The National Forest Management Act (NFMA) and regulations based on it provide the framework for the management of 155 National Forests and 20 Grasslands, and are the key guidelines for ensuring that these lands help safeguard biodiversity. NFMA regulations are currently under revision, after a set of regulations enacted under the Bush administration was invalidated by the courts. A panel of scientists convened by SCB reviewed the new draft regulations. The scientists reviewed each of five focus areas in the agencies’ draft Environmental Impact Statement on the service’s proposed rule. While reviewers noted that the planning rule was in certain respects a marked improvement over the 1982 forest rule that is currently in effect, they called on the Forest Service to make improvements in order to reach the agencies’ stated goal of protecting water and wildlife in a changing climate and to meet the requirements of the law in today’s world. Read more…
Expansion of renewable energy infrastructure is an important goal but creates complex questions regarding how the renewable footprint can be expanded while minimizng adverse impacts on biodiversity. SCB recently submitted comments to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service suggesting how conservation science can best inform their current process of developing Land-Based Wind Energy Guidelines.
In December 2010, peer reviewers from three scientific societies (SCB, AOU, and TWS) reviewed the recovery plan for the threatened Northern Spotted Owl (see earlier blog post here). The reviewers found the plan was still inadequate in several major aspects. In particular, the reviews noted that the draft plan was released before completion of the habitat modeling that would be used to design the network of habitat reserves. Recently, the FWS has released Appendix C to the recovery plan, which describes in more detail those modeling methods. Despite a short comment timeline, SCB was able to recruit some of the same peer reviewers to review the Appendix. The reviewers generally found the methodology appropriate, but criticized the fact that there was still no information on the actual reserve scenarios that would be evaluated. Read more…
The United Nations has declared 2011 the International Year of Forests, in order to strengthen the conservation and sustainable development of all types of forests for the benefit of current and future generations. In conjunction with the UN campaign, SCB has issued a declaration outlining twelve recommendations based on conservation science that can help further these goals. Read more…
The Society for Conservation Biology is pleased to announce a new Policy Fellowship. Deadline for applying is May 31st. Description and applications procedure are available at: http://www.conbio.org/jobs/jordanfellow.cfm
The following column by SCB Policy Director John Fitzgerald is adapted from an article that will appear in the upcoming issue of SCB’s newsletter, available here later this quarter.
From Nagoya to Nuclear Catastrophe and from Organic Shade Grown Fair Trade Coffee to the Tea Party – in One Season
At the end of 2010 we reported in the Policy Insider and the Newsletter on the considerable progress that SCB’s delegation had made in the meeting in Nagoya, Japan, contributing to and improving the strategic plan and other elements of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s next ten years of implementation.
We also reported on initial attempts in the US Congress to curtail the application of the Endangered Species Act and other bedrock environmental laws, initially by removing gray wolves in two or more states from the endangered and threatened lists. (For more details on these and other issues see the Policy Insider at www.conbio.org/resources/policy.)
Read more…
