
which takes you to healthy forests.gov and you can actually click on an
individual state and see what pages are out there \-- what projects are
active. That\'s a pretty good web site. And coming up before long is an
internal web page that we\'ve developed, and it is going to be on \-- in
www \-- actually, web.blm.gov under renewable resources, and you will be
able to go to internal web site for stewardship.

On that stewardship site it\'s going to have a link \-- will show where
all the stewardship coordinators are in each state, it will show sample
contracts, our performance based contract, our simplified acquisition,
our IDIQ contracts and some of the other things you need for
contracting. It will have sample BPS submissions, some of the things
that we need to be able to review the projects. And it has a link to the
Forest Service side. Additionally out there are some training aids. I
know we\'ve had requests from quite a few of the states to be able to
use some of the Powerpoints that we\'ve developed in \-- for our
training for stewardship coordinators. So we will be posting all of
those on there. So for more information on stewardship contracting, you
can contact myself, Scott Lieurance at the Washington office, and Eric
Christiansen at NIFC. He is recently hired there and he is the
stewardship and biomass coordinator and Helen Curly, a bureau
procurement chief. Also, IM 2004-8 and 2005-099, that was when we
allowed the use of forest products contracts.

Let\'s switch gears with biomass. I know everybody is aching to find out
what\'s going on with biomass. If you turn to page 23 of your guide
we\'ll talk a little bit about going on. With BLM\'s biomass utilization
strategy, the goal of the strategy is to increase the commercial
utilization of small diameter material from forestry, fuels and
rangeland treatments. Using biomass from forest products and energy will
help offset \-- could help offset a portion of restoring lands, reducing
smokey missions from prescribed fires and wildfires and provide jobs and
create renewable energy. Why would we put a biomass strategy together?
One reason is in the national fire plan, the 10-year comprehensive
strategy, goal 4 of that strategy is to promote community assistance.
Within that, biomass utilization is included in there and we\'re
supposed to employ all appropriate means to stimulate industries that
will use small diameter woody material resulting from hazardous fuels
reduction activities, such as biomass for paper, pull that for paper,
building materials and whatever else we can use lies this material for.
Action item is in there. Promote markets for traditionally underutilized
material for value added outlet for bye products from treatment.
Additionally by the national fire plan we have the MOU for woody biomass
utilization signed in June of 2003. This was signed by the secretaries
of agriculture, department of energy and interior.

Within that MOU, we had the purpose of that MOU is to communicate to our
employees what we can do with biomass and how we can achieve some of our
other goals. It\'s also to promote utilization of biomass. And
additionally it\'s to develop new mechanisms to increase efficiencies.
It has eight principles, the MOU does. One of those is to include
communities in our utilization strategies. With that, it\'s not unlike
your community wildfire protection plans. Another principle is to
promote the quantity and quality of our biomass. Develop knowledge,
encourage development out there, support tribal efforts for utilization
of biomass, and explore sustainable supplies and develop performance
measures and outcomes. That\'s what\'s in the MOU.

Another item we have is our national energy policy, task number 45.
Develop a strategy to encourage use of biomass from public land. Develop
opportunities to utilize funding from other sources within the national
fire plan. And so we develop BLM biomass utilization strategy. Parts of
that strategy include building tools and expertise, stabilizing
supplies. And also within the realm of tools and expertise we have some
new contracting techniques that complement our BLM timber sale
authorities. One of those is the \-- our stewardship authority which I
already talked about, and then our Department of Interior clause. At the
Denver last year in the winter, we had the biomass conference. Our
secretary announced on all of our \-- that we would have a biomass
clause attached to all of our service contracts where it\'s appropriate
to offer the option for biomass utilization. What that does, if we have
an opportunity and we are able to use the biomass that\'s ecologically
appropriate, we can offer that biomass for removal to that operator that
we\'re already working with, and the contracting mechanism to do that
would be a negotiated sale through our forest products. That has to be
basically a negotiated sale. Now, where we\'ll have direction coming out
shortly on the use of that biomass clause. Additionally within an I.M.
coming out will be definitions and performance measures.

