15 min

Welcome, Change of Chair, Certify the August Meeting Notes, & Review the November Agenda

45 min

Activity Information Sharing

• Review progress to date implementing the NFP

• Identify some key goals for the upcoming year

• Identify IAC meeting schedule for FY 1998

- Proposed dates: February 5, May 7, August 6, and November 5

• Seek IAC agenda topics for FY 1998

Input

Decision

Input

& Curt Loop

70 min

Aquatic/Riparian Effectiveness Monitoring (EM)

• Review discussion & recommendations from 10/31 policy subgroup meeting

• Affirm/change/clarify prior policy direction or bounds.

• Research executives take IAC advice & provide work group guidance needed to produce a draft plan including appropriate alternatives for peer review, etc.

Guidance

Next Steps

Dan McKenzie, & Dave Busch

40 min

IAC/PAC Relationship

• Review progress & findings to date:

- IAC member questionnaire--completed

- DFO questionnaire--completed

- PAC questionnaire--underway

45 min

NFP MOU Review Discussion

• Review schedule & process for the MOU review

• Seek comments

15 min

10 min

10 min

• NFP MOU Review Issues
• New Information Process and NFP Changes
• Tuchmann Follow-up Report Items
• Effectiveness Monitoring
• Implementation Monitoring Report
• BLM 3-year Plan Evaluations
• Forest Service Plan Revisions
• Strategic Research Plan
• Validation Monitoring
• Salmon Initiative

Four policy or guidance issues were identified at the August IAC meeting that could potentially benefit from a re-evaluation. A letter to the IAC (REO, 9/23/97) provided additional background, detail, and potential alternatives for those issues. Subsequent staff work and input have resulted in further refinement of the issues and process for proceeding.

An IAC policy subgroup meeting has been scheduled for October 31 to discuss and obtain IAC input on these issues. An agenda with additional clarification on the issues and questions will be distributed to the IAC members prior to the October 31 meeting.

The REO developed a three-step process to review the IAC/PAC relationship:

(1) Obtain information from the IAC.
(2) Survey the 12 Designated Federal Officials regarding how they view PAC activities and their relations to the IAC.
(3) Meet with a number of PACs in order to get their view regarding their activities and relationships with the IAC.

The REO has completed the first two steps and is in the midst of completing the third. Because of meeting with different PACs depends on their meeting schedule (three PACs will have been interviewed by the November IAC meeting) it will probably take another several months before being able to meet with at least six committees (which was the original target).

The following discussion is a summary of what the REO has accomplished so far and a description of what it is doing to complete the IAC/PAC relationship review.

1. Obtain information from the IAC.

The results of the IAC responses were presented at the February 1997 meeting. Among the primary issues raised by this review were:

PACs may not be fulfilling their anticipated roles.

There is a general lack of coordination of PAC activities, emphasis, direction, etc.

A lack of direction from the IAC to PACs.

A lack of a way to effectively communicate problems, needs, requests from PACs to IAC.

Uncertainty if the IAC should play a more active role with the PACs (or would that get in the way and possibly make things worse).

Those concerns prompted the IAC to request the REO to:

Review the ROD discussion on IAC and PACs.

Review agency, REO, and IAC documentation and discussion regarding previous guidance concerning regional/provincial committee relationships.

Based on results of the first two activities, describe the anticipated and current IAC/PAC relationships.

Draft a questionnaire to survey all PAC members regarding their desired or recommended future IAC/PAC relationships.

As a first step, the REO polled all Designated Federal Officials for the 12 PACs.

All 12 DFOs have responded to the REO questionnaire. The results identified how PAC time is spent; identified PAC priorities; assessed the time spent on, and the degree of importance of, the eight RIEC identified roles (IAC meeting notes, February 12, 1997); and, described immediate obstacles to success and identify solutions to overcome them.

The following is a summary of the responses of the DFOs.

• How PAC time is spent.
• Information transfer and education accounted for almost one-third (30%) of the time reported by the DFOs. All DFOs reported time spent on this activity. Six (one-half) of them indicated that their PACs' time ranged between 30-64%, with an overall range of 5-64%.
• The second largest percentage of time reported, for all DFOs combined, was 11% devoted to committee organizational activities (administration and maintenance), with an overall range of 0-30%.
• Additionally, the following activities were reported by half or more (i.e, >6) DFOs. The activities are followed by the range of percent time reported and the average time for all PACs.

