Draft oregon State Stewardship Coordinating Committee Meeting May 22, 2015 Oregon Dept of Forestry Santiam Room, Building d 2600 State Street, Salem, or 97310 Members in Attendance
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- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- ODF Staff
- Public Comment
- National Forest Stewardship Program Update
- Forest Legacy Program – Letters of Interest for FY 2017 Funding Cycle
- East Moraine/Wallowa Lake
- JE Schroeder Seed Orchard Happenings
- Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) Analysis – Family Forestland Incentive Programs
- Roundtable (Organization Updates/meetings)
- September 24 and October 8 th
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DRAFT Oregon State Stewardship Coordinating Committee Meeting May 22, 2015 Oregon Dept. of Forestry Santiam Room, Building D 2600 State Street, Salem, OR 97310
Call to Order Lena Tucker served as Chair for this meeting, filling in for Peter Daugherty. Morgan will be providing her roundtable report early to accommodate schedule. Introductions Karl Dalla Rosa, new Assistant Director of State and Private Forestry, PNW Region 6 USFS. Mike Running, Communications Manager for the Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts. Running is filling in for Kelly Beamer. Clare Klock, Clackamas Soil and Water Conservation District and Landowner Gary Jensen, Soil and Water Commission Committee under the ODA and also the Upper Willamette SWCD out of Lane County and Small Tree Farmer. Members continued introductions… Public Comment No comment was offered. USDA Forest Service State and Private Forestry – Brad Siemens
Karl was the Forest Stewardship Program Manager in Washington. Prior to that he was writing a Forest Legacy Program Assessment, and working in Cooperative Resource Management for the State of Hawaii. He got the Legacy Program up and going there. From Hawaii he went to Washington, D.C. and then wound up here, to be closer to partners and projects. The Regional Forester is all about increasing the pace and scale of restoration and has a really strong appreciation for the role that our State & Private Forestry Programs can bring to that. Dalla Rosa’s leadership most likely will emphasize the importance of working with private forest landowners in terms of addressing some of those larger landscape scale concerns. Cathcart extended his invitation to Dalla Rosa to attend our meetings regularly. He asked for an overview of the organization of State & Private Forestry. Dalla Rosa: The way that we are organized is we have a State & Private Forestry Director, Teresa Raff for both Regions 6 and 10. She has two Assistant Directors, myself for Region 6, PNW and Michael Shepherd for Region 10, Alaska. Here in Region 6 we have the Urban & Community Forestry, Forest Legacy, Forest Stewardship and Forest Health Protection programs. We have a Biomass Specialist as well who works with Marcus Kaufmann, ODF. We also partially support an ecosystem services position with National Forest System.
This is the 25th Anniversary of the establishment of the Cooperative Forestry programs (Legacy, Stewardship and Urban and Community Forestry program). The National Office has been trumpeting this, to set a celebratory tone and get recognition for the good projects completed. They had an Anniversary event in D.C., which SSCC member, Dick Courter attended. To help commemorate the anniversary there is a special logo for this year. State & Private Forestry set up a Challenge Grant Competition to challenge the states and our partners to help us celebrate. The big party tour will be in association with the Wallowa Land Trust in late summer. This is a bi-partisan effort we are trying to get Congressman Walden, Senators Merkley and Widen. It’s well supported and a great program. Forest Legacy is a part of the LWCF program, one of our biggest projects is to get LWCF re-authorized this summer. Hopefully, we will get a lot of press.