Within those \-- the reason we need definitions, we need to have
consistency across the BLM and also how to measure our goals and track
accomplishments. Our definition that\'s coming out on the I.M. is
biomass is all vegetative materials grown in the forest, woodlands and
rangeland environments that are the byproducts of management restoration
or fuels reduction treatments. Historically these are underutilized
materials and biomass utilization, we need to define what that is.
Biomass utilization is the offer, sale, trade, harvest or use of
vegetative material to produce a product, including energy. Biomass
chips spread on the site is not what we\'re going to be calling biomass
utilization. Biomass removed and hauled to a landfill is also not
considered utilized. Another component of our strategy is we have \--
last year we put out a call to the states to find out if anybody would
step up to the plate and be a demonstration area. And we reviewed those,
we had about nine applications, and we ended up with six. Part of the
process they needed to be leaders in increasing biomass utilization as a
component of a vegetation treatment. They also needed to be a national
resource for training demonstrating transferring technology and policy
development. And critical to the biomass demonstration areas there
needed to be management and community support, and there needed to be a
potential for biomass in that area. And the six demonstration areas.
They\'re scattered around the \-- the west.

We have one in royal gorge, Colorado, and that\'s a particularly
interesting one, because the office there is working with the power,
they generate electricity, they will be utilizing some of our biomass.
Additionally, Colorado State University recently got a grant to study,
taking some of the fly ash, combining it with biomass and being able to
reuse that in the power generation facility. That will no longer go into
taking upland fill space. Another is in Prineville, Oregon. They
they\'re working with the Warm Springs Confederation tribes and the
Deschutes national forest and the Mount Hood, and they should be working
on increasing the biomass use at the reservation there. They currently
have a 7 megawatt facility for generating electricity. They have been
applying for grants, putting a business plan together, to increase to
that about 18 megawatts, and critical to that is having an adequate
supply, sustainable supply of biomass. They will be looking at putting a
proposal together under the recently passed tribal forest protection act
where a tribe can petition the government to take care or treat adjacent
agency lands. This should work out pretty good in Prineville.

Another project we have is in Anchorage, and on the camel track.
They\'re looking at having a new facility there and they\'re looking at
using biomass to heat the facility. This proves feasible, especially in
Alaska, where they might be paying 6 to 8 gal dollars a gallon for
diesel, if they are able to heat with a biomass, this is how we increase
our supplies. Another place is in the Boise district. They\'re working
with a new company there that is looking at building a power facility,
taking biomass actually from the landfills rather than going into the
landfills from the urban areas, off of forest sites, on the national
forest sites, they\'re looking at a 400 acre project where they\'ll be
using juniper to generate electricity. And Northern California where we
have a long history of biomass they have several bioenergy facilities
there, and the ALTURAS field office is currently doing an EIS to manage
some 4 million acres of juniper and get that back into a healthy
condition. Those are some. Then in Medford they have a long history of
biomass, in the Applegate partnership. Those some of the demonstration
areas we look at going with.

Another part of the strategy is stabilizing supplies. Part of that is
buying bio-based. We\'re going to be amending the strategy we put out
last year and under buying biobased we need to make our part in helping
to increase the demand. We\'re looking at some possible, as I talked
about with the camel track, using bioenergy to heat some of our
facilities. It just makes sense if we have a recent fire and going to be
doing some mulching, something like be that, rather than bring in straw
that has weeds, we should just shred the existing material out there and
spread it out. We need to help create some of the demand for some of
this some odd 400,000 tons of biomass we\'re creating under our fuels
treatments projects. One of our performance measures or national goals
we have for \'06 is that 10% of the mechanical fuels projects that are
in force in woodland we would have a biomass component. On a longer
range, in 2008, we\'re hoping to get to 50%. We need to be part of this
solution to utilize biomass. This complements or our for tree program.
The fire folks have recently gone out and doing five-year schedules for
fuels treatments for all the field offices and they\'re going to be
identifying potential markets and supplies. That\'s due this fall. I
think that shows real good outyear planning. I think the other resources
needed to similar things, especially in forestry. Biomass contracting
tools, we\'ve talked about that. Stewardship contracting, we had a
recent meeting in D.C. with some logging council. One thing they talked
about is they needed longer contracts.

