Last week, I wrote about what was in the Fix our Forests Bill about counting fuel treatment acres. Last July I wrote about what happens to total wildfire acres if you subtract WFU acres, which led to the conclusion that there was little or no increase in unwanted acres burned through time. Of course, at the same time there are, and continue to be, seriously bad and impactful wildfires.
Well, yesterday Nick Smith had a link to this op-ed by Sarah Hyden in The Revelator.
“But by that date, the Forest Service had made the decision to expand the fire up to a “planned perimeter” of 7,000 acres with firing operations. That means the Service intended to expand it up to 538 times its size. The fire may have continued to slowly expand naturally, but relatively high vegetation moisture from recent rains made it unlikely that the fire would spread much on its own. By Aug. 1, when the fire had been expanded to 6,500 acres, enough rain came that it was apparently too difficult to expand the fire any further. It’s hard to say exactly which part of the 6,500-acre “wildfire” was due to intentional burning and which was “natural” wildfire, but it is clear the vast majority of the acres burned were due to the Forest Service’s own ignitions. Nonetheless the agency calls the Tanques Fire a wildfire.”
She goes back to the Biscuit Fire
The first publicized example of such wildfire expansion was the 2002 Biscuit Fire. Timothy Ingalsbee of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology estimated that a large proportion of the Biscuit Fire was ignited by Forest Service firing operations. Inglasbee stated in a 2006 report largely focused on the Biscuit Fire that “burnout operations can sometimes take place several miles away from the edge of a wildfire, or alternately, miles away from the fire containment line.” Wildfire expansions have greatly increased since 2002, and wildfire starts, such as lightning strike ignitions, are often simply the “match that lit the fire,” leading to numerous firing operation ignitions to implement intentional burns that the agency calls wildfires.
Now while I and many other scientists disagree with Sarah on this..
However, evidence clearly shows that burning of homes and communities by wildfire is not significantly impacted by logging, thinning, and intentional burning treatments out in the forest, and that only the 100 feet surrounding homes and other structures is relevant to structure ignitions.
we can also ask the question, “what is the best way to count what I call “unwanted wildfire acres””? Because fire folks might intentionally build a larger box than “necessary” but who decides what is “necessary”? We can’t really analyze the probabilities of success of different boxes without making a host of assumptions. And would it be worth the time and money to even try?
So the FS wants to reduce fuels. It has an opportunity with a lightning strike. Fire folks consider the opportunities and the risks and determine a course of action. I don’t know but perhaps they consider 1) firefighter and public safety, 2) likelihood of success holding a line and 3) need for acres treated. There may be other factors as well.
So how to parse out what is done for fuel reduction versus safety versus likelihood of success? Seems tough or impossible looking from here, but I am not a fire person. In the case of Tanques fire, it seems like it was an intentional and documented decision to expand. At that point, it seems like it would be possible to delineate Unwanted Wildfire Acres (as if they had put it out directly) from Intentional Wildfire Acres (or Beneficial Fire, as the Wildfire Commission would have it). But at the same time, those early acres are probably beneficial in some sense as well, because if those acres had endangered communities or other infrastructure, fire folks might have gone to full suppression. Or maybe not.
This seems like a very head-scratchy kind of question. Maybe someone out there with more fire experience has some ideas?
The overriding issue is U.S. land managers report zero losses. Just acres burned. Inside the fire perimeter are private acres burned. Insurance companies or private owners have no path to recovery of loss. U.S. employees, agencies, working from a plan, have zero tort liability. Zero constraints. San Francisco shop lifter and USFS burn bosses have the same protection from laws: total. SUPREMACY CLAUSE.
Meanwhile, it appears only in New Mexico will prescribed private property losses will be mitigate by 900 victims of Hermit’s Peak-Calf Canyon and the two decades ago Cerro Grande prescribed fires. The rest of the Nation hopes to pin liability on a public utility whose energized lines were compromised by conflagration wind blowing limbs and weak trees across power lines igniting secondary fires on private lands. Pacific Power rates are being considered for an 18% raise for 1/1/25: up 50% since 2022. All to pay victims of federal fire trespass compromising power lines. Not all, but how many power lines on county road rights of way are there on federal lands? Supremacy clause protections for the executive branch transfer liability to federal and state regulated private and other cooperative utility providers for escaped prescribed fire…..except in blessed New Mexico. Odd, the deal. Just Democrats helping Democrats stay in office.
