More Federal Firefighters Moving On

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/firefighters-are-leaving-us-forest-service-better-pay-benefits-rcna93689

“The situation has grown so dire that the San Bernardino National Forest in Southern California saw 42 resignations in 48 hours in May, officials said.”

 

I guess we’ll see Congress extend the extra pay, but the firefighters want other issues addressed, too.

Let’s Discuss: the Norm-and-Jerry MOG Op-ed in Politico

Side note: whatever your thoughts, please comment on the MOG ANPR here. That is Mature and Old Growth Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.  Some people have had trouble finding the link, perhaps due to the bizarre title “Organization, Functions, and Procedures; Functions and Procedures; Forest Service Functions.”  Comments are due June 20th. We appear to be in the middle of a major media campaign on the MOG, so this seems like a good time to discuss some concepts.

Norm Christenson and Jerry Franklin had a an op-ed in Politico yesterday.  I’m a big Jerry Franklin fan, based on my personal interactions with him since the 80’s. I’ve told some of the stories before, so I won’t bore you with them again. Mostly our disagreements have been about west-side vs. east-side practices, ecology and experience.

I like how they tagged on the wildfires in Canada to “underscore the need to let our current mature forest grow old.”  You could also argue that the wildfires in Canada underscore the fact that wildfires are a danger when trying to use forests to mitigate climate change.  Because if you believe that climate change will cause forests not to grow back, you’ve just blown your last tree sequestration opportunity plus released much carbon (and PM2.5).

“It turns out the age and composition of forests makes a big difference in what role they play in preventing wildfires and storing carbon. Old growth forest is the best at both, but there is very little old growth left in either the western or eastern United States.”

I would argue that old growth forest in some species/places is not the best in “preventing” wildfires (what does “preventing” even mean in this context?).  Take a mixed ponderosa/true fir understory stand with large old pp.. how exactly does that “prevent” wildfires? I won’t go into carbon because the sequestering/storage burning up all depends on assumptions which may differ.

As part of the MOG effort, the FS counted the BLM and FS Old Growth acres and you can see them in the above table. It looks like 33 mill acres or thereabouts, or about 18% of the total. Note that this is just FS and BLM, there is probably OG on other state and country and private lands as well. So.. are 33 ish mill acres plus other unknown acres “very little” or not? How would we know what the “right” amount is?

But a large amount of the forests on public lands is what foresters call “mature” forest, which is nearly as good as old growth and in fact is on the brink of becoming old growth. It is these older forests that will help us prevent future forest fires and will do the most to reduce climate change, and its these forests that we need to protect at all costs.

I’m still interested in the mechanism of older forests helping us “prevent” fires.  I have to admit, the old forests in my neck of the wood seem to be slacking off on this.

Then there’s  the “p” word.. protect- the question is “protect from what?” This op-ed seems to mean “protect from removing any trees”.. but you can in the chart below (in the ANPR) see the timber harvest acres (including ecological restoration and fire risk reduction) are relatively tiny compared to fire and bugs and diseases.  I guess I can see the argument “we can’t affect wildfire, and insects and diseases, so let’s focus on timber”; except that we can affect acres impacted by wildfire by thinning.  Unless you believe that fuel treatments, PODs, etc. don’t help protect mature and older forests.  Which isn’t the view of the fire science community nor practitioners.  In fact, that isn’t addressed in this op-ed.

Within a few years, tree seedlings grow quickly, and their canopies expand to form a continuous green “solar panel.” The time it takes for this growth depends on the site’s fertility and the number of pioneer trees in the environment. The result is an immature forest composed of trees of small stature and similar age. These immature forests pose a high risk of wildfire due to the abundance of fine fuel, small branches and leaves, near the ground.

This reminds me of our 1980’s Central Oregon silviculture workshop with Bruce Larsen and Chad Oliver- when trees compete for water, they don’t grow the same way as the standard models and thinking based on competition for light.  The old mesic forest bias.  And when water is limiting, then thinning can increase vigor of trees and reduce beetle outbreaks in some cases. This isn’t scientifically controversial. There’s probably a literature review out there;  here’s one example from the Northern Rockies

Our results show treatments designed to increase resistance to high-severity fire in ponderosa pine-dominated forests in the Northern Rockies can also increase resistance to MPB, even during an outbreak.