Stewardship contracts allow us to do that. When we can have a 10-year
contract. Our biomass option, which I talked about a little bit, that
gives us an option to increase supplies. We need to have longer, larger
long-term contracts to be able to provide these materials. We\'re also
working with the USDA forest products lab to \-- giving them some of our
materials, see what they can make out of it, and use that as a marketing
tool. And in Colorado, a group called Colorado Wood is \-- they\'re
doing a little bit of research with Colorado State in demonstrating
products made from juniper. In Prineville Oregon, they\'re working to
determine what the level of supplies are across all ownerships in the
lower Deschutes.

Now, some of the challenges. We have a lot of challenges with biomass.
Nobody said it was going to be cheap. The expense of offering,
transporting and marketing biomass is not going to be easy to overcome.
We need to make good business decisions. But at the same time we need to
hope our local and rural economies and develop those markets. And we
need assistance in attracting markets such as partners or clearing
houses. We work with USDA, Department of Energy for grants and research.
Now, for more information, you can contact Gregg Nelson, he is our
recently hired biomass coordinator in the Washington office or you can
talk to Eric Christiansen at NIFC. Janine Velasco, she\'s the deputy
director for 800 in Washington. She\'s been critical in the buying
biomass. Healthyforest.gov, you can go to that web site and there is a
link to the biomass programs that the department has and some of their
strategy. What we need to do is we need to be a part of utilizing this
material pause we\'re generating a lot of it. Roy.\
\
R. Johnson: Thanks, Scott. I\'m somewhat overwhelmed. A lot of things
happened. Lot of things going on. Thanks for your excellent overview as
well as the BLM\'s biomass strategy. Certainly BLM is the leading agency
in the biomass strategy. Well, for the next section you\'ll need to
follow along on page 25 of your participant\'s guide. But before we
start, we\'re going to take another 20-minute break. During this break,
once again you\'ll need to discuss stewardship contracting and biomass
strategies and be prepared to report back on those issues that you have,
that you would like to share with us and also some tools you\'d like to
see or some assistance you would like to see in implementing these.
Specifically we want you to look at the questions within the guide which
are what questions do you still have about stewardship contracting and
biomass utilization, and what might be done to assist you in
implementing these two initiatives. We\'ll see you in 20 minutes.\
\
R. Johnson: Welcome back for our final segment. By now you know the
drill. If you have a question or comment for us, please use your mic or
give us a call or send us a fax. Those numbers once again are on your
screen. 602-906-5713 for our fax or if you want to call us
1-877-862-5346. Well, we had an interesting time so far. Now we\'re
going to open up the lines for questions. What we\'ll do is go with the
questions on stewardship and biomass to start with and then we\'ll have
a chance to shift over to some of your burning questions after that. The
lines are open.\
\
Caller: Nevada state office, Roy.\
\
R. Johnson: Nevada state office, Butch Hayes, go ahead, Butch.\
\
Caller: Thank you. Just I guess a combination observation and question.
With these stewardship contracts, many of them are multi-year which
entails a Contracting Officer\'s representative responsibility or
workload overtime, and yet every year it seems like the target is just
for new stewardship contracts. Is there any recognition at the
department level that this workload continues on into the outyears even
\-- I mean, you\'re not getting rid of it the year you get to claim it.
It just hangs on. Does that make sense?\
\
R. Johnson: Good question.\
\
S. Lieurance: Butch, I know the department is very cognizant of the
number of contracts we have going out there and the additional workload
it\'s going to be. A lot of the things we are going to be doing anyways.
