Hell's Canyon National "Recreation" Area

On a recent trip into the Hell's Canyon National Recreation Area I had a few thoughts. Not many, but a few.

Hell's Canyon in on the border of Oregon and Idaho, and the Snake River both divides the States, and provides a center for the NRA. On both sides of the river are steep, rocky, grassy canyon walls creating the deepest canyon in North America. Yes, deeper than the Grand Canyon.

On this three day trip I contemplated the management of the NRA. What is being done in the Area, and what should be done?

A National Recreation Area could be just about anything a person wants it to be. The fable of the seven wise, blind people who were told to go find an elephant and report back to the King. Each wise person touched a part of the elephant and reported back such things as an elephant is a rope (from the person who only touched the tail) to the one who reported the elephant is a page made of leather (from the person who touched the ear of the elephant).

So, this is only one blind person touching Hell's Canyon NRA. And one of the first things I touched was a sign-in box:

There are no forms, no paper, nothing, in the box. They don't want to know what your recreational needs are. And last year there were no forms. The five or six times I've checked this box there has been nothing in it. It's only to make a person think that the Forest Service is interested in your recreational needs. Nothing more.

Not too many more meters along the trail a person walks through a thicket of blackberry brambles:

Introduced from Eurasia, Himalayan blackberry (Rubus armeniacus) is a non-native invasive. It doesn't belong in the area. And it is spreading, requiring trail users to hack back the canes annually to keep the trail clear.

Further along the trail a recreation user gets the official greeting of entering the Hell's Canyon Wilderness Area:

The sign is propped up against the rock pile. The Forest Service apparently can't even mount the sign properly on a pole. It's just sitting next to the trail as if the USFS personnel didn't have the time or energy to spend a little extra time to install the sign on an official post.

There are native plants in the area, and you can see them in the above image with the sign. Those clumps of grass are the native bluebunch wheatgrass (Pseudoroegneria spicata). But many of the natives are being overrun, or outcompeted with the non-natives. Call them what you will: non-native, exotic, weedy, invasive, foreign, they don't belong in the area and take over from the naturally occurring native plants.

Here's a pretty image of the Spring Creek drainage with a foreground full of non-native thistles:

Non-native bull thistle (Cirsium vulgare) occupies a large area of this bench and might be considered the dominant species in the area. It is a biennial, meaning that it usually takes two years to flower, then it dies. So all the tall, skeletons of bull thistle are dead.

But looking closer to the ground a person sees:

Bull thistle! This plant was busy establishing itself last year, and this year it will be ready to take off,  send up a nearly two meter stalk which will flower, and send out hundreds of seeds.

Non-native thistles are not the only forbs that are dominating the area. There's teasel:

Like thistle, teasel (Dipsacus fullonum) is biennial and these are the remains of last year's seed heads.

Looking around a person can easily find the plants that will be making this year's flowers and seed heads:

Teasel was one of the plants in North America that was intentionally introduced. It was brought to this continent so settlers could use the seed head for carding wool. Now it seems to just be a problem.

The above images have been focused on specific plants and problems, but what happens if a person just takes a picture of the plants at his feet?

Where to start? The deep green plant on the left edge is teasel. The gray-green plant near the top of the image is known as beggar's lice, gypsyflower, or houndstongue (Cynoglossum officinale), another biennial non-native. It produces tick sized and shaped seeds that stick to people's clothing.

On the right side of the image is the skeletal remains of last years medusahead wildrye (Taeniatherum caput-medusae), a non-native annual grass.

The green grasses in the above image could be some of many non-native grasses that have their remains in the area. Besides the medusahead, there was cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), bulbous bluegrass (Poa bulbosa), Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis), and wiregrass, also known as North Africa grass (Ventenata dubia). Many of these species are considered winter annuals, meaning that the seeds germinate in the autumn, winter over as small plants, then when spring and warmer weather begins, they have a head start on growing. This allows the winter annuals to suck up the limited soil moisture and nutrients faster than the plants that don't germinate until the spring.

All of these non-natives in our National Recreation Area!

What could possibly be the source of so many alien species of plants?

Is there a finger a person could point to a likely vector of these weeds?

Let the first person who is free of sin cast the first cowpie!

Domestic cattle are allowed to graze much of the Hell's Canyon National Recreation Area, sometimes for up to six months. While there were no cattle in the area in March, 2016, their remains were everywhere. Maybe this allotment has cattle on it in the early summer, after the grasses have had an opportunity to grow a bit taller.

Do US Forest Service personnel ever get out in the field anymore? Or are budgets so tight that there are no personnel to do field work? Or has the mission of the Forest Service sifted so far that they have abandoned being land stewards and have all become suppressors of wildfires?

