8. Priorities and Design Op-ed on Cottonwood Fire.
Today, again thanks to Nick Smith, there’s an op-ed in the Salt Lake Tribune by a Forest Service retiree, Brett Roper. It’s about the impacts of the Cottonwood Fire, and suggests that projects were done, but did not focus on treatments that would protect private land (wrong places?).
The Cottonwood Fire burnt nearly 100,000 acres east of the city of Beaver despite multiple recent Forest Service decisions implementing thousands of acres of treatments to reduce fire risk and produce timber in that area. As part of this effort, the Forest Service collaborated with Utah’s Watershed Restoration Initiative and spent millions of dollars between 2021 and 2026 to reduce the risk of fire and protect streams. Yet the area burned and flooded.
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The Forest Service did what was legally required. The issue was these assessments never discussed the possibility of a future conflagration across private land or the types of treatments that might have altered that kind of fire’s behavior. Instead, these documents focused on discussing timber harvest away from the private land boundary, maintaining vegetation diversity and restoring the historic fire regime.
Landowners who build houses in forested areas assume a greater risk of their properties being destroyed by fire. That does not negate the Forest Service’s responsibility to design alternatives that might mitigate some of the fire risks as they are the agency with expertise.
The Forest Service seems focused on meeting targets measured in acres treated. The question that needs to be answered is whether the status quo is the right approach, or whether the Forest Service should also be working with the local public to design vegetation projects that are more likely to stop the progress of fires near human habitation, even if such treatments are costly.
Now many of us would read that and say “what’s up with that? don’t some funding sources prioritize WUI (was that HFRA or something more recent?) Didn’t the communities and FS work together to design projects that would help protect private lands?” Or did the communities not want cutting near them (I’ve heard that from homeowners in Colorado)?
Or, as Zeke Lunder said about the fire.. maybe it got to the point where any fuel treatments might not have worked.
- Suppression is extremely difficult in areas with heavy dead timber (snags) from previous burns; direct attack is often not possible, and retardant is less effective in dense, downed fuels.
- Criticism of firefighting efforts is common, but extreme conditions and landscape limitations often make suppression impossible once fires are this large.
As I drive around, I see prescribed fire treatments right next to communities. Plus in some places, communities strongly agitate for the FS to do work in specific areas. The op-ed makes it sound like the FS does the right thing in the wrong place, more or less everywhere (of course, that’s a click-inducing headline and not what Roper wrote.) Which is not my observation. What does that look like in your neck of the words?
9. Fuel Treatments Held Up by Litigation. We’re familiar with the “we planned it but it got stuck in litigation” as documented by the folks at PERC and Breakthrough, as well as others. Here’s one from a few days ago (from AFRC):
The Grasshopper Fire is burning through forests on Oregon’s Mt. Hood National Forest that were identified and prioritized years ago for hazardous fuels reduction through a collaborative effort involving local communities and the U.S. Forest Service. Yet much of that work remains unimplemented after years of litigation and administrative delays slowed or prevented the projects from moving forward.
These forests are located in one of the High Priority Landscapes identified in the Biden Administration’s 2022 Wildfire Crisis Strategy that targeted “high risk firesheds” to improve resilience to wildfire.
Years before the current wildfire, the Wasco County Forest Collaborative worked with the U.S. Forest Service to develop the Grasshopper Restoration Project, the 27 Road Fuel Break, and the Hootnanny Project to reduce hazardous fuels, meet the intent of the Wildfire Crisis Strategy, and improve forest conditions across more than 11,000 acres.
The Grasshopper Restoration Project became the subject of litigation brought by Oregon Wild under the National Environmental Policy Act challenging the paperwork supporting the project. The Forest Service ultimately settled the case by removing less than two percent of the proposed treatment areas, reducing management in others, imposing additional project restrictions, and paying Oregon Wild $55,000 in attorney fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act.
We also know that sometimes there aren’t the people to plan, and the bucks may not arrive at the right time in the right color to move forward. Given all that, I thought this WaPo article was interesting..but extraordinarily predictable.