If we have a seven or eight-year contract out there, we know we\'ll have
to have people on the ground. We know \-- the department knows this. It
is an additional workload but there is a workload we would probably do
anyway because stewardship contract is just way to implement our
existing activities we\'re doing. So whether the contract is a single
contract that goes for seven years or whether it\'s a single task order
off the IDIQ that only goes for one season, the point is we need to get
out there and do these things. The longer term contracts is going to
help with us our infrastructure w our business, with our biomass
markets, and I think the department is very aware that we are \-- that
there is this workload, and they appreciate all the things that the
states have done to get this implementation done.\
\
R. Johnson: Thanks, Scott. One thing if I could add on that, it
certainly was quite an impact on the states, I know, to implement this
as quickly as was liked. I think what Scott was saying, certainly there
is an appreciation of the way the BLM has implemented this and with that
and the trust level that\'s been developed we\'re looking forward to the
future and effective use of these tools. Thanks, Butch for these
questions. We have Tim duck on the line from Arizona. We haven\'t heard
from Arizona yet.\
\
Caller: Good morning. Originally when stewardship contracting and HFI
came out we were told to be cautious about marrying those up. Do we have
the ability to combine our NEPA compliance tools like HFI and HFRA with
stewardship contracting? I\'ll listen to the answer offline.\
\
S. Lieurance: The stewardship contracting is just the mechanism you are
going to be using to implement the project. Whatever you\'re doing under
the HFI or the HFRA for the NEPA side of things, stewardship is just a
tool. We kind of treat it like a program, but it is really just a tool,
and so you can use it to implement any of the projects you identify in
your collaborative planning that you do, and, as I said, it\'s a tool to
use to meet the needs of local and rural communities, and so I\'m hoping
that a lot of the projects that do come out of your collaboration
aspects, if you approach it from the stewardship concept, they are
identified in your collaborative processes, that a lot of the thing that
you do are stewardship contracts. But it\'s just one of the tools that
you can use. You can also use your standards \-- standard service
contracts or forest products. Whatever tool you use to implement your
HFI project is what you\'re going to do. It\'s just one of the tools in
our toolbox.\
\
R. Johnson: Thanks, Scott. Tim, did that answer your question? I was
afraid when you went off line we might have lost you. Somebody out there
help him with that response. We\'ll get back with him. Thanks. Anybody
else on the line? Lines are open.\
\
Caller: Roy, this is Sandy Gregory from Nevada. Scott, can you talk a
little bit more about the new IDIQ as it relates to stewardship?\
\
S. Lieurance: One of the things that we did in our original rollout in
\'04 is we had all the contracts go through the Denver service center
and we strictly used the performance based contracting. This year to
help facilitate to make it easier for the field, working with Joe,
actually Joe did this, Joe bogus there in Denver, he amended all the
existing awards under the original IDIQ solicitation to include a
stewardship component, and then the awards that they did last September,
those came out, and those were also amended to include a stewardship
component. So if you ever a fuels project you\'re doing out there and it
has biomass that you want to utilize or to remove or for some secondary
product, you can issue a task against that order \-- or against that
award and it will count as a stewardship contract.

Basically what stewardship in this case does, it combines the
flexibility of a service contract with a product removal, and I think it
should expedite \-- really expedite substantially the ability to the
field to implement their fuels treatments, to utilize the biomass, and
to get these projects through contracting. Joe recently sent out the
template for that stewardship IDIQ task order. It\'s going to be on that
wonderful web site that didn\'t show up. Technology sometimes kicks you
in the pants, you know. But the point is, with this new IDIQ task
forward that you will be able to use, you will be able to use your
existing contracts. And if you have some local contractors, this fits
into the concept of meeting the needs of local and rural communities. So
explore that. Contact your state coordinators. Contact your state
contracting officers. They have these samples in hand and they\'ll help
you put those task orders together.\
\
R. Johnson: Thanks, Sandy for your questions. The line is open.\
\
Caller: Roy, this is John foster in Idaho, again.\
\
R. Johnson: Go ahead, please.\
\
Caller: Scott, could you tell us a little bit more about the role of
forage with the biomass strategy? It wasn\'t real clear to us here.\
\
S. Lieurance: Okay. With biomass and actually with stewardship, the
forage was actually in our stewardship component, but when we originally
put out the guidance for stewardship, we did not include forage in it.
We wanted to stick strictly with forest products, conventionally what we
consider forest products, vegetative material. We have a couple requests
come in from states, how can we include forage in a stewardship contract
and use the value of that offset or combine that in a service contract?