It perplexes some. The geography of Hell's Canyon has not changed. It is still, and will continue to be a big gorge. It will continue to be a place of big spaces. What is changing is the seeming neglect that the managers of this special place have. Neglect. And it is visible everywhere a person looks.

One final image that sums it all up:

This is along the Thirtytwo Point Trail (#1789), at the junction with the Buck Creek Trail (# 1788). It's the only indication that there is a trail junction here. If a person wasn't paying attention they might miss the junction. But, interestingly, the sign has not been replaced in the twenty to thirty years that the wildfire had occurred in the area.


Twenty years, and they haven't replaced the sign. It is only a sign, but it is a sign also of the mismanagement of your National Recreation Area.

Reporting Illegal Activities

How do I report an illegal activity? I raise this question because many times over the past few years I have reported an illegal activity and nothing becomes of it. Who do I report it to, and how much do I have to be involved in the situation before it is resolved? I have three examples, each a little different, where nothing became of the criminal in the case.

Example #1.  I found an abandoned vehicle about 300 meters off a road. It had been burnt, but was obviously abandoned. I reported the vehicle to the District Ranger, giving him the gps coordinates and how to access the area. That was four years ago, and the vehicle is still there. I would try hauling out parts of it every time I walk by it, but I consider it a crime scene and don't want to disturb any evidence.

Example #2. Bovines. This really annoys me. There never seems to be proper policing when it comes to domestic livestock. Nearly every year I find cattle in sheep allotments, or livestock in "vacant" allotments, or cattle on the allotment long after they should have been removed. Every year. One year I reported four bovines in an allotment on the Umatilla National Forest in the middle of November. I asked the range person for that district when the cows were suppose to be removed, and she told me she couldn't reveal that information to me unless I submitted a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request.

Example #3. While hiking in one of the Wilderness Areas on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, I encountered a hunter who was using a chainsaw to clear the trail. I talked with man, and got his name and filmed him with my camera while he was telling me he knew he was in wilderness and what he was doing was illegal. When I got back to the trailhead I wrote down his license plate. I gave all this information to the Law Enforcement Officer (LEO) for the Forest, and he has subsequently ignored doing anything about it. I had the perp's name, license plate, and a video the the criminal, and nothing became of the case.

Here's the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCDkxaCOYvs

What am I doing wrong? Am I reporting these crimes to the wrong people? Should I go straight to the State Police, or the FBI, or what? Do I need to follow up on these things?

Meadow Creek

On Wednesday, 6 August 2014, you sat me down for a one-on-one discussion about a video I had posted in a public place. The video informed the viewer of what I considered to be a crime on federal property. It appeared in the video that somebody had driven motor vehicles repeatedly through a wet meadow in the Starkey Experimental Forest and Range. The video implied that Forest Service personnel had committed this destruction of the meadow. There were tracks of motor vehicles across maybe twenty meters wide, and perhaps 50 meters long, with no vegetation visible in that section, which before had been a wet meadow full of native sedges.

You asked me to remove the video. I said I would, and in fact, I had actually tried the night before, but had forgotten my password to the website. I did remove the video that night. You said that things that were to go out to the public were suppose to go through certain procedures before they were publicized. I did recall seeing emails in the past that said documents for public dissemination were to follow defined protocols in order to present a professional appearance for the agency. In this case, I did not follow those protocols, and for this I am sorry.

I am not sorry for pointing out illegal activities on federal lands.

When I initially posted the video of the destruction of a wet meadow that I found along Meadow Creek, I never thought so many people would spend so much time discussing the video. It seems the amateur video achieved more import than the crime that occurred on federal property. I feel that I should provide some background to this entire sordid affair.

In May I was working along Meadow Creek. We had started in the downstream sections known as pastures 2, 3, and 4. Then we drove over Bally Mountain, down Smith Creek, parked the vehicle and walked the approximate 1 kilometer to the beginning of pasture 5. It was there, next to Meadow Creek, that a major mudding area caused by motor vehicles had recently developed. There were personnel from the La Grande Ranger District working just downstream. At lunchtime, I pulled my camera from my pack and took several videos of the mud bog. This was not an elk wallow, nor anything else that could have been naturally occurring. This was done intentionally by somebody, or several somebody, driving repeatedly back and forth through a wet, not moist, but wet, meadow.

Now, I can understand driving into a place and getting stuck. Once. I cannot understand why anybody would drive through a wet area repeatedly, or in the words of the Forest wildlife biologist, "literally hundreds of passes."

At home later, I assembled a video, a cathartic activity for my own benefit more than anything else. I was upset that such destruction would be done by people in an agency who's Chief once said " We're supposed to be leaders. Conservation leaders. Leaders in protecting and improving the land." This was way outside my comfort level for protecting and improving the land--to intentionally destroy the land with motor vehicles.