I was on the Biscuit Fire and though I was certainly not involved in any high-level operational decisions (I was a Division Supervisor on the fire), my impression was that there was a decision to go big because numerous containment efforts had failed, and they fell back to major roads where they thought they would have a greater degree of success. It was strictly operational, not a “let’s have more good fire” thing, or that was my impression anyway.
As far as I know, they are still using the Wildfire Decision Support System (WFDSS) to make the decisions you are asking about. There are numerous inputs that go into this, and in my opinion, it was not a bad program but certainly not perfect. Some of it comes down to who is providing the inputs. It is signed by the responsible line officer.
As far as accounting for beneficial and unwanted acres, it is presently difficult to do that. Maybe I am wrong about that. I think there would need to be direction requiring a breakdown and that would need to be consciously followed.
The initial step in tracking the magnitude of intentional burning and wildfire use may be the most important and the simplest to achieve.
In a phone call to FS Fire Director Shawna Legarza and her staff a few years ago, I asked her to task Incident Command Teams with tracking the miles of indirect fireline (natural, airdrops, or human-made) and estimating the acres burned between the indirect line and the wildfire.
These figures would not be conclusive about wildfire use. Still, they would reveal the astonishing level of intentional wildfire use for all purposes, from backfiring to burning out to firing operations to reduce energy in PODs to firefighter safety. The information gathered would help us understand one independent factor: the percentage of a wildfire lit on purpose.
For example, 60 percent of the almost million-acre Dixie Fire was intentionally lit in firing operations (https://www.google.com/search?q=zeke+lunder+the+lookout+talking+fire+dixie+firing+operations&rlz=1C5MACD_enUS1026US1028&oq=zeke+lunder&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBggCECMYJzIGCAAQRRg5MgcIARAuGIAEMgYIAhAjGCcyBggDECMYJzIHCAQQABiABDIHCAUQABiABDIHCAYQABiABDIHCAcQABiABDIHCAgQABiABDIHCAkQABiABNIBCDgxNDBqMGo0qAIAsAIB&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8).
Instead of arguing about whether this burning was for firefighter safety, restoring fire to fire-depleted ecosystems, or normative line construction, we would be able to confront the scope and scale of the single most important independent factor affecting fire size and costs. This data, in turn, would lay the groundwork for our interest in the role of intentional and unilateral wildfire use in managing our precious national forests.
One outcome of intentional burning is a dramatic increase in air tanker costs. Instead of requiring firing operations from a physical anchor point, like a highway, dozer line, or lakeshore, drone and helicopter firing operations have gone free range, lighting fires where they will and using air drops to constitute the indirect fireline on the fly. This tactic resulted in free-range firing operations more than 10 miles ahead of the 2022 Black Fire in the Aldo Leopold Wilderness.
The issue for all of us, former planners, fire managers, and line officers, is that the FS is using wildfire as its last active management tool. It doesn’t require anyone’s permission, NEPA or NFMA, or adherence to substantive laws like Clean Air, Clean Water, T&E Species, and ARPA.
Zeke Lunder, possibly the preeminent fire analyst of our time, had this to say about the state of the current Forest Service and wildfire use as a substitute for active management:
“We should…not pretend … the Forest Service is a functional agency because it’s not They can’t meet our expectations of them getting anything done because they can’t . They lost so much they’re really not a functional agency. They can’t do anything at scale, and they haven’t been able to since they stopped cutting big trees …. They were really good at cutting big trees …, but since then they no longer have a function. They’ve lost their esprit de corps and sense of purpose, and their reason for being has gone away …. So, they still have to manage the land with active management …what does that leave us? Well, using fire is active forest management. So, they’re using fire.”