And we talked to the folks at the national range office and we developed
a few criteria that would have to be done. We have an \-- we haven\'t
amended the guidance to include that, but basically here is what it is.

If you have a stewardship project where you\'re going to meet some of
those seven objectives such as the wildlife, soil and erosion control,
hazard reduction, noxious weeds, and you have \-- there is a forage
component to doing that such that you\'re basically removing the fuel,
then we can have a stewardship project and contract. Now, if the
contract \-- or the project \-- the AUMs you\'re dealing with or the
forage is part of an existing lease or award or is under contract via
the Taylor grazing act, the primary purpose is to graze, not to meet one
of the land use objectives such as we outlined. So we wanted to make it
clear that stewardship contracting when use of forage does not replace
our existing grazing program. Those leases, et cetera, are already
awarded, and these are \-- would be new forage or new AUMs, not
associated with an adjudicated lease. Now, did that answer your
question, John?\
\
Caller: Does that give any kind of preference to existing permitees or
lessees?\
\
S. Lieurance: If you\'re doing this in a lease that has suspended AUMs,
I think under the stewardship you would be able to negotiate that with
your existing lessee. You still have to keep everything within the
context of the land use plan, the class of livestock, the season of use,
et cetera. So you could, through \-- we haven\'t explored that in
complete detail yet, but it would be very difficult for a person to
issue AUMs on an existing lease if they have suspended AUMs because that
permittee basically is still within their preference. So \-- but we have
to remember, the primary purpose of this is to do \-- meet those first
objectives, and if a lessee is willing to do that, then this would be a
separate lease or contract, separate from their Taylor grazing permit.
