Science is clear: Catastrophic wildfire requires forest management

Science is clear: Catastrophic wildfire requires forest management” was written by Steve Ellis, Chair of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees (NAFSR), who is a former U.S. Forest Service Forest Supervisor and retired Bureau of Land Management Deputy Director for Operations—the senior career position in that agency’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.

I have extracted a few snippets (Emphasis added) from the above article published by the NAFSR:

1) Last year was a historically destructive wildfire season. While we haven’t yet seen the end of 2021, nationally 64 large fires have burned over 3 million acres. The economic damage caused by wildfire in 2020 is estimated at $150 billion. The loss of communities, loss of life, impacts on health, and untold environmental damage to our watersheds—not to mention the pumping of climate-changing carbon into the atmosphere—are devastating. This continuing disaster needs to be addressed like the catastrophe it is.

2) We are the National Association of Forest Service Retirees (NAFSR), an organization of dedicated natural resource professionals—field practitioners, firefighters, and scientists—with thousands of years of on the ground experience. Our membership lives in every state of the nation. We are dedicated to sustaining healthy National Forests and National Grasslands, the lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service, to provide clean water, quality outdoor recreation, wildlife and fish habitat, and carbon sequestration, and to be more resilient to catastrophic wildfire as our climate changes.

3) As some of us here on the Smokey Wire have been explaining for years, the NAFSR very clearly and succinctly states:
Small treatment areas, scattered “random acts of restoration” across the landscape, are not large enough to make a meaningful difference. Decades of field observations and peer reviewed research both document the effectiveness of strategic landscape fuel treatments and support the pressing need to do more. The cost of necessary treatments is a fraction of the wildfire damage such treatments can prevent. Today’s wildfires in overstocked forests burn so hot and on such vast acreages that reforestation becomes difficult or next to impossible in some areas. Soil damage and erosion become extreme. Watersheds which supply vital domestic, industrial, and agricultural water are damaged or destroyed.

4) This summer, America watched with great apprehension as the Caldor Fire approached South Lake Tahoe. In a community briefing, wildfire incident commander Rocky Oplinger described how active management of forestlands assisted firefighters. “When the fire spotted above Meyers, it reached a fuels treatment that helped reduce flame lengths from 150 feet to 15 feet, enabling firefighters to mount a direct attack and protect homes,” The Los Angeles Times quoted him.

5) And in a Sacramento Bee interview in which fire researcher Scott Stephens was asked how much consensus there is among fire scientists that fuels treatments do help, he answered “I’d say at least 99%. I’ll be honest with you, it’s that strong; it’s that strong. There’s at least 99% certainty that treated areas do moderate fire behavior. You will always have the ignition potential, but the fires will be much easier to manage.” I (Steve Ellis) don’t know if it’s 99% or not, but a wildfire commander with decades of experience recently told me this figure would be at least 90%. What is important here is that there is broad agreement among professionals that properly treated landscapes do moderate fire behavior.

6) During my career (Steve Ellis), I have personally witnessed fire dropping from tree crowns to the ground when it hit a thinned forest. So have many NAFSR members. This is an issue where scientist and practitioners agree. More strategic landscape treatments are necessary to help avoid increasingly disastrous wildfires. So, the next time you read or hear someone say that thinning and prescribed fire in the forest does not work, remember that nothing can be further from the truth.

Rim Fire Update

Apparently, enough of the hazard trees within the Rim Fire on the Stanislaus NF have been cut so that the travel ban has finally been lifted, after more than a year. I heard one report that says that the litigation has failed at the District Court level, losing their pleas to stop the logging three times. The article below includes the Appeals Court but, I doubt that an appeal has been seen in court yet. It seems too soon after the District Court decision for the appeal to be decided.

http://www.calforests.org/rim-fire-update-final-motion-halt-restoration-forestry-rim-fire-denied/

P9232907-web

 

Since the Rim Fire tore through the area and devoured over 250, 000 square miles of National, State and private forested land, the community has come together to put together a solution with positive environmental, economical and social sense. The whole effort to restore forests has been very successful due to cooperation of a diverse group of individuals, organizations and government agencies.

(Edit: Thanks to Matt for pointing out the acres/square miles error. That should be 250,000 acres.)

