https://interagencytrackingsystem.org/ Would be interesting to see overlay with wildfires.
There are at least two sides to every story. Often, though, reporting is not “what happened” but “people are upset about.” When this happens with the Forest Service, often the FS does not respond (due to the litigation cone of silence, or difficulty in getting answers approved by Admins, or ….). I used to tell my staff “nothing good ever came from talking to the press” which may or may not be true, but if you know you are working on something that the outlet doesn’t like (in our case, Colorado Roadless), the risks often outweigh the potential advantages. I have also heard from different public affairs people that responding keeps controversies alive and not responding helps them blow over. Both of these are true. For us in the public, though, the result tends to be we don’t have both sides.
Sometimes I will dive into “the FS side” by looking at objection responses or NEPA docs and infer the FS point of view.. but how many people have the time or the inclination to do that. Fortunately, we can be assisted by unofficial knowledgeable people.
Let’s go back to an example.. remember the story on the Garnet Fire we covered last month?
A Fresnoland investigation into a stalled prescribed burn project exposes systemic dysfunction at the Forest Service. Even with full state funding, political backing, and exemptions from environmental review, the Forest Service didn’t act.
Systemic dysfunction? “Exemption from environmental review”.. this sounded a bit suspicious to me. There is no “exemption” – there is just “possible streamlining.” Also “full state funding”- does California fund specific projects on NF land? Then do they also do the NEPA and the work? Like shared stewardship agreements in MT and ID?
America’s founding environmental historian – an expert on how failed agricultural policy instigated the Dust Bowl in the 1930s – wonders if this trail of devastation is a sign that California is entering something like a 21st century Dust Bowl.
“Are we creating another Dust Bowl in the forests of the West?” asked Donald Worster, emeritus professor at University of Kansas.
The clouds of dust which menaced the Texan panhandle 90 years ago, Worster says, certainly do bear a stark resemblance to the county-spanning clouds of smoke that are now routine occurrences across the West.
To be sure, the collapse of the Sierra Nevada is not unique to Gould’s area, most of which is being transformed from a forest into a glorified weed patch by the unprecedented flame of mega fire. Forests are not adapted to fires this hot, said Stephens, and as a result the old ecosystems are not growing back.
I don’t think Scott probably said this in so many words, but it wasn’t that long ago when we recognized that burned areas without trees needed help (reforestation and brush control) in the Sierra for trees to grow back. Will they be the “old ecosystems”? I don’t know, but they could be forested with the same tree and plant species composition, hence wildlife. I do recall when Sierra (Range) forests became unable to use herbicides. At the time, we worried about their potentially becoming brushfields due to seedlings being overtaken by brush species. That was probably 40 or so years ago.
“Logging and thinning by themselves may only aggravate the fireshed,” said Stephen Pyne, America’s pre-eminent fire historian.
I think “prescribed fire” is a bit confusing here (and maybe elsewhere). It can mean (not thinning plus broadcast) or (thinning plus broadcast) or (thinning handpiling and burning) or (thinning mechanical piling and burning). Who would do thinning (as we’ve talked about, there doesn’t seem to be a physical definition for “logging”) and not remove the fuel by burning (piles or broadcast)? It wouldn’t be much of a fuel treatment prescription. Is this a straw person argument? Or is the Pyne quote missing important context?
But back to the point I was trying to make..
Gould and his U.S. Forest Service office could not be reached for comment via email despite repeated requests both before and after the government shutdown.
