The Smokey Wire : National Forest News and Views
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Oregon Wild has proposed a massive half million acre Wilderness Area, partly to “protect” Crater Lake. The Klamath County Commissioners are saying no, with fears that summer fires would affect public health, and that those unhealthy forests need active management.
Here is a map of what Oregon Wild wants done.
I shot this picture from the top of Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, along the Sierra Crest. At the end of July, there should be a lot more snow and ice (including small glaciers) in this view of north-facing slopes. The view behind me was obscured, for three afternoons, by a Fresno area wildfire, with smoke drifting up over the crest. I’m sure that the groundwater levels are extremely low, as well.
Water levels at Mono Lake also continue to drop, exposing more of the famous Tufa formations, created by the fluctuating lake levels, over tens of thousands of years.
More interesting news for “disposable” employees!
http://nffe.org/ht/display/ArticleDetails/i/105694
NFFE-Backed Temporary Employment Reform Legislation Approved by Senate Committee
There may come a time when temporary employees actually have a career ladder!
“Thousands of wildland firefighters and other dedicated seasonal workers have been stuck for too long in dead-end jobs, not because of a lack of merit on their parts, but because of flawed regulations that do not recognize their years of service,” said Mark Davis, Vice President of the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) and past President of the NFFE Forest Service Council. “Many others leave and take their years of experience with them because of blocked career paths. After years of work, I’m optimistic that we are about to fix that.”
Of course, this is most directed towards firefighters, as so many timber temps have been jettisoned or have found “other employment”. Most temps would say that there is plenty of work to do, outside of their 1039 appointments but, that issue is not being addressed. The higher-ups choose to continue to embrace the 1039 appointments, thinking that policy is “good enough for Government work”. There really is nothing stopping the Forest Service from changing their policies on 1039 appointments. Truthfully, I’d like to see the temporary appointments scaled back to 800 hours, essentially forcing the Forest Service and other Agencies to hire more 13/13 permanent positions. Yep, make it too costly and “inconvenient” for them to continue using temps to do work that is needed, each and every year. It’s up to OPM to impose more rules, to stop the abuse of the temporary hiring authority.
This looks to have far-reaching effects on those National Forests within the “core habitats”. This looks like a forced settlement situation, where the Forest Service will probably pay dearly for their loss in court.
http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2015/06/17/13-35624.pdf
Interesting:
Although the court granted summary judgment to Cottonwood and ordered reinitiation of consultation, it declined to enjoin any specific project.
This by a state administration, but could it happen to Forest Service planners if one of the Republican ‘denier’ candidates wins in 2016?
This viewpoint shows more of the reasons why the desire to have larger and more intense wildfires, in the Sierra Nevada, is the wrong way to go.
In this picture below, fire crews were run out of this stand, and back into the “safety zone”, on this fire I worked on, back in 1988.
http://www.sacbee.com/2014/09/28/6737076/viewpoints-urgent-action-needed.html
Air quality the past two weeks has been several times worse than some of the most polluted cities in the world due to smoke from the King fire. Last year’s Rim fire emitted greenhouse gases equivalent to 2.3 million vehicles for a year.
Also, the lost habitat and recreational opportunities from major fires like these are significant. It is not an exaggeration to say that virtually all Californians are affected when these “megafires” occur.
The report points out that wildfires are getting larger and burning at higher intensity than ever before. The Rim fire burned at nearly 40 percent high intensity – meaning virtually no living vegetation is left – covering almost 100,000 acres. More acres have burned in the first 4½ years of this decade than in seven decades of the last century.
What can we do about it?
The main bottleneck in treating more acres is in implementation. The Forest Service is unwilling to increase the size of its Region 5 timber management staffs. They use some of the usual excuses, some of which are beyond their control but, not all of those issues are really significant, looking at the big picture. Yes, it is pretty difficult to implement extremely-complex plans when you are constantly training new temporary employees, hired right off the street.
Here is a view of the Granite Creek watershed, and a peek at the Tuolumne River canyon, too. The Rim Fire burned all the way to those most-distant ridgetops. For scale, you can see a vehicle in the middle of the picture. That road is the Cherry Oil Road, which connects Cherry Lake with Highway 120. That greenish tint is the vast growth of bearclover, easily reclaiming their “territory”. Bearclover is one of the reasons why clearcutting has been banned in Sierra Nevada National Forests since 1993.
It’s kind of a challenge to assemble pictures shot in different years, from different spots, and from different cameras. This is an excellent way to view and monitor trends, showing the public what happens over time to our National Forests. Sometimes, you have to look hard to see the differences. In any future repeat photography projects, I will be using very high resolution, to be able to zoom in really far.
One of the reasons why you don’t see much “recovery” is that the Eldorado National Forest has finally completed their EIS for using herbicides in selected spots, almost 10 years since the fire burned. This is part of the East Bay’s water supply. Sierra Pacific replanted their ground in less than 2 years. So, the blackbacked woodpeckers should be long gone, as their preferred habitat only lasts for an average of 6 years. As these snags fall over, the risk of intense soil damages from re-burn rises dramatically. Somewhere, I have some earlier pictures of this area which may, or may not line up well with this angle. I’ll keep searching through my files to find more views to practice with.
My first attempt at assembling pictures, showing how quickly salvage impacts can “heal”. Here is the current aerial view of this specific area.
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.4831284,-120.3639833,223m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en
Here is a view of a re-burn that has already occurred, in the same area. Notice the lack of significant mortality, due to having salvaged the area, reducing the fuels of the inevitable future fires.
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.4770266,-120.3464336,892m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en
One of the biggest “purpose and needs” in the Sierra Nevada is fuels reduction after a wildfire. Otherwise, re-burns, like the Rim Fire will dominate the landscapes for an indefinite amount of decades.
Not sure what to make of this –
“Of those polled, 48 percent listed conservation issues as the primary factor in supporting elected officials and 38 percent they were somewhat important. Conservation issues were less important for 9 percent and not important to 4 percent.”
“When asked if protecting public lands in Montana has generally been more of a good or bad thing, 78 percent responded “good” and 15 percent “bad.””
“A slim majority of 51 percent favored protecting more lands as wilderness.”
But of course, “it probably will not affect how legislators vote …”