- Identify Watershed Restoration Projects (5-30%, average 7%)
- Participate in NFP Implementation Monitoring (3-10%, average 6%)
- Review Timber Sales (3-15%, average 6%)
- Review Riparian Reserve Activities (3-35%, average 6%)
- Review Watershed Restoration Activities (3-35%, average 6%)

• What are the PAC priorities. (Number of DFOs responding are in parentheses. Responses are where two or more DFOs identified an activity.)
• Monitoring Activities (7 total)

- General (5)
- Implementation (2)
- Social/Economic (1)

• AMA strategy (4)
• Forest restoration projects/priorities in NFP (3)
• Riparian Reserves (management, activities, and review) (3)
• Organize and define roles (3)
• Water Quality (3)
• Fish Quality/Fisheries (including habitat & watershed restoration) (2)
• Information/education/interpretation (2)
• Forest health/Dry forest management (2)
• Timber sale implementation (2)
• LSR (management, activities, and review) (2)
• Public/Private/Tribal Partnerships; Cooperative ecosystem management (2)
• The time spent on, and the degree of importance of, the eight RIEC-identified roles.
• Five of the eight RIEC-identified roles were considered to be critical or significant, although the frequency of occurrence (i.e., how often the task was addressed by the PAC) varied:

- Facilitate local involvement.
- Encourage and facilitate information among provincial stakeholders, Federal and non-Federal.
- Develop direction at the provincial level and refine to meet biogeographical needs of the province.
- Produce provincial monitoring reports.

• The other three roles were considered by the DFOs to be unimportant or have little significance to their PACs:

- Prepare biological assessments to expedite programmatic ESA consultation.
- Encourage pre-listing conservation agreements.
- Obtain and provide data to REO GIS library.

• Four immediate obstacles to success were identified, along with potential solutions to overcome them. Obstacles were identified by two or more DFOs.

1. Lack of information sharing between the PACs and REO/IAC.
- Encourage REO representatives to be more active with PACs.
- The IAC should consider PAC implications in its discussions.
- Encourage/facilitate communication between PACs.
- More communication between PACs and REO.
- REO mail material directly to PAC members.
- Ask PACs for input before making decisions affecting them.

2. Inconsistent attendance/participation by PAC members--especially Federal members.
- IAC agency members should keep track of their agencies' participation at PAC meetings.
- Federal agency regional executives should stress importance of participation at PAC level.

3. Lack of direction/guidance from IAC.
- IAC should provide more leadership in establishing Regional strategies.
- REO should hold annual workshops on interpretation (similar to ones recently conducted across the region of the NFP).
- IAC should clarify the PAC role and IAC expectation.

4. Cost of PAC staff support.
- Provide funding or assign REO staff more prominent role.
- Allocate agency support for PACs and sub-committees.

3. Meet with a number of PACs in order to solicit their view regarding their activities and relation ships with the IAC.

The REO is in the process of interviewing PAC members to incorporate their points-of-view into our review. The status of that effort will be shared with the IAC at the November 6 meeting. The goal is to have visited with at least half of the PACs in order to get an adequate sample of opinion.

• The Director of the White House Office on Environmental Policy
• The Secretary of the Interior
• The Secretary of Agriculture
• The Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency
• The Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere

The RIMT is anticipating that a review draft will be distributed in January 1998.

On the IAC conference call (October 2) three issues were addressed. First, the issue of the uncertainty associated with the habitat approach for the MaMu was discussed. The EM Plan is based on an initial period of research and protocol development to better assess this uncertainty and the modeling and other tasks are dependent upon positive results. Agreement was reached that clear future milestones will facilitate evaluation and selection of the approach to EM for MaMu. Second, the issue of difficulty in reading and understanding the EM Plan was discussed. It was agreed that the document would benefit from consistent terminology, clarity in presentation of the framework and modules, and identification of the framework for future modules. The final plan will be edited with these goals in mind. Third, the discussion focussed on the need for an explicit schedule with milestones, particularly in the next few years, tied to expected results and decisions. The EM authors recommended that this be developed as part of the implementation work plan.

In addition, the EM P/M group met and developed recommendations for individual agency roles and funding. The Federal executives are scheduled to meet on November 6 to address the roles and funding recommendations.

Karin Berkholtz, RCERT-IAC Liaison; and Don Knowles, REO. It was tentatively agreed that the assessments of the requirements contained in the ROD (i.e., the social/economic effects of Federal forest and land management policy) and those of the Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative (NWEAI) should be conducted as two separate activities. Finally, there was tentative agreement that employing a contractor would be the best approach to accomplishing the objectives.

The primary objective to the Strategic Research Plan (SRP) is to establish an interagency process for the identification, prioritization, and coordination of research to support NFP implementation. The draft SRP includes an identification of research needs, based primarily on NFP documentation (ROD, FEMAT, etc.), categorized into the following categories: Understanding Ecosystems, Research on Individual Species, Developing and Evaluating Alternative Management Systems, Resource Restoration and Enhancement, Research to Support Monitoring and Inventory Systems, and Decision Support. An inventory of research projects was also developed that will be made available via the Internet.