10. Fuel Treatments Held Up by Trump Admin.. WaPo
Last year, the Trump administration delayed a $10 million grant that was supposed to help Minnesota thin out about 4,000 acres of dense, dry forest at high risk of burning. Most of that work never got started, according to five people familiar with the situation and a document reviewed by The Washington Post. And now, some of those areas are on fire.
We were shovel-ready,” said Aaron Kania, who was a U.S. Forest Service district ranger with the Superior National Forest for six years and a law enforcement ranger with the Bureau of Land Management for two decades before retiring last December. “Had that work been implemented, it would have been effective in stopping or slowing down these fires.”
And the WaPo seems not very careful with numbers…
In the following months, the agency would lose about one-third of its employees, including those who managed timber reviews and grant administration programs — critical components in getting wildfire mitigation projects like the Superior National Forest’s up and running.
The link goes to another WaPo story from earlier this month.
In 2024, there were 18,700 federal employees who could fight fires. Now there are a little over 17,000, according to the U.S. Forest Service and Interior Department. In a recent June report, the Government Accountability Office noted that the U.S. Forest Service’s workforce “decreased by about 20 percent in response to a February 2025 executive order for large-scale workforce reductions.”
I wish reporters would link to the section of the story with the numbers when they cite numbers.. I still don’t get the 1/3. If the FS lost the same 6K that they gained 2022-2024, then that would be 1/3 of 18K which is not the total. But maybe it’s just fire folks?
But that earlier story also quotes Colorado Governor Jared Polis:
In an interview Thursday, Governor Jared Polis (D) and several fire and public safety officials said that while Colorado may have its hands full right now, they are managing. It’s what could come next that worries them. Decades of falling behind on fuel treatments and climate challenges have made their forests tinder boxes, they said.
That’s “decades” of falling behind, not spring of 2025. Oh well, losing 1/3 is a lot, maybe someone can figure out where that number came from.
Sarah Anderson, Andrew Plantinga and Matthew Wibbenmeyer published a very really study a few years ago that speaks to Sharon’s observation that in some places “communities strongly agitate for the FS to do work in specific areas”. Turns out those who agitate successfully for these projects are high socioeconomic status communities, especially higher income, more educated, and whiter communities and are often in areas where wildfire events have occurred recently (increasing salience in areas where wildfire risk has already been reduced and need is no longer the greatest). The piece builds on models that recognize the “differences in the costs of lobbying across demographically varying communities”.
I have long wondered if there is another contributing factor at play, that communities that fit the model described above also have greater access to private philanthropic resources which increases their capacity to organize and capture private and federal implementation dollars in a way that artificially inflates their work compared to their level of risk.
Chelsea, that would be interesting to look at. The Lake Tahoe area seems to have quite a bit going on, might be interesting to look at.
We had those discussions about priorities in Region 2… partners are great, but partners who contribute money.. well.. have money. Denver Water. Rich people in the I-79 ski corridor (what I call Gucci Gulch). Conceivably the Justice 40 initiative in the Biden Admin was designed to get at that inequality. I thought the mapping approach was bogus https://forestpolicypub.com/2023/02/22/ceq-uses-first-streets-wildfire-risk-maps-instead-of-us-government-maps-in-ej-screening-tool-why/ but for now it might be interesting for a GIS proficient graduate student to compare the maps and where the FS designed projects (probably it takes more than one Admin to plan and carry out a project). Maybe decision dates during that period? And see if that policy intervention did as intended.
One thing that is not often addressed is the migration of wildfire experience from the Forest Service to other Agencies, often with much bigger pay and better promotion potential. That has been happening for about 20 years, now. I’m sure there are also folks out there who will no longer accept fire assignments (partly to do with age).
Background and context on the Grasshopper Project settlement, Mt. Hood National Forest:
• AFRC’s accusations deliberately omit key dates. The Forest Service authorized the Grasshopper Project in January 2023. Oregon Wild challenged the Grasshopper Project in June 2023 and settled the case in January 2025.