Congressionally appropriated WFM “Emergency fire suppression” dollars are now used for massive summertime prescribed fires with no limits on the checkbook and no one to say “no.” Randy can claim 4.3 million acres of prescribed fire and fuels reduction in 2023 and promise to almost meet the same mark in 2024 because he is counting wildfire acres burned from any cause. Yes, wildfire is a form of fuel treatment. Yes, sometimes fires like the West and Preacher Fires on the Tonto and Coconino this year were beneficial. But increasingly, fires that started small and were made big by FS pro-fire policies are hugely destructive and even deadly for humans and wildlife.
Three of the largest California wildfires had something in common: They all resulted from massive firing operations. Firefighters lit the North Complex, the August Complex, and the Dixie Fire to achieve public purposes. These fires did not cooperate and instead burned hundreds of thousands of extra acres, killed 16 civilians in their homes and cars, burned several communities into oblivion, and killed hundreds of cattle and hundreds of thousands of wildlife, large and small, never mind the billions of board feet of timber lost and miles of riparian habitat burned to mineral soil.
My colleagues and I spent the past decade closely following the unintended consequences of wildfire use (let-burn, applied wildfire, intentional wildfire use, etc). Our work in support of litigation and for other reasons is well-documented in exhibits suitable for courtrooms across America. I have given numerous presentations on the subject to state attorneys general, continuing education seminars for lawyers and foresters, state associations of counties, packed meeting rooms in restaurants in small towns, legislative committees, members and staffs of federal delegations in Washington and various state offices, and meetings of different groups like the Dude Ranchers Association and the Idaho Forest Owners Association. These presentations are widely available, and I would happily present my evidence and data in Zoom meetings to this group, individually or en masse, anytime.
It would be awesome if this site would up its game by allowing us to publish photos and maps and other exhibits to illustrate our comments. Not have pictures makes Jack a dull boy.
Frank, you can post photos in comments. You go to your own wordpress area and make a “fake” post, upload the files and then copy the html into the comments. It’s kind of kludgy but it works, that’s how I do it. I will also ask our web folks if there is another way. If you have longer material you can submit it to me as a post, also.
Hi, Sharon. The Chief received a watershed letter that will ring down the Ages in wildland fire policy. Mark this day. A shot has been fired and the windows are shaking.
https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:67d7585d-31e2-4587-a999-c60aabe128e2
Montana Governor Gianforte wrote to the Chief to tell him that Montana would no longer participate in science fiction and that “full suppression” could be anything other than “anchor, flank, and hold.” Those of us working on this issue for the past decade are euphoric. Montana has removed any doubt that FS firefighters intentionally use wildfires to manage natural resources.
This development is critical for many reasons. First, Montana will no longer share the outrageous and growing costs of giant, summertime prescribed wildfires under the Master Agreement. The governor told the chief, “Either put the fire out immediately, or you’re on your own paying for your alternative strategies.” This is an astonishing and overdue development. Gianforte’s letter shatters the deception that the FS is working with cooperators, and everyone is on board with the wildfire use policy. They are not.
See my presentation here: https://1drv.ms/p/s!AuKr93RuXe49gbIHkbk4dY3DoqJvbA
With the FS budget in complete disarray and a billion dollars in the hole, the FS needs the states to participate to defray the high costs of current policies. The states are not sympathetic. Many key state leaders first heard the FS was expanding wildfires on purpose as a result of my work with Sarah Hyden, Joe Reddan, Van Elsbernd, Nadine Bailey, Quentin Rhoades, Roger Jaegle, and many others meeting for the past several years with states Attorneys General in Montana, Idaho, and others, and in multiple presentations to any significant group who would listen and buy us lunch. We lobbied Congress at home and in DC. We challenged the FS’s assertions of legal management strategies in meetings and in fire briefings.
The Governor’s letter clarifies that the vagaries of wildfire use and applied wildfire in PODs and firesheds is not a conspiracy theory or a figment of the imaginations of disgruntled former employees. Gianforte says it’s all too real, and he’s not playing.
