Pick a Lane, Please: Suppression Strategies, Particulates, Carbon, Climate Change and Capacity

This is a post in which I advocate for metrics to help improve wildfire management practices, and for forest plans to make certain wildfire management-related decisions.  Since I am usually skeptical of both metrics (too easily gamed, many discussions with my former boss Fred Norbuey) and forest planning (many discussions with all of you all), this is highly unusual, and possibly worthy of note.

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When I worked on Colorado Roadless, our team would often say “they need to pick a lane” because external folks would sometimes hold ideas that seemed to not be consistent to us.  Let’s just say that we as staff were not encouraged to ask clarifying questions when this happened- while we might think we were clarifying it could have been seen as challenging to People More Important Than Us

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So in this case, let’s put some pieces together.

1. Climate change “causes” wildfire and things are going to get worse until the world gives up fossil fuels.

If we agree with this, then nothing in the way of wildfire is “natural” anymore, so we should use whatever capacity (human and technology) to reduce impacts. Pluse perhaps we need to give up the argument of “historical range of variation” and “wildfire deficit” and simply deal with what presents itself in the most practical way possible.  It  is more likely that decarbonization will be a relatively slow process, so adaptation will be key.

2.  A. It’s going to be a really bad year for wildfire in many parts of the west.

B.  Reorganization has affected wildfire capacity. Some in the media have elided the Interior Combo and the FS Reorg to some extent, and personally I think the jury is outon the Combo, still , certainly experienced folks have reiired, but let’s take it  as a hypothetical for now.

what doesn’t add up is C:

Since conditions are bad, and organizational issues beset the federal wildfire force, it’s also a serious problem if they don’t use monitoring, point protection and contain and confine, which all depend for success on ongoing use of more people and other resources thereby making them not available for the next problematic wildfire, which is sure to occure, because it’s a dry year.

So the Trump Admin can be dinged for not having enough well-trained people and, at the same time, for not using strategies that require a greater number of  well-trained people to carry off safely, plus conceivably extra resources on standby in case something goes awry.  This sounds like “management by wishful thinking”, not particularly safe, and not part of the wildland firefighting culture.   It seems to me that folks need to pick a lane. If conditions are bad, and people are few, this is not the year for operations that require more people to conduct and have a potential to escape.

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If we look at FY 2025, despite similar policies, MF still happened (or at least was reported) by the FS.  Of course the FY starts in October and the inauguration wasn’t til January, but it does make me wonder how this all fits together (policies vs. metrics).

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There’s also an obvious tension about how “we need” more fire on the landscape.  Again, this is not an argument that holds much weight in my county.  Again, it seems to be a federal lands issue.

Given that “we” need it, the argument for MF is that prescribed fire and MT won’t do it.  Which is OK, except we see hundreds of thousands of acres with Unwanted Wildfire, which should also be considered in the question of whether there is “enough” or not.

But that brings up a more complicated question.  If the goal is fuel reduction, then shouldn’t UWW  acres be counted when they reduce fuels? Wouldn’t we want to decide what it is that “we” want and measure the effects (good or bad) regardless of  whether the wildfire was prescribed, MF or UWF?  Conceivably that would help improve PF, MF, and UWW practices toward more of the good and less of the bad. We’ve seen PF that burned up all the trees (not the prescription), we’ve seen UWF that reduced fuel without killing all the trees.

Which brings up the question of “how do we know we don’t have enough if we don’t know how much we have (nor how much we want)?” since we all know (with climate change) that the past is information not a target.

Which leads me to the rare place where I agree that forest plans could be useful.  That is the place to look at specific landscapes, habitats, watersheds and decide what is wanted, and how to achieve it, with public involvement.  Many places have collaboration among government agencies and other groups and are figuring this out together, but it doesn’t seem yet to have a place in FS planning (PODs, evacuation routes, and so on).

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Then there are questions of air pollution from MF, PF and UWWF . If we were going for fewer particulates, what’s the best strategy? Plus there are especially bad pollutants from structures, so we would want to avoid wildfire running through communities, right?  And what about carbon?  Wildfires put large amounts into the atmosphere.  Probably the best way to deal with these would be PF and MT, including using the biomass instead of burning it in the woods  (also good for smoke, and safer).  Monitoring, point protection, and confine and contain don’t seem like they are very good for carbon or particulates.

Another pick a lane, more carbon and particulates versus PF and MT with some biomass use? It’s true that many are against using biomass for various ideological and practical reasons, but shouldn’t we at least attempt to get on the same page?

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And of course, to the people who say “suppression doesn’t work”- if it doesn’t work,, what difference does it make what strategy is selected?