Talk to the field manager. Talk to your lessee and come one a best
solution to get this work done. I think working with your lessee would
probably be the best way to go in that. But if you have a proposal, talk
to Jack Peterson, he\'s the Idaho stewardship coordinator, and give me a
call, and we\'ll talk to the folks in Washington, Jack Hamby or Bud, and
we\'ll see what we can come up with. But our biggest point here, any of
the vegetative material we remove has to be a by product of our other
activity. So if the activity includes \-- the main part is to graze,
then that\'s necessarily a byproduct. We have to pass the red face test
in everything we do with stewardship.\
\
Caller: For example, if you wanted to create some fuel reduction along a
fence line or highway, roadway, that\'s not part of an existing permit,
you could look at some intensive herding along there to reduce the fuel
load?\
\
S. Lieurance: Yes, I believe we could do that. Like I said, talk with
Jack and get a hold of me and we\'ll see what we can work out, because
that\'s where the flexibility of stewardship and some our authorizing
authorities, is that stewardship is good things on the land and meet the
needs of local and rural communities and putting in a fuel zone or fuel
buffer fit within those. So talk to jack and we\'ll see what you got.\
\
Caller: One last thing. When do you expect the amended guidance to be
out?\
\
S. Lieurance: We\'re hoping to have the amended guidance out by the end
of the fiscal year but I wouldn\'t wait until then. If you\'ve got a
project, give us a call and we\'ll see what we can do.\
\
R. Johnson: Thanks, John, for your excellent question. Got a fax here.
Ted, got a fax from Mike Bechtel from Kay falls. Want to handle that
one?\
\
T. Milesnick: Sure. Thanks, Roy. I\'ll read this. CXs limit post fire
rehab activities to less than 4200 acres. That\'s only one burning
period for a large growing fire. What do you suggest for rehab
activities greater than 4200 acres, an HFRA EA? I guess I would first
date that the HFRA EAs only apply to hazardous fuels treatment projects
so an HFRA wouldn\'t be an option you can use. What you should do if you
exceed the acres limitations for the CXs is to do an EA prepared under
the healthy forest initiative guidance issued by CEQ. So this would be
an HFI CEQ EA and that would be the correct NEPA document to use in that
situation.\
\
R. Johnson: Thanks, Ted. Thank you for your question. Other questions,
please? Okay. I have another fax \--\
\
Caller: I\'ve got a question. Sarah from the Pocatello field office in
Idaho.\
\
R. Johnson: Go ahead, please.\
\
Caller: The question is, under what circumstances is it appropriate to
develop a second action alternative in a fuels reduction project
streamlined EA? I suppose this is a question for Ted.\
\
T. Milesnick: I think in looking at additional alternatives in the EA
process is that you would go ahead and base the development of those EAs
upon input and comments from the public. So I think it\'s appropriate to
have another action alternative. If you\'re not tying it to HFRA, you
don\'t have to meet the HFI sideboards and requirements there. So if the
public is looking at suggesting something different, we would just go
ahead and develop that as an alternative and incorporate it and analyze
it into the EA as we normally would. So I\'m not sure if that addressed
all of your question or not. Does that cover it or am I missing
something there?\
\
Caller: Yeah, I think you covered it. Thank you.\
\
T. Milesnick: Okay. Thank you.\
\
R. Johnson: We had a couple other questions out there.\
\
Caller: This is Neal Shooky from Wyoming again.\
\
R. Johnson: Hi, Neal. Go ahead. Something we didn\'t really touch on
here was the interrelationship between the healthy forest restoration
act, the healthy forest initiative, the national fire plan and our
timber sale authority. I think it would \-- this is more of a statement
or a point of view, it would behoove us to have a little bit closer
coordination between the fires program, fuels program and the forest
management program in that there have been instances where money has
been appropriated from the 2823 or 2824 program to create fuel breaks in
a WUI situation which were actually a cost to the government to create
these fuel breaks when, in fact, if they would have been coordinated
with forest management with our authorities we could have accomplished
these shaded fuel breaks with no cost to the government and, in fact,
capture receipts through our timber sale authority.\
\
R. Johnson: Well, that\'s a good comment. I think that folks have
certainly been into a situation where they\'ve felt pressure and had a
number of things they felt they needed to get some things done.
Sometimes the collaboration hasn\'t been as good. I hope that\'s an old
story you have there, Neal. But good comment. We do go through the
planning process and approval process at the local level. So we\'re
hoping that that coordination takes place there as well through the
collaborative process to be able to expedite as well as have efficient
and effective treatment. Good comment and collaboration and part in your
opinionship is always a good thing. Thank you, Neal. Other questions?
Excuse me.\
\
Caller: Regarding your amending an existing IDIQ contract that inserts a
stewardship clause, there\'s two ways to go with that. It seems like you
could insert that clause and allow the material to be used or use your
stewardship contractor to go and get the material that\'s been cut
through that service contract.\
\
R. Johnson: Thank, Mike. This is Mike from cape falls. Scott?\
\
S. Lieurance: I think it would be most effective if it was dealing with
one contract. You mentioned that you could go in and generate the