I regret feeling so much affirmation after such a long fight, but I do, and it’s an important fight.
The days of the Chevron Deference ended in June this year. The time of National, Regional, and Unit EIS’s addressing wildfire use, disclosing impacts, inventorying the casualties to date, cooperating to forge robust public scoping and planning, and differences of opinion no longer ignored has come and I welcome it. The Chief will have to retire and make way for an effective and creative manager who can dig out of the mess.
The Forest Service is lost and struggling. The NLT, RFs, and Rangers have developed an unhealthy contempt for the mission. I think it blossomed in the pandemic. It manifests as arrogance and a complete lack of focus on the public. I went to the Boise Supervisor’s Office a few weeks ago. The Visitor Information Center was open, but no one staffed it except a lone federal security guard. He told me two women were supposed to be there but were “unreliable” and often not at their posts. He said I could try later, but there were no guarantees. Most of the staff was not there. The historic archive was thrown away by new kids who didn’t understand the need to preserve federal records. There were no principal staff officers ready to assist anyone.
The Chief and RFs allowed fear to rule from 2010 to today. The agency has been overcome by false constructs of employee health and wellness, now interpreted as meaning everyone can do whatever they want about coming to work (or not), showing up to work together to teach each other (or not), and interacting with the public (or not).
Employees are allowed to stay home. GS Fantastics in the 13-15 range live in their awesome refuges at home or wherever they want, traveling at will to spendy locations and racking up huge expenses. No one is going to work. There’s no opportunity for new kids to learn from old hands. They are lost and afraid. It’s a perfect storm of a once-powerful and now inert agency no longer able to muster a relevant presence on the ground.
I didn’t believe it when I first heard it, but the folks at the top came up with solutions to the current budget shortfall last month that beggars the imagination. The first idea was not to hire the seasonal workforce; now, it’s a solid plan bemoaned by High Country News. The Second was to consolidate Ranger Districts. Hopefully, this nutty idea was stillborn. There was no one with enough courage to enter into a Reduction in Force focused not on seasonals but on the herds of GS-13-15 planning staffers, teams scions, and others at the WO, Region, and Forest level who now constitute the bulk of the nondiscretionary workforce. Lol!! What?? Now is the time for buy-outs and mass reassignments.
The Chief disingenuously claims the current permanent staff will take up the seasonal slack, opening trails, cleaning campgrounds, and handling the work the public expects and deserves to have as support for their use of their lands. What the hell happened to leaders who knew how to lead? What happened to the Forest Service?
In any event, the States are no longer interested in enabling the once iconic agency to fail to grasp its own mission. They are saying, not theoretically, that they are not paying for the pretend party in the halls of the now-empty Forest Service offices (where we are still paying rent and utilities for no-show staff). I’ll stop here lest my fury overcome my message. Suffice it to say that the era of irresponsible, anti-public service, union-driven craziness, and a goofy, indefensible assertion of “safetiness,” is coming to a crashing end: Just in time.
Please read the attached letter several times and rejoice. It took a Governor to drag us back to reality. The entire workforce and lots of accountability will drag the FS back from the brink.
I remain optimistic. My Dad and I served from 1943 to 2011. We know how to do stuff and we can do it with unafraid leaders. We may have the chance to go back to the future with Elon Musk in charge of government reform.
“The issue for all of us, former planners, fire managers, and line officers, is that the FS is using wildfire as its last active management tool. It doesn’t require anyone’s permission, NEPA or NFMA, or adherence to substantive laws like Clean Air, Clean Water, T&E Species, and ARPA.”
And they know it will get funded. So how about this as a way to track acres to meet targets: targets can only be met on acres that have prior plans prepared in accordance with NEPA and other laws?
The larger problem for the agency is “So, they still have to manage the land with active management…” That’s only because “their reason for being has gone away,” which has always been active management. Or at least that’s their perception. Mine is that the Forest Service hasn’t been able to embrace the reason for being it was given by NFMA, which is sustainability of its ecosystems. We can talk about how much active management is necessary for that, but the agency bias seems likely to persist because active management generates a lot more funding than passive management.