The video rested on a web-based video site for a few weeks. I showed it to a few friends, but after about 3 weeks there had been only about ten views. A far cry from a viral video.

On June 15th, the wildlife biologist for the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest posted on a social network site, the following news article from the Spokane Spokesman newspaper, about private citizens mudding on the Colville National Forest:

http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/outdoors/2014/jun/10/four-wheel-drivers-trash-colville-meadow-mudding/

The article states that destroying meadows on national forest lands is against the law, costly to repair, and people are subject to fines and jail if they are convicted. I agreed with all that was mentioned in the article, as well as the sentiments that the biologist expressed. I also posted a link to the video.

Since then I have heard from many Forest Service employees, and every one of them is disgusted with ME! There has been no mention of the destruction of public property, or that the perpertrators should be charged with crimes, or fined, or made to rehabilitate the damage. Every single Forest Service employee who has commented on the social media site, or in private e-mails, or in person, has expressed the view that I am a terrible person for pointing out the meadow destruction.

Forest Service personnel have told me that they "personally see no relationship between these impacts and those caused from malicious abuse with off road vehicles that tear up meadows for the thrill of it." (Apparently the impacts from Forest Service off road vehicles use is less than from private off road vehicles, but I don't buy that).

Unfortunately, somebody has removed my post that included the video, but from there the following exchange took place:

• 

  Mark  I was at Meadow Creek recently and watched a small excavator repairing these ruts. They were also seeding and spreading straw. I've never seen mudders do that. Do you know if there will be a follow up video once the recovery starts? Also, there are no images of the incredible pools and stable stream banks that have come about from this work.

  July 19 at 10:19am · Like · 3
• 

  Catherine  Ironically, I get heartburn every time I see that fat, slobby comedian on a TV commercial tearing up a green meadow with a "monster truck" just to sell heartburn drugs!

  July 19 at 11:32am · Edited · Like · 2
• 

  C Stupid is as stupid does - it doesn't matter who did it, or how much they're sorry, or how much they repair it, or how much good they might be doing elsewhere. We're all jerks sometimes.

  July 19 at 12:35pm · Unlike · 1
• 

  K How much did it cost to repair this meadow? Are the funds coming out of the employees salary? Will it look like the meadow before this damage?

  July 19 at 4:13pm · Edited · Like
• 

  K I can understand driving through there once, and getting stuck. But the multiple times the people drove through this meadow is unconscionable.

  July 19 at 4:16pm · Like
• 

  K Seems like this should be illegal.

  July 19 at 4:16pm · Like
• 

  K One can rationalize just about anything. Including destroying the wet meadow to fix something else.

  July 19 at 4:17pm · Like
• 

  K There are freshly cut lodgepole pine trees lying in this meadow now. Will it ever look like the meadow it use to be? Not in our lifetime!

  July 19 at 4:18pm · Like
• 

  Mark  The damage to this system has occurred for over a century from grazing, logging, and roads. The work going on there now will set it on a path to recovery. There were literally hundreds of passes needed to get logs, tools, fence materials, straw, etc. i...See More

  July 19 at 5:00pm · Like · 1
• 

  Mark  This reminds me of what many timber sales and road decommissioning work looks like immediately flowing implementation. Once the dust settles, slash melts down, and plants come back the results are quite impressive.

  July 19 at 5:04pm · Like · 1
• 

  K "The damage to this system has occurred for over a century from grazing, logging, and roads", says Mark. Yes. And that was described in the video I posted. But does that justify the "destruction" of the wet meadow, that was full of sedges, grasses and other vascular plants for the sake of rehabilitating the creek downstream? Seems you are trading one disaster for another.

  July 20 at 10:32am · Like

K Anyone can rationalize anything. It is as if a shoplifter says he/she will return the goods to the store later. It seems to me that it should be against the law, if it isn't already.

July 20 at 10:34am · Like

I've been told that I should have taken the issue to Bill, who apparently is the District Ranger, and a "very nice person." I suppose that if I had known that I may have, although my limited history with the authority of the Forest Service may still have prevented that option. You see, on the last year of the Ford Presidency and my first year working for the Forest Service, I was taken to task by my supervisor for communicating with the Forest Supervisor. I had sent the Forest Supervisor a letter, written on my own time, suggesting that he ban smoking in Forest Service vehicles. Way back then, non-smokers such as me, had to sit quietly in an enclosed vehicle while somebody else smoked. I am not a fan of tobacco. I've had several relatives, a father, a grandfather, and others, suffer and die a slow agonizing death most likely from tobacco smoke. I wrote to the Forest Supervisor, and heard back though my supervisor that I was never to do that again. Never. It was emphasized that I was never to contact somebody from above the organization other than my immediate supervisor.