Siemens: That speaks to one of the big Regional priorities for the next five years or so is Forest Plan Revisions. The National Forest Stewardship Program Meeting which we will be co-hosting with Oregon and Washington. We have a draft agenda available. But we have our Regional Foresters and State Foresters coming as well as people coming from all over the country to talk about the diversity of experience and approaches to shared challenges. The first day we will be having a series of “success panels” with country wide stories. Next we will be looking at the non-profit sector, working with AFF and NRCS and other NGOs you will see some of the plans and panels. Then looking at landscape scale restoration projects. Like the East Face Project working through private and public lands. Actually, I have Jim Cathcart booked to be involved in success story panel on State Stewardship Coordinating Committees. Not all states are as active as this committee or have the substantive discussions and involvement that Oregon has. How have states implemented the Forest Action Plan and how have states used that to guide their work? The Key Note Speaker will be Jim Findley, State Extension Forester for Pennsylvania. He is considered a leader in the forestry extension world. He works closely with the Pennsylvania Forestry Association. Also is the State Success Poster Session. The second day is a field trip that Jim is leading. We thought that it would be appropriate and be easy to show through the landscape scale restoration competitive grant process. The States of Oregon and Washington both got funding for a Joint Forest Health Partnership in the Columbia Gorge. Issues that prompted this partnership are storm damage events and also an outbreak of California 5-Spined Ips bark beetle. It has caused significant damage to the pine trees in the cities, rural residential and wildland forest. The Partnership was designed to provide outreach and resource assistance for hazard trees, help restore forests. The sites that are picked for the tour will probably look at how the partnership is engaging with landowners and look at treatments going on. Drive up the Gorge and have some good rubberneck stops. It will be in October. The final day of the meeting will be on business updates. Agri-forestry and forest stewardship discussion; genetic resources program, new program standards and guidelines. More just business, grants administration, internal workings. Historically these meetings have focused on our state and federal partnerships only, not open to NRCS and other non-governmental partners. But it makes sense when talking about crossing boundaries and landscape scale initiatives that we want to be more inclusive and accommodate as many viewpoints as possible. If members would like to attend this meeting contact Jim Cathcart. Both Washington’s SFSCC and this committee, are hosting it regionally and it would be good to find a way to attend the first two days, but optionally the third as it is business. Siemens: “State and Private Forestry Happenings”, in addition, we will be hosting Steve Cain, National Cooperative Forestry Director in D.C. as he is interested in seeing the East Face Project, My Blue Mountain, Ritter Project Model Collaborative. There will be interaction with ODF, NRCS in LaGrande and Wallowa Resources work being done around biomass utilization. Della Rosa: For six months we have been going through the Forest Stewardship Program guidelines. We do a review every 5-6 years, focusing on making the guidelines more encompassing, more than forest stewardship management plans. Encompassing landscape scale planning, we have tried to cover all the additional program pieces for more guidance to inform, promote and help states to cease those opportunities. Those things under the Cooperative Forestry Assistance Act, rural forestry assistance and forest stewardship. Also important is we are trying to identify opportunities to cooperate with public lands, Good Neighbor Authority, stewardship contracts. Those are the key components. There will be a draft revision hopefully in the next month or so. I would encourage all to look closely at that and comment back. The goal is to get the revisions due by our national meeting in October. Forest Legacy Program – Letters of Interest for FY 2017 Funding Cycle – Jim Cathcart Cathcart reported receiving two Letters of Interest this year. But to begin, Cathcart briefed the committee on the latest news on the Hood River Forest and Fish Conservation Project. The story is that Hood River Forest and Fish Conservation Project applied for FY 2015 funding right to the day that the property changed hands from Longview Fiber to Weyerhaeuser. It had fared well, and gone back to National, scored high nationally for $3 million funding appropriated in this fiscal year budget. So flags went up because this was a multiple phase project and the new landowner did not apply for the second phase of the project. So Western Rivers Conservancy and the Department was trying to get a feel for completion of the project. The outcome of those conversations were that the new landowner was not ready in good faith to administer the easement, in which case, we are not going to receive funds and were turned