With a monster storm approaching California, we should be seeing some catastrophic erosion coming from the Rim and King Fire areas. Of course, very little can be done to prevent erosion on the steep slopes of the canyons with high burn intensity. Standing snags tend to channel water, while branches and twigs on the ground can hold back a surprising amount of soil. This flood event would have been great to document through repeat photography but, it appears that opportunity will be lost, too.

Bark beetle activity has also spiked where I live, northwest of the Rim Fire.

Interview With Lynn Jungwirth, Community Forestry Pioneerwith

Lynn Jungwirth
Lynn Jungwirth

About 15 or so years ago, I attended a Leadership Academy for the Society of American Foresters for which Lynn Jungwirth was the keynote speaker on leadership. She was amazing and inspiring. I was thinking about the SAF meeting and thought I’d see if I could find a copy of her speech. While I couldn’t, I did find this interview from 2013, when she became a board member of Sustainable Northwest and so here’s a link. She is one of the founders of the community forestry movement in the US west, so this is relevant to our ongoing community forestry discussion.

SNW: What are some of your biggest accomplishments in the past year, policy or otherwise?

Lynn: Too many to list! We’ve made significant inroads in the state of California on biomass policy, especially as it relates to forest health. We’ve done a lot of community level work, as well as work with state partners. We have seriously affected the national cohesive wildland fire strategy to build capacity at the local level, so communities can adapt to fire and help the land around them adapt as well. On a local level, we have launched a prescribed fire strategy in Trinity County and trained local crews in understanding and conducting prescribed burns. This has been a great year for providing jobs to get young people experience in natural resources management.

SNW: What are your goals for the next three to five years?

Lynn: We are going to work on expanding the tools for community forestry in more communities throughout the West, especially by developing and improving the “hub and spoke” network. We will try to get the Forest Service involved on the local level and have them designate Trinity Forest as a community forest. We also receive significant Forest Service contracts each year and need to meet land planning goals as well.

SNW: What barriers are preventing you from achieving your goals?

Lynn: The biggest barrier is that there is no legal framework for local groups to work with federal land managers. We are doing “out of the box” work and therefore have to bend the system to do things differently. We must find another way because there is no standard policy to support our work. Many of the rules we deal with were written for a former institution, and there is no legal process or framework to do things differently. The Forest Service National Partnership Office has done a lot, but now we need the land management, procurement, and acquisition side to get involved as well for planning decisions and financial arrangements. Changes in tools and policies need to be prioritized.

SNW: If you could have 1 minute to address the President or Congress, what policies would you pitch?

Lynn: (Three things):

1. Congress: please permanently reauthorize Stewardship Contracting.

2. Mr. President: We are ready for a rural agenda (AGO was ok?), but we need the people and land relationships figured out better. Livelihoods based on recreation don?t create the kind of relationship that we should have with natural resources. The practice of ?use and exploit? doesn?t work for both sides. We cannot continue to demean rural; rural lands are more than just vacation destinations. So far we either exploit it or have service jobs.

3. Some of the brightest, most courageous and energetic young people that want to live with and treat the land properly, have homes and families in our community. We must give them the tools to provide effective land management.

Elliot State Forest Parcels Are Sold

old growth doug-fir

Photo by www.facebook.com/LarryHarrellFotoware

An update from Bob Z.