So the reporter could not get the FS side of the story. Note: this is not the FS side of the story, but it’s another side of the story. Folks can imagine that reporters can’t get the FS side sometimes, and they feel the need to report anyway. While this is the way the system works, it’s definitely suboptimal for the understanding by the public of the issues at hand. Many thanks to FM and others who can tell us “what might be part of the FS side of the story”- below is his comment:
I’m familiar with the Teakettle area and project. I read Matt Hurteau’s Ecology paper. Unfortunately that write-up is full of falsehoods and is generally misleading and un-professional. Teakettle Experimental Forest: designated in 1938, 3200 acres overseen and managed by the Pacific Southwest Research Station USDA, beginning around 1995 research focused on forest thinning and prescribed fire. Despite this experimental forest area being managed by research scientists, who have numerous funding sources available to them, they sadly never actually managed their 3200 acre plot of land against the threat of wildfire. About 170 acres of planned research prescribed fire had been accomplished in Teakettle as of 2019. Over a million acres have burned in over 23 major wildfires (per IFTDSS website) since 1995 within the Sierra NF and areas immediate adjacent in Yosemite and Kings Canyon (this doesn’t include adjacent State land or the Inyo and Stanislaus National Forests). A major tree mortality forest die-off event (look that up about how many acres affected and how many trees died and fell to the ground adding to hazard fuel loads) started in 2014 and was centered in the Sierra NF just a couple of miles from Teakettle. The Sierra National Forest has been overwhelmed. Prescribed fire needs have been carefully analyzed and prioritized (silviculture, WUI, infrastructure etc) resulting in sorely needed prescribed fire implementation proposed for decades into the future. Anyone familiar with the Sierra NF (as these researchers are) or in reality the Sierra Nevada ecosystem as a whole should know this.
Matt Hurteau mishandled a proposed 870 acre Rx burn project in 2019 by not following established guidelines for notifying the Forest Service (Forest Service heard about his proposed project haphazardly through contractors a few months before Matt hoped to have it burned), presenting a project foot print that could not have prescribed fire feasibly applied to it (this showed a shocking lack of knowledge of basic prescribed fire knowledge and awareness), a confusion about who actually will implement the prescribed burn and numerous other factors affecting his proposed project. Sierra NF then proposed a much larger acre burn (while clearly stating that they had no funding or personnel to take on a project like this) that was considered the only way to get the 870 acre plot originally planned done. This is where the 3000+ acre proposed burn idea came from, not from any of the researchers. The Sierra NF had a carefully planned 5 year work schedule to meet Rx burning needs including: silviculture site prep (planting requires ordering trees from nurseries years in advance), WUI, infrastructure (Hydro-electric is not to be impacted) and numerous other inputs which again the researchers should be aware of. That Matt Hurteau fully expected a large 870 acre burn to be accomplished with a 120 day lead time is as shocking as it is ignorant and insulting. Whatever talk there is of the Forest Service ignoring NEPA requirements, promising to do an unplanned/sudden 3000+ acre research burn in lieu of every other years-ahead planned action(s), dragging their feet (same staff that does prescribed burning has been fighting the large fires listed above) or that any one individual is responsible for a century plus of management decisions is silly, grossly ignorant or has an agenda behind it.
Contact me if you’re interested in learning more. FM
We could dig into this more… like the story’s claims about the State’s role, and what NEPA they were doing exactly. But I think most of us would probably agree with FM that it’s hard (or wrong, or both) to blame Sierra employees for a “century plus of management decisions.” Also, it’s not surprising that there would be disagreements about prioritization. If the scientists had been FS, those disagreements might have been elevated to RF/SD issue resolution. But the broader point here is that 1) we only heard one side of the story (Sierra=bad) with much questionable embroidery and 2) now we realize the issue is much more complex. I don’t feel that I need to know more at this point, but the additional context leaves me with a much different impression about the Sierra.
Thanks for posting FM’s response as well as your own. When I saw Hurteau’s info posted on LinkdIn, I reached out to him sharing my experience working with the research folks at the Sagehen Exp Forest. He quit responding to me when I asked if he had sat down with the Forest Supervisor and/or leadership team. Clearly he wasn’t interested in what worked for me/us when in a similar situation. Your info has helped flesh out my knowledge and is very much appreciated.
Problems certainly could have been mitigated if most of the National Forest mortality in the southern Sierra Nevada had been salvaged. Once the only lumber mill in SoCal was plugged with private logs, there wasn’t any more capacity to bid on USFS salvage projects. Yes, it is more complex, and there’s plenty of blame to go around. We’re stuck with the problems until the excess fuels burn in uncontrollable wildfires, like the Station Fire. The terrain is just too dangerous to do much when fires are burning.