So “protecting”  increases risks from pine beetles and wildfire, which doesn’t actually sound, in those cases, very protective.

As to the green “solar panel” well..that kind of implies an even-aged stand, which many stands that I observer are not. And then there are forests that never form continuous crowns due to competition for water.

I can understand if some don’t want to count pinyon-juniper as forests, but then maybe each kind of forest should be considered separately,  including mesic and dry forests.

 

Here are some interesting and relevant Q&As from the ANPR.

Q. What restoration options are available to restore old-growth forest structure in frequent fire forests?
Mechanical thinning and prescribed fire represent the primary approaches to active restoration of frequent-fire mature and old-growth forest areas to reduce their vulnerability to wildfire. Reduction in tree density often increases resilience to the climate-driven impacts of droughts, insects and wildfire.
Restoration prescriptions generally aim to increase the diversity of trees – age, size, and species – and retain the largest trees of the most fire-resistant species in the area. Diverse forests are more resilient because threats are less likely to impact trees species, ages and sizes at once.

Q. Are old-growth forests climate resilient?
Many old-growth forests have resilient characteristics like thick bark, high canopies, and deep roots. Some, like coastal redwoods, require moderate year-round temperatures and abundant moisture to thrive. As such, they are highly vulnerable to shifting conditions. As climate continues to deviate from historical
norms, even otherwise resilient forests are expected to be at increasing risk from acute and chronic disturbances such as drought, wildfires, disease, and insect outbreaks. These threats heighten the vulnerability of mature and old-growth forests resulting in higher chance of forest loss.

Your thoughts?

 

“Proforestation” It Aint What It Claims To Be

‘Proforestation’ separates people from forests

AKA: Ignorance and Arrogance Still Reign Supreme at the Sierra Club.

I picked this up from Nick Smith’s Newsletter (sign up here)
Emphasis added by myself as follows:
1)  Brown Text for items NOT SUPPORTED by science with long term and geographically extensive validation.                                                                                                                                                        2) Bold Green Text for items SUPPORTED by science with long term and geographically extensive validation.
3) >>>Bracketed Italics for my added thoughts based on 59 years of experience and review of a vast range of literature going back to way before the internet.<<<

“Proforestation” is a relatively new term in the environmental community. The Sierra Club defines it as: “extending protections so as to allow areas of previously-logged forest to mature, removing vast amounts of atmospheric carbon and recovering their ecological and carbon storage potential.”          >>>Apparently, after 130 years of existence, the Sierra Club still doesn’t know much about plant physiology, the carbon cycle or the increased risk of calamitous wild fire spread caused by the close proximity of stems and competition driven mortality in unmanged stands (i.e. the science of plant physiology regarding competition, limited resources and fire spread physics). Nor have they thought out the real risk of permanent destruction of the desired ecosystems nor the resulting impact on climate change.<<<

Not only must we preserve untouched forests, proponents argue, but we must also walk away from previously-managed forests too. People should be entirely separate from forest ecology and succession. >>>More abject ignorance and arrogant woke policy based only on vacuous wishful thinking.<<<

Except humans have managed forests for millennia. In North America, Indigenous communities managed forests and sustained its resources for at least 8,000 years prior to European settlement. It is true people have not always managed forests sustainably. Forest practices of the late 19th century are a good example.                                                                                                                                                 >>>Yes, and the political solution pushed on us by the Sierra Club and other faux conservationists beginning with false assumptions about the Northern Spotted Owl was to throw out the continuously improving science (i.e. Continuous Process Improvement [CPI]).  The concept of using the science to create sustainable practices and laws that regulated the bad practices driven by greed and arrogance wasn’t even considered seriously.  As always, the politicians listened to the well heeled squeaky voters.  Now, their arrogant ignorance has given us National Ashtrays, destruction of soils, and an ever increasing probability that great acreages of forest ecosystems will be lost to the generations that follow who will also have to cope with the exacerbated climate change.  So here we are, in 30+/- years the Faux Conservationists have made things worse than the greedy timber barons ever could have.  And the willfully blind can’t seem to see what they have done. Talk about arrogance.<<<

Forest management provides tools to correct past mistakes and restore ecosystems. But Proforestation even seems to reject forest restoration that helps return a forest to a healthy state, including controlling invasive species, maintaining tree diversity, returning forest composition and structure to a more natural state.