So, I just didn't think about approaching somebody up in the Forest Service organization.

I'm not sure where to go with this. It seems like the issue has become me and a video I posted, and not the crime of destroying public property. The decision document that was signed by Bill, the District Ranger, says that vehicles will not be operated in wet areas. See this web link for the complete document:

http://a123.g.akamai.net/7/123/11558/abc123/forestservic.download.akamai.com/11558/www/nepa/86728_FSPLT2_382249.pdf

It doesn't seem to get any clearer that what happened on Meadow Creek should not have happened. The Willamette National Forest feels so strongly that this sort of activity is illegal that they have an entire website devoted to why it is illegal:

http://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/willamette/recreation/ohv/?cid=stelprdb5097794

I'm goiing to have to guess that what is illegal on the Willamette National Forest should be illegal on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest as well.

It's illegal. There. I have told you all, and now the ball is in your court. On our meeting on the 6th of August, you said you could facilitate a meeting with personnel from the District. You mentioned that there could be a field trip to the site and a discussion on what happened and what should happen next. I don't think that will be at all productive. I have rather strong feelings that this should never have happened (36 Code of Federal Regulations 261.13, section h, Descision Document, Chief's Comments, etc.) but apparently I'm in the minority, and I would hate to be ganged up on. That seems like the logical conclusion of any meeting that would have a bunch of people in it that seem to support what happened there.

La Grande Ranger District personnel mentioned that "it saddened me that it looks like you put "us" out there like this and opened the doors for more ridicule to be heaped on." And yet this person commented kindly to a former District Ranger who told her on a social media site that she was "spending entirely too much time in the woods, playing, and squandering tax payer dollars." Nothing like encouraging people to continue to heap ridicule on the Forest Service by claiming they are squandering taxpayer dollars.

I've heard from several Forest Service employees about this, and there has been no mention that the Meadow Creek action was legal, or ethical, or right in any way. There have been mentions that what I did was dispecable. Imagine! Posting a video to a website that showed the Forest Service in a negative light.

I don't want to meet with anyone about this. I am not comfortable in public situations. Accept that not everyone is an extrovert. There would be people I didn't know, and people who might know me and the "ridicule" I have heaped on the Forest Service. It makes me uncomfortable thinking about a meeting like that.

You asked me to remove the offending video from the public website, in part because I didn't go through the proper channels. So I have some questions:

1.) Do I need to remove all video's that I have posted on the Youtube website? 

(See:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guOyI2VKwNs or

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCDkxaCOYvs )

Or only ones that mention the Forest Service in a negative light? 

2.) Can I post comments to a social media site (eg., facebook) without going through the proper channels?

3.) What can I post on public sites that would be acceptable without going through the proper channels?

4.) Are other Forest Service personnel subject to the same rigorous scrutiny that I'm being subjected to? Or is this the result of me being a second class employee of the Forest Service?

5.) What about blogs? Am I suppose to get approval for each and every blog I post? (See:  http://chochaloza.blogspot.com/).

Wait. Did I just say second class employee? Yes. I'm sure you are aware of the hierarcial structure of the Forest Service. Everyone is equal but permanent employees seem to be more equal than temporary employees. A perfect example is the TSP, Thrift Savings Plan. You and other permanent employees can put your own money into your own TSP account. But people such as me, a temporary (ha!) employee since the Ford Administration, cannot put my own money into my own TSP account. Yes, I can put my own money into a savings account that may get all of one percent interest, whilst some TSP accounts are getting close to twenty percent. 

Second class employees. Would a permanent, first class employee be set down in the boss's office and told in no uncertain terms that he was "too chatty?" I've watched many permanent employees who were way, way more talkitive than me, walk down the hall jabbering, with no mention by Catherine that they were too chatty. But because somebody was a second class employee it is probably much easier to bully that employee than a first class, permanent employee.

Speaking about being too chatty--I have gone on way too long, covering way too many topics.

Image removed based on above conversation

Here's a wet meadow area along Meadow Creek, just downstream from the "problem" area:

Image removed based on above conversation.

Here is what "somebody" did after the destruction was highlighted by the above story:

Image removed based on above conversation.

Notice the recently cut lodgepole pines that have been piled over the former wet meadow.

This image was taken in September, a year and a few months after the damage occurred:

Image removed based on above conversation.

Autumn is usually a dry time of year in northeast Oregon, so the standing water is evidence of moisture seeping up from the soils, indicative of a wet meadow. Vegetation on the far left had been undisturbed by the ATV users.