Elliot State Forest Sale Closes Amid Controversy

Elliott State Forest Sale

Statesman Journal 
The Oregon Department of State Lands has completed the controversial sale of three parcels of Elliott State Forest totaling 1,453 acres to Seneca Jones Timber and Scott Timber Co.
The Wednesday sale fetched $4.2 million despite the promise from environmental groups to file a lawsuit to halt logging over the alleged existence of federally protected marbled murrelets in the parcels.
The East Hakki Ridge parcel was purchased by Seneca Jones Timber for $1.89 million, while Adams Ridge 1 was purchased by Scott Timber for $1.87 million. Benson Ridge was purchased for $787,000.
In December 2013, the State Land Board approved selling about 2,700 acres within the Elliott. Managing the Common School Fund land within this forest —which in recent years generated annual net revenues in the $8 million to $11 million range — cost the fund about $3 million in fiscal year 2013.
Losses are projected to continue in fiscal year 2014 and beyond, due to reduced timber harvest levels as a result of litigation over threatened and endangered species protection.
“The Land Board realizes the Common School Fund cannot continue to have a net deficit from managing these Trust lands,” DSL director Mary Abrams said in a press release. “This first effort to sell three small parcels was to gauge interest in these properties, as well as determine the market value of land within the forest.”
The sale, which will benefit the Common School Fund, represents less than two percent of the 93,000-acre forest near Reedsport.
Even so, the sales have become a flashpoint in the lingering dispute between environmentalists and timber companies.
“These parcels, which once belonged to all Oregonians, should never have been sold in the first place,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity in Portland, in a press release announcing the notice to initiate a lawsuit. “Now that they’ve been sold, we’re not going to allow them to be clear-cut and contribute to the extinction of the unique marbled murrelet.”

Can Idaho manage public lands better than the feds? Idaho Statesman and Some Whiffs of Domestic Imperialism

Now I am not for land transfer as a solution. I think that there is a middle way, or a variety of middle ways, to be tested that could help us deal with the concerns of local people and officials. But first we have to be willing to listen, and not enemize or partisanize them, or simply tell them that their concerns are not valid. Basically the US owns the land and it can do what it wants, buffeted by alternating sets of national interests.

Here is the link.
But here is an interesting paragraph:

WHAT ABOUT RECREATION?
Haunold, whose business sells skis, bikes and other outdoor equipment, said nothing in the discussion addresses his industry, whose $6.3 billion in consumer spending generates 77,000 jobs annually, according to a new report by the national Outdoor Industry Association.
According to a 2011 report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the parent agency of the U.S. Forest Service, more than 7 million people visit Idaho’s 20 million acres of national forests annually, spending more than $400 million.
A 2011 Interior Department report concluded that recreation accounts for six times more jobs than grazing or timber, and three times more than energy and minerals on the 12 million acres in Idaho managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
Even though much of the visitation hits rural communities, much of the spending is done in Idaho’s urban areas, so the rural lawmakers backing the bill don’t necessarily see the economic benefits of recreation in their districts. What they do see are reduced timber harvests and restrictions on grazing.
That’s why Haunold is skeptical when lawmakers say they won’t sell off the land if they can win a lawsuit upholding their plan and force Congress to turn it over – which Haunold thinks is a distinct long shot.
“As soon as they get their hands on it, they are going to sell off what they think is not valuable,” he said. “They’re going to fail, but along the way they will waste my taxpayer dollars.”

I italicized the part that interested me. First, I ‘d like to see the breakdown of where the jobs are if articulated in the studies he refers to.

But I hadn’t heard before that the “rural communities don’t necessarily see the economic benefits”. I wonder if that’s true? If it is, perhaps OIA would support a “Payments to Counties-like” transfer based on a percentage of say, metro sales going to support governments in rural areas? It only makes sense if those uses are up-and-coming, require county services, and don’t pay taxes in the counties.

I am beginning to understand the point of view of some rural legislators. We can’t use the land for what would give local people jobs, but we can to give urban people jobs… because those uses are .. better..

There is a bit of an air of domestic imperialism here. I didn’t focus on that in this piece but here’s also a quote from Swearingen’s piece on collaboration that we discussed here:

The idea of collaborative process has had its skeptics ever since it got a foothold in the 1990s, as people looked for ways through the polarization of the timber wars. The basic idea was to get traditional foes like loggers and wilderness advocates into the same room to hammer out proposals that might spare the Forest Service some costly litigation. But critics complain that these local, collaborative groups shift power from urban conservation interests to a rural minority.

Maybe that’s what all the unrest is really all about. Maybe we should discuss the power issues directly. What would it take to give local communities their rightful place in determining land uses? What is the local communities rightful place? Are some communities simply colonies of national interests and groups, because they happen to have a large federal land component, and they should simply resign themselves to the fact that outsiders know more than they about what is best?

Rocky Barker: Good reasons why federal forests don’t pay like the state’s

Here’s the link and here’s an excerpt.

In the days when the Forest Service did try to emphasize making money from logging, it lost support across the West because it was clear-cutting.

