We have some folks at TSW of these varying positions.
(1) No managed fire
(2) Some managed fire if…
(3) Current approach is fine, no changes needed.
There’s much possible territory to discuss in (2). There’s my idea.. to do a stand-down of plan revisions and OG amendments until wildfire amendments are completed for all wildfire-prone NFs. The wildfire amendments would have an EIS, development and maintenance of PODs and fuelbreaks, conditions for managed fire, areas delineated for prescribed fires, and coordination with communities’ efforts, plus public involvement.
What other ideas are out there? Nadine Bailey has some in her comments on the NW Forest Plan on Canva. She explains her views and experiences very clearly and she has great photos.
areas, so that we can work on the communities and areas that are at the highest risk.
The other thing that strikes me is that the NWFP amendment process is going forward without a formal and open lessons learned of what might have gone better with the NWFP. Of course, JWT never meant that to happen, as we see in Nadine’s slide above, and he was a knowledgeable and well-meaning individual. So why did have bad things to wildlife and watersheds and people apparently resulted? Was that actually from the NWFP or from other causes?
What worked well and what didn’t? And, as I’ve said before, why do we have lessons learned for a GS-5 who rolls a four-wheeler, but not for the massively disruptive policy interventions? It’s almost as if the greater the impact to the public, the less we think any kind of improvement is important. Are we afraid to question powerful people? Trust in government= accountability plus transparency plus access. Whoops, sorry about the soapbox.
Back to “what do you think of Nadine’s ideas?” Do you have other ideas?
Well, color me surprised, but I couldn’t agree more that we need to “do a stand-down of plan revisions and OG amendments until wildfire amendments are completed for all wildfire-prone NFs. The wildfire amendments would have an EIS, development and maintenance of PODs and fuelbreaks, conditions for managed fire, areas delineated for prescribed fires, and coordination with communities’ efforts, plus public involvement.” This is essentially calling for place-based strategies.
I do think it’s a leap of faith to assume, without any evidence, that if only the NWFP had been different that the wildfire problem would be just fine and JWT would not have been standing there in 2014 looking at black sticks. The USFS is good at accomplishing fuels treatments that include commercial, but not so good at maintaining treated areas or treating fuels in areas that don’t have much volume or areas that are more than 1/4 mile from a road. This would be the same under whatever plan they operate. I do not foresee any change to the current trend (except that we’ll run out of green forests to burn), without getting better at treating fuels without a commercial harvest component.
I think that that differs by part of the country, for example, I don’t think that this was commercial https://www.vaildaily.com/news/breckenridge-wildfire-cause-fuel-reduction/ Dead lodgepole in Breckenridge.