back. In that timing it allowed the funds to drop down to another ready project nationally. The landowner withdrew the application. The expectation was that they were going to re-apply for the FY 2017 funding cycle. They didn’t re-apply. So no Hood River Forest and Fish Conservation Project. It was a big block of industrial timberland (50,000 acre phased project) up against the Mt. Hood National Forest, Columbia Gorge Scenic Area, and Hatfield Wilderness Area. It was to be a pilot, as our first large industrial working forest easement. One of the Letters is on a contingency as proposed last year. The East Moraine/Wallowa Lake Fee Acquisition Application to Wallowa County. It stands to be appropriated, and I encouraged them to submit a contingency application for FY 2017 just in case. But if they do receive funds for FY 2016 they can withdraw their FY 2017 request. There is reason for them to apply and they did. The Letter of Interest is in the packet. There was no real change to the project structure. The other project is new, in Lane County, the South Eugene Hills Area, which is located near Spencer Butte Wildland. It is a small woodland owner. Wozniak with The Trust for Public Lands had conversations with the landowner and described the property situation for the members. It is 273 acres on south slopes of Spencer Butte within 3-4 miles of a park. It is well situated near regional open space efforts. There is a collaboration of local, state and federal agencies in the area trying to coalesce around a vision of long term conservation and open space around the Eugene/Springfield area. It’s a very nice property with a lot of diverse habitat. The landowner acquired it with the express goal of conserving it to mature forest structure. It is very strategically placed for open space anchor and borders a Healthy Forest Reserve Project area (HFRP). Criteria for the project: It is strategically located, next to property secured by a HFRP easement. As far as the mechanics of the project go, she has been on her own, but the City of Eugene could be the easement holder. The committee’s decision about whether to accept an application will be a deciding factor for her. The best statement the committee could make would be to invite the full proposal. The decision-space of the committee in terms of our State Action Plan and governance for the Forest Legacy Program is the committee has the discretion to propose up to six projects for full proposal development so there is no constraint there because we only have two. You can invite none, one or both to develop to a full proposal. You can condition that invitation on specific actions being done for a formal recommendation to the Board.
Wozniak: I need to disclose that if you invite full proposal with that applicant we are in the running for the money as a partner. Cathcart: The Motion invites back both Letters of Interest for full proposal. All in favor, Motion carries. Cathcart commented on the lack of Legacy applications. The lack of outreach was deliberate because of workflow capacity issues. We have stepped back a little bit by design. The outreach is a year ahead and it may take a year or longer to get to a Letter of Interest. Then when it comes to project readiness, due diligence, landowner expectations, and getting a market analysis of their numbers, etc… we are learning that putting that off, comes back to bite you so we are trying to get some of that analysis done up front. There was discussion in the SWOT analysis of the State Natural Resources Agencies needing to come up with a common infrastructure for holding easements. We don’t have an endowment fund so we are now telling people that ODF can’t commit to holding an easement under Legacy. We need acquisitions or projects where there is an easement holder available that meets Legacy’s criteria so we can move forward. Running: It’s a limiting factor for Legacy as far as who is going to hold the easements. One of the things on the horizon is looking to modifying Legacy rules so qualifying non-profit conservation organization can hold easements under Forest Legacy programs, but that’s in the future. Oregon is probably not the only state in this predicament. This will become more of an urgent issue to know what the State’s role will be. We need to figure out how to leverage Legacy and the Agricultural Conservation Easement program. I have heard of some barriers that say they are exclusive of one another. Running: From my understanding they aren’t mutually exclusive but can’t act as a match for each other. You need non-Federal match. In Oregon, besides federal funding there is OWEB. We have been working with them to find ways to fund working Lands easements, agricultural-based easements or forest-based easements. To find creative opportunities or start a pilot to see how it can be done. We have the OTAC meeting next week and NRCS is going to talk more about Agricultural easements and new rules. JE Schroeder Seed Orchard Happenings – Mike Kroon Kroon was present to talk about his new duties as the Seed Orchard Manager taking over for Rick Quam. Don Kaczmarek is also new, as the Forest Geneticist. A little background…The money to establish the Oregon Seed Band came from the Cooperative Forestry