No matter how many times the timber industry tried to put a good face on that accepted forest practice, the public just didn’t like looking at clear-cuts. Much of the federal forest timber program was shut down by litigation and lack of money for roads, along with water-quality problems and endangered species issues.

Otter noted that timber harvests on federal lands in Idaho are the lowest they have been since 1952. They are actually beginning to rise, however, in part due to the collaborative efforts of timber executives, environmentalists and others to identify timber that can be sold.

Private forests and state forests are, by definition, high-value forests. If they weren’t, the owners would have disposed of or traded them in years ago.

But the Forest Service doesn’t manage forests for a profit. You don’t hear the conservation groups that are supporting new mills and increased timber harvests and jobs complaining about timber sales that lose money.

That’s because they know the restoration value for wildlife and fish habitat that comes with timber sales are a part of the cost of managing forests for multiple uses.

Private and state forests are managed for maximum timber harvest. The recreation, habitat and other values that come from those lands are secondary. That’s why you can go to some state forests in Idaho and clearly see the difference between them and the federal forests next door.

It’s the state forests that are still being clear-cut.

Sharon’s take: It’s still not clear to me (so to speak) why clearcutting still comes up as an issue when the FS hasn’t done it in a while. Anyone who can help with this, especially from Idaho, please comment.

Hearing on Forest Service Management and Trusts by House Resources Committee

Here’s a link to the report. Thanks to Derek!

Also here is a piece from E&E news daily. Below is an excerpt.

Legislative proposals from last Congress

In concept, yesterday’s proposals are similar to legislation introduced last Congress by committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) to require the Forest Service to establish “trusts” under which logging and other projects must meet historic revenue targets. Such projects would be exempt from major environmental laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act, and would set firm deadlines for approvals.

That proposal was vigorously opposed by environmentalists, who argued that it would subject forests to vast clearcutting and create the perverse incentive to cut more logs even if the price of timber was low. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, last Congress said the proposal would reignite the timber wars of the late 20th century.

A separate proposal by Oregon lawmakers last Congress would have transferred roughly half of the 2.4-million-acre O&C lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management to a state-appointed timber trust, under which NEPA and some provisions of ESA would not apply.

But Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), who authored the bill, said their proposal was different because BLM’s O&C lands are statutorily distinct from Forest Service lands. While Forest Service lands fall under laws mandating clean water, multiple use and species protections, among others, O&C lands were designated primarily for timber production.

Trust proposals on Forest Service lands may fly in the Republican-led House but would never pass Congress, he said.

“National forestlands are managed under a whole different set of laws; there is no relationship,” he said. “They may be trying to mimic what we proposed, but there’s no legal authority.”

Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the ranking member on the subcommittee, asked how such trust lands would be chosen, how conservation and recreation interests would be represented, and which environmental laws would still apply.

“State trust lands are set up for a singular purpose, to produce revenue,” he said. “Federal forests on the other hand have a broader mandate and a wider set of management goals, with multi-use options.”

He urged Republicans to avoid “radical ideas” that won’t move in the Senate and to focus on policies that would make forests healthier and safer for constituents.

“Delegating the management of American resources to the states is still in and of itself a radical idea,” he said. “To imagine that the long-standing struggle over the use of our national forests will somehow disappear if they are turned over to the state is just pure fantasy.”

Bishop said yesterday’s hearing was the first of several this Congress to focus on “shifting this paradigm” of federal forest management.

It comes several months after the expiration of the Secure Rural Schools program, which for more than a decade subsidized Western counties where federal timber revenues plummeted in the 1990s. Lawmakers this Congress will be examining ways to extend the law, reform it or return to a commodity-based system favored by many Republicans.


So the problem with having the different houses of Congress controlled by different parties is that they can just agree among themselves, and blame the other house (Party) for not getting together.

So how can we help? We could set up a separate forum of people of all persuasions to discuss A Sensibe Solution. Congress could establish a bipartisan group. Or we could let D governors work it out since it appears to me that some environmental groups don’t think there is a problem, and if D governors are responsible for a state and feel that there is a problem, they may be in the best political space to broker a solution. Maybe that’s why some folks like nationalizing issues; it gets to our currently ineffective Congress and the status quo remains indefinitely.