If I understand well, in about 2018 or 2019 some researchers decided the Teakettle EF would be a good place for a prescribed fire study. It is unclear if any USFS researchers with the Pacific SW Research Station which administers the Teakettle EF were involved. The researchers secured funds for surveys in 2019 before figuring out what they needed to survey, and they directed their survey contractor to ask the Sierra NF what they needed to do. The Sierra NF determined the prescribed burn as initially planned at 870 ac was not feasible. The Sierra NF and researchers worked out a 3800 ac prescribed burn proposal and in 2022 the researchers secured $5,600,000 from the State of California for the research project (I assume most of this amount was intended for research activities other than burn implementation). At around this time the Sierra NF was dealing with COVID-19, a forest plan revision, and the prescribed fire pause. In 2024 an (e)6 CE for prescribed fire including the Teakettle EF was signed by the Forest Supervisor (I’m not sure how the research station was involved). Before the Sierra NF could complete prescribed burning a 60,000+ ac wildfire caused by a lightning strike about 9 miles from the Teakettle EF burned the area in August 2025. Some people are unhappy about burned forest and unrewarded planning effort. Some are complaining about the pace of forest management generally and arguing that a low and mixed severity surface fire with ladder fuel removal along control lines would have saved the Teakettle EF from crown fire.
Completing work on land you don’t control is definitely not always easy or fast, especially if you need other people to do the work and take on the risk for you. An initial proposal with burn boss input and a savvy proponent in the research station might have fared better. But even then the area could have still burned in the Garnet Fire, $5.6 million to study one prescribed burn is unusual, and the blame on the Forest Supervisor is misplaced.
Stories can have sides, usually two, as Sharon writes; however, this story is a megagon! From the usual “he said/she said,” there is the dimension of Forest Service scientist, Malcom North, a “top Forest Service scientist,” criticizing in the San Francisco Chronicle, Dean Gould, the supervisor of the Sierra National Forest, an agency colleague in the National Forest System Deputy Area. Unprecedented!
And it doesn’t appear that the Chief of the Forest Service or the Deputy Chief of Research and Development, now Fire and Aviation Management, has muzzled North.
Before the Garnett Fire smoke had dissipated, and the last of the embers had cooled, Matthew Hurteau and Scott Stephens published an editorial in the Ecological Society of America (https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/fee.70018) calling for reckless leadership of the Nation’s public lands! Despite academic irrational exuberance for pyrotechnics, theoretical forestry has real environmental impacts. And seasoned forest supervisors like Gould know the downsides. Apparently, Professor Hurteau has not traveled the 130 miles from the University of New Mexico to Las Dispensas or Calf Canyon to see the ignition points for the Federally sponsored arson that became the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon conflagration. But it’s a crap shoot if their vaunted 3,800-acre burn on the Teakettle Experimental Forest were to escape as the 1,200-acre Las Dispensas burn did in 2022, or would it stay within prescription through 16 to 32 days of ignition. The probability of escape over 200 acres with 16 ignition days is 15%, nearly double at 27% with 32 days—very unacceptable risks.
It becomes curiouser and curiouser as the Climate and Wildfire Institute (https://www.climateandwildfire.org/team) entered the fray in 2023. The institute, composed of the usual suspects, lists both the retired Deputy Director of CALFIRE – Chris Anthony – as a senior consultant and the newly named director of the United States Wildfire Service – Brian Fennessey – as an advisor. Anonymous dryly notes that $5.6 million is unusual for studying a “controlled burn,” but not when the CWI is involved!
A review of the CWI website shows seven paid employees: an executive director, three deputy directors, and three program managers. In the consultant and advisor category, there are two advisors, two senior consultants, and four consultants. I will assume that all consultants are paid for their services while advisors are unpaid. The Board is 11 members, all of whom, according to the 2023 (most recent) IRS 990, are volunteers. However, the 2023 IRS Form 990 reports a 235% increase in salaries relative to the 2022 filing year. Like the smoke of the Garnet fire, the $5.6 million grant wafted off into wages, without the burn occurring or any peer-reviewed science. Should not the California Greenhouse Gas fund get a refund?