Program, way back in the 1950’s originally focused on improvements to Douglas-fir. In the last 10-15 years they have expanded to Western Hemlock, Western Red Cedar and Willamette Valley Pine. The biggest advantage to this program is the establishment of several orchards so we aren’t collecting seeds from the woods. Forestland owners wanted to produce and plant high quality seedlings that would adapt quickly to planting sites and grow quicker than woods run seedlings. The cooperative accomplishes that through selective breeding. We have the State Forest Program as one cooperator, but typically larger industrial landowners are the cooperators, and OSU is one as well. They all buy in to these orchards. It is an unusual program, the only one west of the Mississippi, where the grounds, buildings and equipment are owned by the state, but the Orchards are owned by private cooperators. So any seed quantities produced are divided up by how much investment cooperators have in the orchard. The JE Schroeder Seed Orchard began as six orchards and now have grown to 28 different orchards. As industrial landowners have gotten bigger they started running their own seed orchard programs so the pool of cooperators is shrinking. Specific traits for improvement are:
We went to having from 30-40% survival to 80-90% due to compatible root stock we’ve found. We keep the root stock seed as well. From graft to seed producing within 7 years. Action Item: Don Kazcmarek handout to members. Last year we collected 4600 bushels of cones, producing 500 lbs. of seed. Orchards correspond to seed zones in the state. As you do improvement over the years, you start with wood’s run seed selected for height, then continue to select for the taller trees. The 1st generation you may get 50% gain in height, 2nd generation you get 75% gain and by the 3rd generation you hear rumors that you may get 80-90% improvement gain. The Oregon Seed Bank is the nexus program for small landowners to get seed from the Oregon Dept. of Forestry. We used to have Phipps Nursery in Elkton that produced seedlings but that closed years ago. ODF used the funds to establish the Seed Bank. The Seed Bank purchases 6% of every harvest to make genetically superior seed available to small woodland owners. Some of the species we have in the Seed Bank are Doug-fir; Western Hemlock; Ponderosa Pine, Port Orford Cedar, and Willamette Valley Ponderosa Pine. ODF puts out a Native Tree Seedling Catalog and Regional Seedling flyers referring customers to nurseries free of charge. Lists of nurseries are available on the ODF website or through your forester. You will have to ask whether the seed used was improved as nurseries don’t necessarily use improved seed. Also you can search for seedlings on the online Forest Seedling Network.
Quadrant II thinking involves assessing programs and thinking strategically about where we want to go. We are just in the tail end of the Legislative session. And this time in our Agency we find out what we achieved in terms of budget and policy and re-assess our strategy given the funds promised and what our Strategic Initiatives are; one on Water Quality; one on Biomass; and Business Practices Improvements (E-Notification System). There are two programs that reach the most Oregonians but receive no State Funding or the least amount of funding of all our programs. Those programs are the Family Forestry Assistance Program and the Urban and Community Forestry Program. There are some 70,000 family forestlands with acreage sized between 10 and 500 acres. And more on the under 10,000 acres. Our Urban & Community Program reaches millions of Oregonians through its network of cooperators. Daugherty framed out some of the opportunities ODF has, including our partners in State and Private Forestry and the emerging partnership we have with NRCS that has become quite good and strong. We have a MOA that recognizes us as the appropriate delivery mechanism for state programs on family forestlands in partnership with those other organizations. There are also some things going on in terms of OWEB funding and the relationship with the new RCPP (Regional Conservation Partnership Program) funding. We need to figure out how to coordinate these efforts. We are expanding the role of our internal NRCS Advisory Committee to provide coordination on these opportunities. For the longer term we want to develop our Strategic Initiative for Incentives. Daugherty has been working internally with Division leadership (Lena Tucker, Jim Cathcart, Marganne Allen, Lee Hullinger and Mike Kroon). We’ve started with a SWOT analysis. (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats) We want to engage you as partners and ask for your assistance to shape this. For the next hour members looked at the Program’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This analysis we are doing is a way of setting priorities. Strengths and Weaknesses are internal qualities and Opportunities and Threats are external forces. Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Opportunities:
Threats:
