Gila Forest Plan update won’t wait for virus

The 90-day comment period on the draft revised Gila National Forest management plan will end Thursday, despite requests from citizens and congressional leaders that Gila National Forest Supervisor Adam Mendonca extend the deadline in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly the effect that closures of places like local libraries — where copies of the plan were made available — may have had on the public’s ability to access pertinent documents.

“I am sensitive to the COVID-19 part of this, and we worked with our Washington, D.C., office and our regional [U.S. Forest Service] office to address these requests, but 80 days had passed before a pandemic had been declared, and we were almost 100 days into the comment period when the governor issued the stay-at-home order,” Mendonca said. 

Mendonca is the ultimate authority when it comes to formulating the revised Forest Plan, the document that will guide the management and use of the Gila National Forest for the next 15 to 20 years, at least. The forest now operates under a plan that was implemented in 1986. 

“The libraries were closed, it’s true,” Mendonca said, but added that, “by releasing the draft revised Forest Plan and the draft [environmental impact statement] 25 days ahead the formal comment period, there was a lot of opportunity to comment. Plus, we held the public meetings already.”

Mendonca also said that since the COVID-19-related closures went into effect, the forest supervisor’s office in Silver City has accommodated requests from the public for hard copies of the two lengthy documents, as well as numerous requests for maps that began well before the state’s stay-at-home order was issued.

 “Looking at the big picture, we concluded we should stick with the April 16 deadline,” he said.

Still, multiple stakeholders and public interest groups that are a part of ongoing Forest Plan revisions in New Mexico say they are “overwhelmed” by the COVID-19 crisis, and sent missives to that effect to Mendonca, U.S. Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and Environmental Protection Agency Chief Andrew Wheeler requesting that comment periods be re-evaluated in the face of the pandemic. 

“In the middle of the 90-day Gila draft Forest Plan comment period, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and people’s lives were upended,” Donna Stevens, executive director of the Upper Gila Watershed Alliance, told the Daily Press. “Senators Heinrich and Udall, and all three New Mexico representatives, asked Gila National Forest Supervisor Adam Mendonca for a deadline extension; and about two dozen conservation groups, and attorneys general from many states, including New Mexico, also asked for more time. 

“But on April 7, Mendonca refused to extend the deadline, despite the national emergency that’s affecting everyone,” Stevens continued. “About one-third of Grant County residents lack internet access at home, so many people are finding it impossible to read and comment on the plan.”

U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich signed on to an April 2 letter from all five of New Mexico’s congressional leaders to Christiansen that requested an extension of the comment periods “for all forest planning in New Mexico” — forest plans are also currently being revised for the Carson, Cibola and Lincoln national forests. He told the Daily Press that one of his chief concerns with the draft of the revised Gila National Forest plan is that it doesn’t adequately incorporate climate science.

“Climate science has to be part of all of our planning, whether it is resource management or building resiliency,” Heinrich said, adding that Mendonca’s decision not to extend the comment period was “disappointing.”

“I think it’s an indication of wanting to ignore the facts,” Heinrich continued. “We need to learn how to manage forests from a perspective that’s different from the ’80s timber model. We need to ask how forests can be part of the climate solution. Climate science has to be part of all of our planning, whether it is resource management or building resiliency.”

Mendonca called the 1986 plan “a good plan,” and noted that the current process is to “revise the plan, not generate a whole new one.”

“In some areas, things haven’t changed. In others, we’ve changed direction,” he said. “But where our management is doing what we think should occur, let’s not change that.”

Mendonca said the main difference in the revised draft plan — which he noted is not the final product, and is subject to modification based on the copious public comments received — and the 1986 plan is the “desired conditions” the revised draft plan promotes.

“The old plan is more prescriptive, and this one gives us more flexibility around how we manage the landscape,” Mendonca said. “This plan has more built-in management approaches that link back to flexibility. We tried to identify how the forest integrates with the communities we serve, and develop approaches that help define our desired conditions based on science.” 

Components like fire, grazing and wilderness area management, for example, are brought forward from the old plan, and could more or less continue in the same way as they are currently managed in the forest, depending on how public comments influence the final plan. 

“The draft plan is strictly ‘business as usual,’ and fails to acknowledge that when forest conditions change, old forest management strategies no longer work,” Stevens said. “The forest is important to many local residents and visitors, and we want to see strong protections for streams, land and wildlife, so we have a healthy forest for future generations to enjoy. The Gila National Forest’s current management plan is from 1986, and a lot has changed since then — you wouldn’t know from reading the draft plan that the forest is right now experiencing the impacts of a hotter and drier climate, and the mass extinction of plants and animals that have lived there for tens of thousands of years.” 

Mendonca acknowledged that the draft revised plan doesn’t incorporate much specific climate science.

“There’s not a ton in there,” he said. “We tried to design and develop our desired conditions using the best available science, some of which has climate considerations. In my mind, we are trying to move our ecosystems to being more resilient — no matter what the changes are.”

By having an effective management plan, the forest will naturally be both more resilient and adaptable to climate change, Mendonca said, which is also good for the forest’s role as a carbon sink that mitigates climate change. 

“We all have a role in carbon release,” he said, “whether it’s driving cars, or factories. From the forest standpoint, we are a carbon sink — and that is a positive contribution. If we have a resilient landscape that can respond as positively as possible, we will have a landscape that contributes to a positive response to climate change.”

Heinrich told the Daily Press that if the Gila National Forest plan doesn’t incorporate enough new ideas and contemporary science-based management practices in order to protect and sustain forest resources, there are legislative fixes that could be looked at. 

“If we end up with a forest plan that looks like it was written in 1993, we will talk about legislation being necessary to have the management resource plan that is appropriate for the times we are in, with baked-in legislative guardrails,” Heinrich said. “That has been done around the country. What’s different about today is that we would be talking about this in a climate context.”

Aside from federal legislative intervention, objections to the final revised Forest Plan could also end up in the courts — something Mendonca has been predicting for at least the past year, during presentations before the Grant County Commission and during meetings with the Southwestern County Commission Alliance, for example. 

“We try to balance in everyone’s comments, and if people sue, that’s totally acceptable. It won’t affect how we work with them,” Mendonca told the alliance at an April 1 meeting last year, where commissioners from agricultural-based counties like Catron and Sierra were allowed to preview a variety of aspects of the proposed draft plan, as well as maps.

Before anything goes to court, however, there will be an “objection period” after the final plan, the associated environmental impact statement and “preferred alternative” forwarded out of the five existing alternatives in the environmental impact statement are published in the Federal Register. It will likely be at least six months before all the comments are reviewed and incorporated into the final draft.

“Once we get done with the review of the comments, we will make changes, and ultimately develop a final environmental impact statement and the final plan, along with a draft Record of Decision on the preferred alternative,” Mendonca said. “Then it goes out for an objection period. If people do object, we will go through a resolution process, to see if we can find an administrative resolution to those objections. If administrative processes are exhausted, people might take us to court.”

A core team of three people inside the Gila National Forest’s administration will spend about six months reviewing and sorting the public comments, and a variety of staff experts will be asked for input on how best to incorporate suggestions and information contained in the comments. 

“This will all play out over the next year, and we are shooting at finishing the review of comments, rewriting the draft, and getting a draft decision by early next calendar year — maybe mid-calendar year,” Mendonca said. “We are shooting for being done with all of this by the end of next September.”