• AFRC’s headline is that litigation “delayed” wildfire prevention. This is not true. Oregon Wild did not seek a preliminary injunction, and therefore nothing has prevented the agency from taking steps to lay out timber sales and put them up for bid over the course of the last three and a half years. Even since our settlement, the Forest Service has had over 18 months to offer timber sales for bid under this project. They have yet to take even this first step.
o The exact request in our legal complaint: “Enjoin Defendant and its contractors, assigns, and other agents from proceeding with commercial logging prescriptions within stands or units with age classes of 80 years or older, specifically those areas consisting of late-successional, mature, or old-growth forest that provides northern spotted owl habitat, unless and until the violations of federal law set forth herein have been corrected.”
o We did not ask the Court to enjoin any non-commercial treatments or commercial treatments in stands under the age of 80. Nothing would have delayed or prevented the Forest Service from proceeding with non-commercial aspects of the project.
• Under the settlement, the Forest Service dropped two old-growth units and committed to diameter limits on trees cut across the rest of the project. This protects the most fire-resistant and fire-resilient trees – many of which will likely survive this fire.
• Oregon Wild’s settlement included a commitment to field visits with the Forest Service to visit commercial units pre- and post-implementation. However, when we tried to schedule those visits last fall, the agency said the Forest Service had not completed pre-sale layouts and was not ready to implement and would reach out once it was. We have yet to receive any communication that implementation is contemplated or underway.
• The project area spans the Cascade Crest, with moist forest stands on the west end transitioning into drier stands on the east end. The two old-growth logging units dropped from the project are west of the current burn perimeter and would not have intersected with this fire.
• AFRC fabricates a statistic that “more than 25 million board feet” have been “destroyed.” There has been no analysis of fire intensity or tree mortality to base any figures on. It will be several months before any type of valid analysis can be conducted.
• A fuels and fire behavior advisory, issued by federal forecasters on July 28, noted that a combination of historically low snowpack and high temperatures laid the groundwork for fires to burn hotter, faster and for longer periods of time than would normally be the case. Oregon snowpack levels and high temps are not a result of litigation.
• Oregon Wild is not opposed to smaller diameter thinning and prescribed fire – especially in fire-suppressed forests that could benefit from ecologically appropriate restoration. However, the original Grasshopper Project proposal contained prescriptions that would increase fire risks. Commercial logging that removes excessive canopy cover creates hotter and drier conditions on the forest floor and allows for greater wind speeds, all of which can exacerbate severe fire behavior. Mature and old-growth stands create their own moist microclimates that offer greater fire resilience, and often provide refugia for wildlife during and after fires.
• AFRC has been a supporter of the Trump administration’s management of the Forest Service, which has included mass layoffs (the Forest Service has lost close to 6,000 permanent staff, or roughly 16% of its personnel), relocations, and reorganizations, which may have delayed the project. These policy changes have also undermined the effectiveness of the agency and the safety of firefighters and communities.
• Although AFRC touts commercial logging as the sole solution to wildfire, over 2,500 acres of logging have previously occurred in the fire area, including both older and more recent thinning and clearcutting. It is far too soon to determine how or if any of this past and recent logging modified fire behavior either favorably or unfavorably.
Thanks for your perspective, John! please send me a copy of the settlement agreement and I will add.
To add to this: I’ve read through the project documents, and it appears that the original project was first proposed in 2019, possibly earlier. The documents indicate that COVID and the large 2020 fires in Oregon delayed continued work (by the Forest Service) on the project, which is one reason it wasn’t approved until 2023.
Reading over the amended plan, post settlement, it looks like a good project with the goals of fuel-reduction and moving the forest towards a multi-generation, resilient one. The modifications requested by Oregon Wild seem to have improved those aspects of the plan, at the cost of dropping lucrative commercial harvest.
I don’t blame OW for the delay — it seems like there are multiple reasons why this project never got done before going up in flames, including reasonable external pressures (pandemic) and the Forest Service’s own glacial pace.