biomass or material via your IDIQ and then come back with the
stewardship. In reality I think the best way to do this is to have a
single contract. Now, if none of your people that are on your IDIQ are
local and you want to increase your local employment, then come back and
salvage the material afterwards. But as I said, you could issue a task
order under the newly modified system, under the IDIQs to include the
stewardship component. But if none of those people are going to use it
and you still have material out there that has a salvage potential to
it, you could come back with a secondary contract. But then you\'re
dealing with two contracts. One of the beauties of stewardship is having
a single contract. And I think the more we utilize this, the better it
is, because it\'s also difficult to have two contractors under separate
contract working on the same contract area. You\'ve got to wait until
one gets done before the other one starts and a lot could happen in the
interim if you\'re dealing with one contract, those things don\'t tend
to happen. But I think the hospitable thing here is to do good things on
the land and to provide local and rural community employment. I think
having the stewardship mechanism and being able to select those
contractors locally is one of the beauties of stewardship and also the
fuels IDIQ.\
\
R. Johnson: Thanks, Scott. Thanks for your question, Mike. Let\'s go to
Colorado. We haven\'t heard from you. Dennis, threw?\
\
Caller: I\'m going back just to a basic HFRA question, and that question
is, why was only the Forest Service and the BLM included in the HFRA
legislation and not the other land managing agencies?\
\
R. Johnson: Rick, good question for you.\
\
R. Tholen: I think Dennis just stumped the number that. I wasn\'t
involved early on in the development of that law. The Forest Service was
probably the most intimately involved in helping the drafting of that
legislation, and so I honestly don\'t know why the other fire management
agencies like Fish & Wildlife service, BIA and the Park Service, I
don\'t know why they weren\'t involved, Roy. Sorry, Dennis, I can check
into that and maybe give you a call.\
\
R. Johnson: Dennis, do you know?\
\
Caller: No, I don\'t. I\'m just curious when we\'re dealing with our
partners, Fish & Wildlife service, Park Service, they don\'t quite know
either, and they\'re looking at CWPPs and it doesn\'t really apply to
them if you look at the legislation.\
\
R. Johnson: You\'re right there. One of the challenges is to effectively
collaborate as we all do. We fall into that category of CWPPs. Sometimes
they\'re the capital CWPP. I know BIA looks at them as a small CWPP. I
think it was good guidance that came out of HFRA and I see the other
agencies using and following along with that. Dennis, thanks for your
question. We have time for one last question.\
\
Caller: This is Christa in Idaho.\
\
R. Johnson: Christa, you\'re going to wrap up this segment, too, aren\'t
you?\
\
Caller: My question is again back to stewardship and we\'re wondering if
you can use an assistance agreement add as the vehicle.\
\
S. Lieurance: The authority did allow you to use \-- it basically talks
contracts or agreements, and we can do \-- use an assistant agreement
process or cooperative agreement as we do, and we\'ll be issuing
additional guidance on how to specifically tailor those agreements. I
think an agreement is a very effective tool, especially if you\'re
working with a not governmental organization. I believe in California in
the Redding office they\'re working on an assistance agreement right now
or cooperative agreement with a conservation district outside of the
City of \-- can\'t remember what the town is, but the point is we\'re
able to use assistance agreements and the one agreement that was done in
our 2004 was done in Idaho. The thing with the agreements is they\'re
not necessarily as competitive as we would like to see with our
contracts. An assistance agreement cannot within a business. They\'re
simply with NGOs but they\'re a great mechanism to do work with our
tribal partners. Assistance agreements \-- you have to be very careful
with the agreement itself because there\'s no dispute resolutions
component of assistance agreements. Under F.A.R. we have a dispute
process, under forest products we have a dispute process but under
assistance agreements there is no such dispute process so they tend to
be a little bit less restrictive. You know, you need to pass the red
face look here. Fit looks like a contract, smells like a contract, it
ought to be a contract. But you can do them.\
\
R. Johnson: Thanks, Scott, thanks Christa for your question. Now it\'s
time, we\'re going to have to wrap this up. We\'ve agreed on the time
limit we have here and we appreciate you calling in. This is not as good
as going state by state and sitting across the table talking to you but
we have been really happy with it. Want to take a couple minutes to have
each of our panel members, first, thank you for being part of the panel,
you ever added greatly. Give you a couple minutes \-- well, a minute
each to summarize. Ted?\
\
T. Milesnick: Thanks, Roy. I guess in summary what I would like to start
off with is thanking you in the field for using the healthy forest
initiative tools you\'ve used. I know some of you think we\'ve really
harped on you for \-- about using the tools and probably we have, and I
appreciate the response that we\'ve gotten in the use of the tools. I do
know we\'re making a lot better progress than a lot of our sister
agencies in using the tools. I do appreciate that. I encourage you to
use the categorical exclusions. They\'re great time and money savers.
Keep up the good work there. Look for opportunities to use them.