Thanks, Joe, would you please send a link to the Chronicle article? I looked up the Climate and Wildfire Institute on Cause IQ and can’t make heads or tails of their financials.But that’s normal for me.. we all have gifts and reading 990s is not one of mine In addition,Cause IQ only has to 2023. Maybe you can take a look..
Sharon: “Who would do thinning (as we’ve talked about, there doesn’t seem to be a physical definition for “logging”) and not remove the fuel by burning (piles or broadcast)? It wouldn’t be much of a fuel treatment prescription. Is this a straw person argument? Or is the Pyne quote missing important context?”
Pyne’s quote might be about research results, which have apparently examined this question intensively. But I also seem to remember a prior discussion here indicating that the burning that gets planned for later might not get done due to changed circumstances (esp. funding). True?
Many parts of the southern Sierra Nevada are no longer suitable for standard “thin from below” fuels projects. Those forests generally are no longer “overcrowded” with commercial-sized timber. Add in the lack of suitable terrain for tractor logging and you’ll see the bigger picture. I doubt that there would be money budgeted for non-commercial thinning.
Jonas, I think we’ll have to see the design of the project. I’ve seen all kinds of conditions in the southern Sierra. If you want to run PF through some stands you need to do thinning (commercial or non) first. Depends.
You mean like this 2024 metal analysis paper..
Increased understanding of how mechanical thinning, prescribed burning, and wildfire affect subsequent wildfire
severity is urgently needed as people and forests face a growing wildfire crisis. In response, we reviewed scientific literature for the US West and completed a meta-analysis that answered three questions: (1) How much do treatments reduce wildfire severity within treated areas? (2) How do the effects vary with treatment type,
treatment age, and forest type? (3) How does fire weather moderate the effects of treatments? We found overwhelming evidence that mechanical thinning with prescribed burning, mechanical thinning with pile burning, and prescribed burning only are effective at reducing subsequent wildfire severity, resulting in reductions in severity between 62% and 72% relative to untreated areas. In comparison, thinning only was less effective – underscoring the importance of treating surface fuels when mitigating wildfire severity is the management goal.
I still don’t see why anyone would thin and not treat fuels..
The efficacy of these treatments did not vary among forest types assessed in this study and was high across a
range of fire weather conditions. Prior wildfire had more complex impacts on subsequent wildfire severity, which
varied with forest type and initial wildfire severity. Across treatment types, we found that effectiveness of
treatments declined over time, with the mean reduction in wildfire severity decreasing more than twofold when
wildfire occurred greater than 10 years after initial treatment. Our meta-analysis provides up-to-date information
on the extent to which active forest management reduces wildfire severity and facilitates better outcomes for
people and forests during future wildfire events.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/rm/pubs_journals/2024/rmrs_2024_davis_k001.pdf
Of course, in a multiyear project the pile burning might not happen, but as I could tell by driving around Calif last fall… plenty of pile burning happens..
Let’s go back to Pyne’s quote
“Logging and thinning by themselves may only aggravate the fireshed,” said Stephen Pyne, America’s pre-eminent fire historian.”
But who is doing logging and thinning by itself? The article seems to imply that maybe the FS is doing it? Otherwise why put the quote in?
Here is an AI discourse on the topic. (It seems to point a finger towards 4FRI as an example.)
https://www.google.com/search?q=Is+there+a+U.+S.+Forest+Service+thinning+project+that+does+NOT+include+fire+or+burning%3F&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&udm=50&aep=48&cud=0&qsubts=1767123053548&zx=1767123055133&no_sw_cr=1&mstk=AUtExfDkxDqglsiDbYhKVrmI1nh-0MMDcRymDnUoJfuEuJqmT54gZwpcYIhemnCh7yz60krXx5J7OnossFWENWMHFFqrfKgH2rAFrktKRyMtYQ8Ha5dWmQwTjcl70myTlXcfdvwLt4TnY7HfJ2D_mIBlWL8h_GzCfjIv9Xc&csuir=1