Proforestation is not just a philosophical exercise. The goal is to ban active forest management on public lands. It has real policy implications for the future management (or non-management) of forests and how we deal with wildfires, climate change and other disturbances.

We’ve written before about how this concept applies to so-called “carbon reserves.” Now, powerful and well-funded anti-forestry groups are pressuring the Biden Administration to set-aside national forests and other federally-owned lands under the guise of “protecting mature and old-growth” trees.

In its recent white paper on Proforestation (read more here), the Society of American Foresters writes that “preservation can be appropriate for unique protected areas, but it has not been demonstrated as a solution for carbon storage or climate change across all forested landscapes.”

Proforestation doesn’t work when forests convert from carbon sinks into carbon sources. A United Nations report pointed out that at least 10 World Heritage sites – the places with the highest formal environmental protections on the planet – are net sources of carbon pollution. This includes the iconic Yosemite National Park.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognizes active forest management will yield the highest carbon benefits over the long term because of its ability to mitigate carbon emitting disturbance events and store carbon in harvested wood products. Beyond carbon, forest management ensures forests continue to provide assets like clean water, wildlife habitat, recreation, and economic activity.
>>>(i.e. TRUE SUSTAINABILITY)<<<

Forest management offers strategies to manage forests for carbon sequestration and long-term storage.Proforestation rejects active stewardship that can not only help cool the planet, but help meet the needs of people, wildlife and ecosystems. You can expect to see this debate intensify in 2023.

Sierra At Tahoe Ski Area Re-opens

After the Caldor Fire seriously impacted the ski area, Sierra At Tahoe is open again. As you can see, it was a high intensity portion of the fire, with the previous forest being highly flammable and loaded with decades of heavy dead fuels. After several droughts, the area did not have any salvage operations. The area is also known to have nesting pairs of goshawks around.

As you can see, snow sports people will be enjoying a new experience of skiing and boarding, without so many trees ‘hindering their personal snow freedoms’. *smirk*

Philosophy Saturday: How Much, If Any, Timber and Other Products “Should” Federal Forests Produce?

We’ve been having an interesting discussion based on Steve’s post about timber on federal lands.  But I think underlying that is a deeper question.  I also think that this discussion at the philosophical level may also be relevant to various other uses of federal land involving products.

Given, that we want to use products (say, build houses), protect the environment, and work on economic inequality, to what extent should we:

(1) Buy American/independence from other national entities

One philosophy is that if the US uses materials, then we should attempt to fill those needs here.   For example, the Biden Admin supports “Buy American.”  The idea is that we can control our own environmental regulations, our folks have jobs, we get to tax workers, corporations, real estate and so on,  and use the taxes for good things, and so on.  There are also concerns that being dependent on other countries for essentials can lead to negative national security implications.

BUT trade can reduce prices, and we all benefit from reduced prices, especially economically disadvantaged people.

So that’s a challenge to the “Buy American” idea. Except the low prices for everyone interact with blue collar jobs, taxes, international security and so on.  That’s why the whole enchilada of trade policy is so complex,  and doesn’t fall neatly along partisan political lines.

Still

(2) Even if we agree with 1, there is still the question of “how much of the products we use, if any, should come from federal land?”.  Now the Sierra Club has said a)  “no commercial logging” so they must believe 0.  Other answers include : b) only when it is a byproduct of ecological restoration, c) only when it’s a byproduct of restoration and/or fuel treatments.   Another approach is d) to the extent that the land is capable and harvesting doesn’t unduly affect the environment.  I think d is what we spend most of our time discussing, because TSW tends to be full of people knowledgeable about forest practices.  It isn’t, therefore,  surprising that the Sierra Club is/was against FSC certification for federal forests, because the practices don’t matter if you are philosophically against doing it at all.

Now what’s interesting to me is taking these same philosophical positions and relating them to oil and gas, mining, and wind and solar energy installations. All of these produce useful products for US citizens and all have environmental impacts.

  1. Should we do it in the US?   Some would say no mining nor oil and gas, but yes to wind and solar.
  2. If we do it in the US, should we do it on federal lands?  Some say no mining nor oil and gas but yes to wind and solar.  Some say no to everything on federal lands.