Cathcart: (Handout) We should look at the end-in-mind. What we are doing here is that we want to move forward and design the strategic initiative possibly inclusive of examples of what an initiative might have as components, funding packages, legislative concepts for policy changes, exploration of partnerships. But the end-in-mind is how are we doing providing family forestland owners the tools to meet their goals and in doing so meets the state goals for these lands. This exercise is where do we sit now in our ability to do that? This is the internal first cut at what our strengths, opportunities, weakness and threats are. Siemens and Dalla Rosa commented on how elements of our Strategic Initiative process this mirrors a lot of the struggles at the National level. One of the threats is eroding funds, particularly from the Federal programs. All of these, especially communication challenges we share in common. The Timmons Group has been contracted now by the Forest Service to come up with the State and Private Forestry-wide outcome measures. They pointed out that enhancing appreciation of the value of State and Private Forestry is to get the NFS side of the Forest Service to understand why investments in Private forests and state forest land management particularly adjacent to USFS lands is so important to increasing the pace and scale of restoration. We have tools now to expand the Good Neighbor Authority. Looking at places where it makes sense to work across boundaries. Roundtable (Organization Updates/meetings) Morgan Holen, representing Oregon Community Trees, gave her roundtable reporting. The Oregon Community Trees had their March meeting that the Awards Committee reported that the nominee Joe Holmberg submitted did receive Recognition for Education and Outreach. The nominee works with South and West Albany High Schools using salvaged wood from the community for shop projects. The press release hasn’t come out yet, but we’ll acknowledge the awards at the Annual Conference at the World Forestry Center. The theme will be “Managing Change in Our Community Forests: A Toolbox for Action” focusing on pest management, increased urban density and how that reflects on urban forestry and drought issues. Our Key Note Speaker is Ericka Fishman who runs Philadelphia Parks and Recreation Tree Philly Program. James Cassidy from OSU will be talking about soil. There will be a panel on species pallets with the changing climate regime their thoughts and recommendations and the threat of invasives. We will also hear from Paul Ries on Storm-Proofing our Urban Forests and Todd Murray, WA State Extension Service will talk about exotic pests and Amy Grotta will talk about monitoring pests. Every year our topics really vary, depending on current interest and events. It’s almost full so you need to register right away. The Annual Board Meeting is scheduled right after our conference. There will be an online recap on our site. Holen also reported on the Tree City USA Grant Program. Annually we offer grants to Tree City USA communities. This year we awarded four grants of $500 to Oregon City, Eugene, Baker City and Sun River to celebrate by using it for tree plantings and with a variety of partners. We are just now receiving feedback and photographs on how they used the money which will be highlighted at the Conference. Mike Running: Update on Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts, and most relevant around working lands conservation easements. We did a study last year, the Oregon Conservation Easement Assessment Project to look at easement use in Oregon and how to increase the incentives for landowners interested in conserving their property with a conservation easement. The whole study was on working lands; farms and forests. It’s one of the missing components in the larger conservation strategy of the state providing to provide incentives for working landowners. We are creating a White Paper on this study. We were waiting on the implementation of the Working Farms and Forests initiative. I have the Executive Summary on this study and what the intent of the paper is. At the end is a list of recommendations and possible strategies to increase incentives. I wanted the committee to be aware of this. We did produce a report with a coalition of 20 different land trusts. This is a State of the Lands report tallying the collective impact of all our lands and the value of land trusts through 7 representative stories of us providing vital services. Siemens: One update is we have a new Deputy Regional Forester, Diane Diggery. She is new to the Region, bringing the NRCS connections that she has. Karl Della Rosa is still fairly new in his position. Community Forests program, I don’t think that the one application from Oregon (Miller Tree Farm) will be funded. There was one from Washington that may be funded. Finally, we are working with NRCS in Washington and DNR to host an All Lands-All Hands Workshop on June 4th looking at the Joint Chiefs funding opportunities and bringing those stakeholders together to identify future projects. Basically bringing representatives from all the federal forests in Washington along with line officers to learn how we do work, prioritize and implement work, how to look at those values we share. It’s an experimental thing. Della Rosa: There is the State Forests Action Plan Update that’s due in November. Within the Regional Office I will be