It doesn’t seem fruitful pointing fingers at one party to blame. I think the larger question is how can we get these projects implemented faster? We see how important fuel-reduction is for safeguarding communities and our forests. How can we work together to propose projects that most of us can support? For example, surely the FS knew that proposing clear cuts and logging of large diameter trees on the Mt Hood Forest was going to draw criticism. Why include those things in the original proposal? Just seems like inviting litigation. Similarly, what practices will environmentalists agree to to speed up this important work before all the forests we love burn up?
“Why include those things in the original proposal? Just seems like inviting litigation.”
Yup. I doubt if there’s ever been a project litigated where the agency didn’t have plenty of warning and opportunity to avoid it. Why do I think that money has something to do with this? And the “so sue me” fund for litigation isn’t part of the regular budget. Why not let known opponents prioritize areas and types of treatments (would they do it for free?).
Oregon Wild won by making the project economically infeasible. They knew the FS would not be able to sell it. So did the FS.
It’s the same play book, rinse and repeat. Diameter restrictions are foolish. South Dakota limited state help on private lands to less than 9 inches. The nine inch trees were as thick as dog hair. The thinning left 100 plus DBH per acre, bug food and fire kindling with a biological desert underneath.
” They knew the FS would not be able to sell it. So did the FS.”
Do you know that the project was not economically feasible, or are you just speculating. I ask seriously, because I have no idea, but it is hard to understand why the FS never put it out to bid after it was approved (as far as I understand).
I understand that much of what was proposed in the project for fuel reduction did not result in commercially valuable timber, in other words it cost money to do the work. Presumably, some clear cutting provided some revenue to offset those costs. Still, as I understand the proposed project, there was logging proposed on larger portions of the forest that would also result in commercial timber, albeit not via lower cost clearcut operations.
Which brings us to this from another comment:
“Fuel reduction would be far less controversial and easier to implement if the agencies focused on removing small fuels non-commercially followed by prescribed fire, instead of commercial logging (and roads) with all the trade-offs on soil, water, fish & wildlife, carbon, etc. It time to invest in our forests, not exploit them.”
This seems like the real friction over the logging/fuel-reduction/fire prevention debate. It seems clear that the forest management steps that will actually reduce fire severity and promote forest resilience do not result in any commercial value, eg large diameter timber. So they cost taxpayers money. The question is, during a time of decreasing resources, are we going to prioritize using our limited resources to do these things? Alternatively, how much timber harvest are “we” willing to allow in order to afford to do the other things we want done? Does the benefit of getting more fuel-reduction done over larger swaths of forest outweigh potential harm of clear-cut or other logging operations on a smaller portion of forest? Can we agree on where and how to do this?
Personally, I’m willing to accept those trade-offs. Looking at the Grasshopper example, had this project gone forward and been completed by now, even with some degree of clearcutting, could that have prevented this fire from blowing up and consuming the whole Badger Creek Wilderness? I also push for expanded NFS budget to pay for fuel-reduction.
Hi Steve,
“Fuel reduction would be far less controversial and easier to implement if the agencies focused on removing small fuels non-commercially followed by prescribed fire, instead of commercial logging (and roads) with all the trade-offs on soil, water, fish & wildlife, carbon, etc. It time to invest in our forests, not exploit them.”
This seems like the real friction over the logging/fuel-reduction/fire prevention debate. It seems clear that the forest management steps that will actually reduce fire severity and promote forest resilience do not result in any commercial value, eg large diameter timber. ”
I don’t know why people keep saying this.. if you have a stand of large trees, and you want to thin, you will have to take out (some) large trees. We had this discussion in depth around the East Side screens and also Sierra diameter limit discussions.
https://forestpolicypub.com/2026/02/24/the-north-yuba-landscape-resilience-project-eis-on-big-trees-and-diameter-limits/
Again, if you need to thin to create shaded fuelbreaks, for example, and there is too much fuel left to pile and burn by hand, some kind of equipment will be on the site whether the site is logged or not. So some of the impacts will occur whether the material is yarded to a landing and taken offsite to be used commercially or not. I think there are a few choices… a) don’t do anything, b) use a fuels prescription and take out all the trees required, sell the ones that are commercial instead of burning in piles, c) do a fuels prescription and burn whatever in piles, including material that might be commercial.