What do you think? Do we need an extra-Congressional bipartisan policy seeking group? Is there any history of success of such a group we could point to?

Subpanel to explore discrepancy in state-federal logging levels

From E&E News..
Here is a link and below is an excerpt.

For example, Washington state’s Department of Natural Resources over the past decade harvested an average of 566 million board feet per year on roughly 2.2 million acres of state forests, generating about $168.6 million annually, or more than $300 for every thousand board feet, according to Tom Partin, president of the American Forest Resource Council.

But on the 9.3 million acres of federal forests in Washington, 129.2 million board feet was harvested in 2010, earning $651,000, or $5 per thousand board-feet, Partin said.

The discrepancy is due in part to the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act, which lengthen project reviews on federal lands and subject many of them to lawsuits, Partin said. In addition, higher slash disposal and road maintenance costs on Forest Service lands bring less money back to government, he said.

“There are opportunities to do a better job of managing our national forests,” he said.

Some have proposed increasing harvests by lifting NEPA, the 1969 law that requires full disclosure by agencies of the environmental impacts of federally authorized or funded projects.

For example, Oregon lawmakers last year proposed placing roughly 1.5 million acres of the state’s federal forests in a timber trust where NEPA would be replaced by state law. Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) last Congress proposed phasing out Secure Rural Schools by requiring the Forest Service to meet revenue targets through timber harvests that would be exempt from NEPA.

But while Bishop’s subcommittee has pledged to shine a spotlight on NEPA this Congress, environmentalists have argued the law is critical to ensuring that the public has a say in how its lands are managed (E&E Daily, Jan. 16).

Most environmental groups support thinning projects that avoid old growth, reduce the severity of wildfires and gird forests against pests. But few groups have endorsed clearcuts, which are common on state forests and help account for the greater harvest levels.

There is a hearing tomorrow at 10.
Here’s the link. Can’t tell if it’s televised..

So here’s my take. When the Forest Service had the Gridlock Reduction effort, I worked in NEPA in DC. My boss, Fred Norbury, used to say “how can we say it takes too long and costs too much, when we don’t know how long it takes or how much it costs?”. The FS has been tracking how long it takes, since, I believe, but not how much it costs, neither NEPA work nor appeals. And for some reason, despite the Administration’s desire for transparency in government, we seem unable to find out how much litigation is costing. I’m just pointing out that we could have a more meaningful conversation about costs, if the Forest Service, OGC and DOJ would keep track of them and tell the citizens and their elected officials. In my opinion.

“A New Approach to Public Lands” Oregon State University Seminar with Dr. Gary Bull

Note: you can click on the below photo to get closer to the ground.

Community_Forest_Tenures_of_BC_2010

Here is the stored webcast. I found the idea that our neighbor to the North has some interesting ideas and experiences that we could learn from was quite interesting. The discussion afterwards was also very stimulating.. and the ideas thrown around about possible application to our US federal lands.

Thanks much to the folks at Oregon State University for thinking to webcast and store the webcast for all of us out here around the country who are interested!

Here is the website of the British Columbia Community Forestry Association.

I’m hoping that viewing the video will start some discussion.

Here is what struck me.

The simplicity of thinking it’s a good thing to have local jobs. There wasn’t a thought that if trees are going to be removed from the woods, that people from other countries or areas of Canada could be imported to do the task more cheaply and that cheapness to do the action is the most important criterion. Taking each community as it exists, its own proclivities and needs, and working with that to make use of local resources for the benefit of the community who lives there. It seems so simple and fundamental. And it’s still federal land.

I was only mildly surprised when they mentioned that many more women were involved in the community forestry movement than the rest of the forestry enterprise. Thanks to the difficulty getting free scholarly papers, I was unable to do a complete read of some papers, but it appears that in the literature, women are sometimes shown to prefer a more collaborative style of problem solving. I think that there is an excellent opportunity for further study by some graduate student (s) at UBC or elsewhere.

I also thought it was interesting that District Ranger at Sweet Home, Cindy Glick, talked knowledgeably about the poverty in her community, and also seemed to look on the life of the community, and its relation with the forest, as a whole. She seemed like the kind of Ranger I would want to have around.

But that’s just my take. Please watch the video yourself and tell us what you think.