coordinating those updates and revisions as your point person. As that deadline approaches if there are questions I am there to help. Johnson: I have two things to share from Oregon State. One is that we are finishing the recruitment filling in behind the retirement of Paul Adams, Forest Watershed Extension Specialist after 30 years. We have 3 candidates that have finished their interviews. We will hopefully have a decision next week. The other is our Building project at Oregon State, we are having a funding campaign to raise $30 million to match another $30 million in state bonds to build a new home for the College of Forestry and a new separate building to be the showcase for the Center for Advanced Wood Manufacturing and Design. We have already raised $24 million in one year. We should reach our goal by the end of June. The new building is replacing Peavey Hall. This will be a signature building on the campus that will be wood based. The buildings will be demonstrations of modern wood construction. We have a team of Mike Green, BC and Craig Curtis, Seattle two of the foremost tall wood building architects in N. America and have teamed up to do the design. Stay tuned our big challenge is what to do with 18 months of construction with the people that populate Peavey Hall. Wozniak: Trust for Public Lands. We were crushed but not surprised that the Miller Tree Farm project wasn’t funded. We continue to partner with Wallowa Land Trust on the East Moraine project. Our working lands databank project, I spoke on two meetings ago, in partnership with the Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts we are wrapping up. We will be doing a public outreach once we have completed the report and have officially launched the portal. I will report back in September when that’s happened. The politics at the Legislative level about trying to do something on conservation on working lands has clearly has evolved since Kitzhaber’s departure. We are hopeful our organizations will have a seat at the table. Our perspective as an organization, the one tool that we could really use for landowners looking to protect their lands would be a state level match for NRCS. If your property doesn’t have a lot of endangered species and habitats it’s hard to get funding for protection. Leadership changes at the Trust. Diane Daggett our State Director stepped down, she did a lot of work to advance the working lands protection aspect of our work. She wanted to focus on rural development and work in Wallowa County. Our new State Director is Malcolm Mathews, who’s a Senior Project Manager for us and is based out of Bend. Action Item: Wozniak requested a posted draft of the notes. Suggestion to remove the approval process and post as drafted notes. Staff will improve the internal workflow. Action Item: Notes from the SWOT analysis will be separated out and posted. Jensen: The Soil and Water Conservation Commission here under ODA represents interests and act as an agent within the communities in a voluntary capacity, we are not regulatory and have no obligations to do that. The big issues are agricultural waters today. ODA has implemented priority areas around the state, our conservation districts help mitigate issues that may create potential problems. The dynamics of how agriculture views how things should be done versus forestry that has a distinct rule set and regulations in place under the FPA. Agriculture doesn’t have that. But as that evolves there may be limitations and rules put in place in the future. Our next meeting happens to be August 3rd, and 4th at Miller’s Woods. Holmberg, Director, Oregon Tree Farms. To be in the Tree Farm System you are expected to manage to a set of standards. Price-Waterhouse-Cooper audited our farms this year to ensure standards are adhered to. Most of the audit was checking documents, contracts and insurances. The close out call will be around August. The audit is for the whole western region. OSWA Annual meeting will be on June 20th a Forest Fair at Chemeketa Community College. A free event. The day prior to that it will have the Outstanding Tree Farmer of the Year Tour in Lyons up McCully Mountain. Cathcart: Our Federal Grant Award just came out, ODF stayed steady this Fiscal Year. Hartstein at OWEB we are undergoing a solicitation for FIP. The OWEB has selected 7 priorities: Estuaries; Coastal Coho; Oak Habitats; Dry Type Forests; Sage Steppe Habitats; Native Freshwater Fish; and Closed Lakes/Basin Wetlands. Those priorities are our hotspots. We are soliciting from partners right now for implementation focused investment application due on July 1. Also capacity building for partners that may choose to go into implementation at a later date or to build the capacity of the partnership. That will be a Letter of Intent sent to OWEB by July 1 with application due on November 1. The SIPs (Special Investment Partnership) existing have transition funds. As of January there will be no more. Cathcart: Our next meetings are September 24 and October 8th. We do our Forest Legacy two-step, there will be agenda time available on both dates. With that, we will adjourn. Yüklə 52,42 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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