It seems to me that the only philosophically consistent approach would be 1) yes to US preference, but no to federal lands; 2) no to US preference, and therefore no to federal lands and 3) yes to US and yes to federal lands with desired levels of local consent, environmental and worker regulations, and appropriate payments to the USG.  The latter is where we spend most of our discussion time.

Still, there’s also question 3.

3) If we satisfy our own country’s demand (or not), should we allow exports from federal lands?  This is another trade conundrum. Trade deficits are thought to be bad, and being able to export is good.  Would that be a “trade barrier” to WTO? But we already have a log export ban from federal timberlands, which hasn’t been challenged as far as I know.

As Oscar Wilde said “Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative”.  Still, I’m interested in where you all are philosophically and why.

 

 

 

 

Possible Salvage Strategy for Dixie and Caldor Fires

Since a battle for salvage projects is brewing, I think the Forest Service and the timber industry should consider my idea to get the work done, as soon as possible, under the rules, laws and policies, currently in force. It would be a good thing to ‘preempt’ the expected litigation before it goes to Appeals Court.

 

The Forest Service should quickly get their plans together, making sure that the project will survive the lower court battles. It is likely that such plans that were upheld by lower courts, in the past, would survive the inevitable lower court battles. Once the lower court allows the project(s), the timber industry should get all the fallers they can find, and get every snag designated for harvest on the ground. Don’t worry too much about skidding until the felling gets done. That way, when the case is appealed, most of Chad Hanson’s issues would now be rendered ‘moot’. It sure seems like the Hanson folks’ entire case is dependent on having standing snags. If this idea is successful, I’m sure that Hanson will try to block the skidding and transport of logs to the mill. The Appeals Court would have to decide if skidding operations and log hauling are harmful to spotted owls and black-backed woodpeckers.

 

It seems worth a try, to thin out snags over HUGE areas, while minimizing the legal wranglings.

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.

Budd Falen: Standing Up for Rural Constituents

Salon

Karen Budd Falen was the Deputy Solicitor for Parks and Wildlife in the Department of Interior for three years, and she left with the rest of the Trump administration, capping off a notable career in opposing public lands.  She appears to come by that view honestly, being raised on a Wyoming ranch and representing ranchers as an attorney (including the Bundys).  She reflects in this short piece on her legacy of changing the Endangered Species Act regulations and National Environmental a Policy Act regulations to promote more “local control” (as well as with the Land and Water Conservation Fund).

I take issue with her arguments in both cases that the laws the regulations implement (ESA and NEPA) were intended to allow social and economic considerations to play the role she has provided for them.  These statutes are both clearly aimed at the “natural environment,” and not local “custom and culture.”  Remarkably, she appears to admit that, “the listing of a species should be based only on science,” but then she has made it harder to do that with various changes in the ESA implementing regulations (which go beyond those she describes here in relation to critical habitat).

My fundamental disagreement with her and those she represents concerns this statement (and I suspect it may be a reason for differing opinions on this blog):

In my view, local elected officials should have more sway on issues directly affecting them than someone from midtown New York who has never faced the realities of making a living from the land.

The major gloss-over here is that endangered wildlife and federal lands don’t belong more to local people and their elected officials.  Her view that local interests should have more influence is not supported by either of these laws, and it is not the view held by most of the people that these resources do belong to.  Should the Biden administration not reverse these regulations, courts will have another opportunity to slap down the misinformation from her, and organizations she has worked for like the Mountain States Legal Foundation, that has led to ideas like “county supremacy” limiting how national forests are managed.

(Here is a little background from just before Trump decided she could not get confirmed as BLM Director.)

North Versus Hanson

Experts Frustrated by Stalled Efforts to Counter Megafires

“Use every damn tool you’ve got,” he said. “If we could have beavers on crack out there I’d be donating to that process — anything that will speed up the pace and scale of this thing.”

Dr. Malcolm North

Hundreds of Giant Sequoias Considered Dead From Wildfires

It appears that rumors of ‘natural and beneficial’ wildfires in the southern Sierra Nevada have been ‘greatly exaggerated’. Even the Alder Creek grove, which was recently bought by Save the Redwoods, was decimated. Of course, this eventuality has been long-predicted.

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-11-16/sierra-nevada-giant-sequoias-killed-castle-fire