It seems to me that there are different ideas .. one is “no large trees should be thinned”. I don’t think that’s true if fuels experts are asked, let alone silviculturists who want trees to be able to survive droughts. If large trees are to be thinned, and the fuel is burned or otherwise removed from the site, then it seems the environmental question is ” will cutting and piling and burning be better for the environment than moving some fuels offsite to make useful objects and not be burned onsite”?
Folks like the Californians are working on using smaller diameter material… which makes me wonder if some would still be against that because.. commercial? Is it really about commercial-ness, size, or equipment used?
Also, I searched on the project documents and I didn’t find anything about clearcutting.
California has been working with smaller merchantable timber for more than 30 years, in Sierra Nevada National Forests. It would be better if we could utilize all those landing piles of logging slash, pulled from cutting units through whole tree yarding. The trees between 20 and 30 inches provide the commercial value to make all those 10-14 inchers go to the mill. And, yes, we did that without clearcuts.
“if you have a stand of large trees, and you want to thin, you will have to take out (some) large trees…. silviculturists who want trees to be able to survive droughts”
If silviculturists want trees to survive droughts, thinning large trees should be the last resort – or show me the science that says otherwise. There should be a burden on the agency to make that case based on the facts of a particular project.
Here’s some science https://www.fs.usda.gov/about-agency/features/science-says-thinned-forests-are-healthy-forests but there’s plenty in different parts of the country. And the agency does make that case in each project… e.g. https://forestpolicypub.com/2026/02/24/the-north-yuba-landscape-resilience-project-eis-on-big-trees-and-diameter-limits/
“Generally, the number of large trees (greater than 24 inches dbh) have declined by at least 50% in the Sierra Nevada ecoregion (see Figure 1 from McIntyre et al 2015, see also Dolanc et al 2014, Stephens et al. 2018, Easterday et al. 2018). Broadly, this has led to forest management goals that prioritize retention of large trees, restricting removal of all trees greater than or equal to 30 inches dbh. However, species composition has also shifted toward shade tolerant trees, which in some stands may dominate the growing space. In these types of stands, the targeted removal of some larger shade tolerant trees can provide growing space for the shade intolerant pines, recruiting the large diameter pines of the future. Moreover, trees greater than 30 inches dbh in the dripline of even larger pine trees may pose a fire hazard to the larger trees, and their removal may bolster the potential to maintain the desired larger pines on the landscape. Finally, the ability to create heterogeneous stands with openings is challenging with strict diameter limits. Collectively, this suggests that treatment needs may be more complex than the application of a strict diameter limit allows for yet given the importance of large trees on the landscape, the proposal includes stand-level field verification, documentation and disclosure, and formal public comment opportunity prior to implementing this plan amendment.”
Seriously, though, I don’t think that a 27 inch dbh white fir should really be considered to be a “big tree”. I’ve seen 24 inchers that still have the young bark. Anything over 50 inches is definitely “big”. I was always disappointed when I measured a nasty fir at 30.8 inches dbh. Off Limits.
Big, is of course, relative. As is “old”.
More importantly, it has to be scientifically defined based on its ecological value and scarcity.
Does it? At the project level?
To Sharon: Size and age are only relevant to the extent that they represent some particular value of interest. I hope that would be identified and provided for in the forest plan, so it could be scientifically validated at the project level.
And, of course, I was talking about the Sierra Nevada, where white firs can grow to over 100 inches in diameter. It’s not like the USFS is marking every “big tree” under 30 inches dbh. (Although some do want that.)
One example does not prove “the agency does make that case in each project…”
See my comments on the prior post. And I’d emphasize that they looked at “the importance of large trees on the landscape.” Ecological integrity is to be at the landscape scale, so the dearth of large/old trees at that scale may work against removing them from a site where that otherwise might make sense.