Regarding the joint counterpart regs, this is a new one that we\'ve just
kind of gotten our biologist manager certified. We haven\'t made much
use of it yet, but this is a tool that I think again has some
opportunities for time and money savings, particularly freeing up Fish &
Wildlife from having to take the time to do those consultations. So I
encourage you to become familiar with that tool and to use that. Then
finally I guess I encourage you to take care when you\'re reporting the
use of the tools into NFPORS to make sure you\'re using the correct
reporting mechanism there so we get credit for using these tools. And
finally, I thank awful you for your participation and comments and
questions. I think it\'s been a great workshop and appreciate the
feedback we\'ve gotten from you all. Thank you.\
\
R. Johnson: Thanks, Ted. Scott?\
\
S. Lieurance: For stewardship and biomass, stewardship is a really good
opportunity for us to work with our communities. Although it talks about
collaboration, we need to be able to collaborate with our partners out
there, with our stakeholders. That includes the government agencies out
there. It includes county. It includes all our interested publics.
Stewardship is a way to build a contract and a project that helps meet
our needs and help meets the needs of the local and rural economy.
Collaboration is not just externally. It\'s internally, too. I think
Neal mentioned in that Wyoming. When we put these project together,
it\'s not just us. It\'s all the biologists, field people, the
foresters, it\'s the contracting people. They\'re the ones with the
knowledge to develop a good contract. Stewardship gives us a really good
opportunity to make longer-term contracts that hopefully we\'ll be able
to get some infrastructure going. It\'s really good. I know the
department is very appreciative of all the work the people have done of
trying to do those 35 contracts in \'04 was a big chore for the states
that did that. We had successes. We had some that didn\'t. We have
lessons learned. We\'re learning from those lessons, and in the future,
hopefully we\'ll be able to implement these at the larger landscape
scale which is where we should be doing some of our NEPA.

It folds right into the community wildfire protection plan, the
collaboration involved with that. In stewardship I think there\'s a lot
of potential to do a lot of good things. The secretary wants you us to
use biomass. We\'re generating 400 tons a year or more out of our fuels
treatments. I think it\'s the right thing for us to do, to maximize our
ability to utilize biomass and at the same time we needed to good
business decisions out there owes these contracts. The more we utilize
biomass, hopefully, eventually, it\'s going to reduce our costs. Anyway,
Roy?\
\
R. Johnson: Thanks, Scott. You\'re a real team player. We\'ll give you
time after we\'re through. Rick, go ahead.\
\
R. Tholen: As I go around the country, I see or hear a lot about how
HFRA may not be providing us a lot of extra added value. People often
ask, well, you know, why should I use HFRA rather than a categorical
exclusion. My answers don\'t use HFRA instead of a categorical
exclusion. If your project qualifies to use the CX, by do so. It\'s
proven, I think, to be the biggest time saver and money saver in terms
of getting these projects implemented. I think next I would look at HFRA
if my project didn\'t qualify to use the categorical exclusions, I would
look at HFRA and see if the benefits from the reduced NEPA analysis and
alternatives would be beneficial, and in the wildland urban interface I
think it truly can be beneficial because in that case you only have to
develop the proposed action, you don\'t have to develop any other
alternatives.

In areas where there\'s \-- the public consistently asks the government
to look at a number of complicated alternatives to every project, I
think in those places HFRA even outside the WUI can could proof to be
beneficial in terms saving time and money. When you\' using HFRA, I
guess the take-home lessons from this session are, document how the
project qualifies to use HFRA using those four situations that I talked
about. Make sure that that\'s documented in your meetings and in your
NEPA documents and certainly in your decision record. And also make sure
that your project is \-- you document how you are complying with the
different requirements such as the old growth and large tree retention
requirements. I\'ll say once more, I\'m available to answer questions. I
don\'t mind that at all. I would ask you to call me and discuss any
other issues that we didn\'t get to on \-- at this session. So thanks
for tuning in and back to you, Roy.\
\
R. Johnson: Thanks, Rick. Your participation and candid comments have
made this workshop a success. We have covered a lot of ground, shared
information, our experiences and share some excellent ideas to improve
our use of the tools. I know we have gained a lot from the session. We
hope that you have as well. We have captured your comments and
recommendations and we\'ll use those to help promote the effective use
of these tools in setting realistic expectations in the BLM. We
appreciate your participation and investment of your valuable time.
Thanks again for being with us. Good-bye. This has been a presentation
of the renewable resources and planning directorate, the office of fire
and aviation, and the National Training Center. This broadcast has been
a production of the BLM National Training Center.