Polly Dyer – Seattle • Entered by Penelope Peterson on December 31, 2023
Updates on Public Comments on ANPR on Climate Forest Resilience
October 31, 2023 – October 31, 2023
Participants and Hours
| Pre Planning hours | |
| Post Admin hours | |
| Activity Hours | 2 |
| Participants | 1 |
| Total Hours | 2 |
Key Issue: Multiple apply
Activity Type: Education & Outreach (tabling, films & lectures, regional B-walks/works)
Key Partners: Forest Service, USDA
Short Description of Activity
I attended this Zoom presentation on updates on the public comments that had been received on “Proposed Rule making on Climate Resilient Forests and Grasslands.” I was interested in this since I had submitted comments. The speaker reported that they had received comments from 500,000 people for a total of 92,000 submissions and 30 petitions with 426,000 signatures. They opted to use Natural Language Modeling to analyze the data. This analysis resulted in 4,500 recommendations that fell into five major themes:
1. Watersheds and water quality
2. Forest management for climate resilience
3. Protected areas
4. Mature and old-growth forest protection
5. Carbon stewardship
The speaker then gave examples of sample comments on each of these themes. He then talked a little about next steps and took questions from some of the listeners to the webinar.
Reflection/Evaluation
This webinar was interesting yet disappointing. The analyses described failed to look at the positions or sides represented on each of these themes. For example, what approaches were suggested for forest management, and how many people were in favor of each approach? What were the positions taken on “protected areas” and on “mature and old-growth forests”, and how many people took each position? None of these questions were addressed in this webinar, and it remains to be seen whether future analyses will address them.