So they make the case in some projects but not other projects? I see a trade-off for large trees, when as Tom Paris says, you would remove a large tree to protect another large tree, in the event of a wildfire, and also to reduce stress on another large tree.
“This seems like the real friction over the logging/fuel-reduction/fire prevention debate. It seems clear that the forest management steps that will actually reduce fire severity and promote forest resilience do not result in any commercial value, eg large diameter timber. ”
I don’t know why people keep saying this.. if you have a stand of large trees, and you want to thin, you will have to take out (some) large trees. We had this discussion in depth around the East Side screens and also Sierra diameter limit discussions.”
Sorry, I should have written “results in less commercial value, sometimes much less”, and not categorically “no commercial value”. That seemed to be part of the criticism of the Grasshopper project post-lawsuit: that by removing the clearcutting and putting restrictions on large diameter trees the project was no longer economical viable: no company was going to bid on it. This is the explanation forwarded by some to explain why the project was, apparently, never put out to bid by the FS since it was approved in Jan 2025. (And this is implicitly the argument made in many, many online comments about the Grasshopper fire criticizing environmentalists for delaying the project.)
As the examples cited in subsequent comments show, many places seem to be wrestling with and finding solutions to this balance of income-producing activities with thinning activities that just cost money. It’s heartening to see some places thinking innovatively about how to make smaller-diameter wood have economic value, which helps fund the whole project.
I agree with much of what you said and how you frame the choices in front of us. It’s worth noting that choice (b) “use a fuels prescription and take out all the trees required” still begs a lot of debate: what are sound scientific fuels prescriptions and just what sort, size, and age trees will be removed. Answers to that seem to be … unsettled, as comments here show. Nonetheless, those are the conversations that need to be had.
“Also, I searched on the project documents and I didn’t find anything about clearcutting”
As far as I could tell reading through the project documents, the original FS proposal include a small area of clear cut, and no restriction on tree size that could be cut in the VDT areas. The proposal post litigation settlement removed those clear cuts and put some sort of upper limit on tree diameter that could be cut. (There are two sets of project maps, one for the original proposal and one for the post-settlement proposal where you can see the clear cuts, which are a very small area.)
Another factor , often ignored, is that the type of fuel reduction the agencies prefer to do is implemented via commercial logging of trees that are NOT hazardous fuels, they are medium-to-large, with thick bark and high canopies, not the low vegetation and ladder fuels that are more likely to spread fire.
Fuel reduction would be far less controversial and easier to implement if the agencies focused on removing small fuels non-commercially followed by prescribed fire, instead of commercial logging (and roads) with all the trade-offs on soil, water, fish & wildlife, carbon, etc. It time to invest in our forests, not exploit them.
Canopy reduction via logging has complex/competing effects on fuels and microclimate that refuse to carefully examine:
(i) Logging removes fire resistant trees with thick bark and high canopies that help maintain a cool, moist microclimate that help maintain fuel moisture;
(ii) Logging opens the stand and makes the forest hotter, drier, and windier all of which exacerbate fire behavior and increase evaporative demand and drought stress on remaining trees;
(iii) Logging moves significant amounts of fine fuels from the canopy (where they are relatively unavailable for combustion by surface fires) to the ground, (where they are more available for combustion by surface fires), and such activity fuels often remain on the ground for extended periods before being treated;
(iv) Logging opens the canopy which makes light, water, and nutrients available to stimulate the growth of future surface and ladder fuels;
(v) A more open stand with more rapid growth of hazardous fuels requires more frequent and more expensive follow-up fuel treatments.
Second, the latter are talking points not observations. They have been carefully examined and found not to be the case in many places.
Or … treatments are such an inexact science, and statistically they have a ridiculously small chance of having been done in a place WHERE LIGHTNING MAY STRIKE, that they are not effective and are a waste of resources, and destructive to ecosystems.
Throw in the human-caused ignitions and that chance becomes quite larger. Fires will continue to burn, even in ‘treated’ areas. We’ve seen heavily-managed areas burn, anyway. We should be focusing on resilience. We’ve lost ‘the war on wildfires’. We do know how to manage for resilience.