Phil Hardy sent the below in as a comment, so I thought I’d post. From my observation, (some) people mischaracterize the motives and views of others. That can happen from both sides.. the change agents can characterize the skeptics as “turf defenders”, while the people who don’t want (this set of) change say that the changers “want to suppress everything” and “are in it to make money from FS contracts” or whatever. Whatever energy we spend decrying others’ motives (other than politicians for whom that is BAU) is energy we could have spent trying to understand their concerns and address them.
Maybe we all don’t disagree about all this as much as we are told by others (whose business model derives from outrage) we do? Maybe we should just talk to each other directly, and especially, listen. Maybe, as Tim said on The Hotshot Wakeup podcast Friday, we could all work together on improving conditions for wildland firefighters.
In that spirit, here’s what Phil has to say:
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I guess I need to clarify myself for everyone here. I’ve waited long enough. And I apologize for the wait.
I am absolutely for managed fire and recognize the value of prescribed fire. However, I think it’s lunacy to conduct those sorts of things between May and October. And we can argue over the exact timing because the weather is different every year.
I don’t think enough people even want to have a discussion of the fact that what we really are talking about is fire in the WUI. That needs full suppression. Federal fires that bleed into private property and state timberlands need full suppression.
Let’s use the Angeles NF as an example. I would describe this essentially as an urban forest. There are probably 10 million people who live around it within 10 or 15 miles maybe 20. I scarcely think there is a purpose or place for managed fire or prescribed fire here. Something’s gonna get on fire there anyhow anyway.
I’m also flabbergasted by continued references to two things: First, “let’s do things how the natives used to do it.” In 1900 90 million people lived in the United States. Now there are 340 million people living in the United States. There’s no possible way we can do things the way the Indians used to do it unless we are talking about doing it in Alaska or in a large enough designated wilderness areas. And let’s forget about all of the health issues that go along with letting something that big burn. Let those burn, fine.
The second thing is people are still constantly bringing up is the 10 AM rule. I don’t know a single policy person who isn’t some kind of crockpot who keeps using this term and believes it. It’s a ridiculous comment and a ridiculous idea that people propagate to raise money for their NGO’s.
I can’t believe it still gets used! I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years and I’ve never had a conversation with anyone about the 10 AM rule other than to say, “that’s ridiculous. No one talks about that anymore.”
Oh! I have a third, “clear cuts”. I haven’t bothered to do enough research here, but I seem to believe that the last clear cut on Federal land occurred in 1971 but I’m sure there’s somebody on here who can enlighten me about that. But online people still talk about it all the time on federal lands. Where are they getting these talking points?
If I wasn’t clear enough, and Steve Ellis did mention this (Parenthetical remark, Steve was my BLM state director in Idaho in 2010) and I like Steve. However, I think too much has changed since he retired.
I have spoken in the last week to 10 current and past federal fire chiefs on all different national forests. All of them say, it has changed completely. They all spoke of former line managers who had almost coequal fire knowledge as the fire chiefs. Experienced fire knowledge, and they were great forest sups or District Rangers. Not anymore, by and large.
My main thesis is, whatever we’re doing is not working well because we just burned down half of Spokane. We’ve lost large parts of two cities in two years. So everything is fine?
I get it, change is hard and scary. But all I think about are my children (and hopefully grandchildren) living in Boise who are breathing absolutely toxic air every summer and have been all their lives. And those toxins are even worse now because of all kinds of things like electric car batteries.
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A few of my own thoughts:
As to Phil’s “clearcut” comment, I attempted to get a definition going in this post in 2025 “Clearcuts, Openings, Definitions and Some Reasons For” and “Let’s Define Clearcut and Reduce Unnecessary Disagreement.” The latter starts with “What if.. we agreed on a definition of clearcutting?” Still, as Matthew Koehler pointed out in his comment, the FS does do some clearcutting still. I don’t know how prevalent it is.. nor the fuels/silvicultural rationale. Perhaps the totals are in some FS database somewhere? This might be a good question for readers to address from their local unit perspective.
And as to the prescribed fire close to town idea, I’ve seen it work in Northern Arizona and Colorado, but the vegetation, fuel characteristics, weather patterns and all that are different. Part of that is probably the NEPA process and public involvement in the decision. Plus prescribed fire tends to be used by local experts which increases trust over time, while WFU based on a team of out-of-towners.. maybe not so much.
Glad to see you are open to managed fire and Rx fire. The science is in, there’s no forest resilience without frequent good fire.
It doesn’t make sense to me to have a blanket limit on Rx fire until October. For example, here in the NW, our wildfire season often ends in early- to mid-September. We have a very short fall window to do Rx fire before it rains/snows too much to actually burn. I know it’s hard to believe after the wildfire season we’ve had this summer, but within the next couple of days our wildfire season will be pretty much over in much of Washington’s forested areas, even on the dry side of the state. One reason is our rains and cool weather come earlier than farther south, and are days get short really fast this far north, so there’s just more nighttime for fires to settle down. The problem for us is that California wildfire season often gets turned up to 11 in September, so we often don’t have the resources available to do much Rx fire.
If clearcutting is the same as even-aged management, which is how I think it is often used, then the USFS definitely still does it. It is the common commercial harvest method in subalpine forest in the inland NW. The trees in these forests are naturally densely packed and of relatively small diameter. The only way to commercially harvest such stands and make money is to do even-aged management, often shelterwood harvest with residuals that is dictated by a diameter limit. Even-aged management in these forests also better mimics natural disturbance processes than it does in frequent fire systems. In the Sierra Nevada in California, the 1993 CASPO guidelines effectively ended even-aged management across the range, but there are those still pushing for its return. If the NW Forest Plan revision goes as folks are looking for it to go, I could see even-aged management returning to the wetter USFS forests in the NW, but not the dry side.
As someone that lives in the Spokane area, I can say for sure that it was not forest management that resulted in the destruction we witnessed this summer. It’s relatively low productivity forest (15-ish inches of annual rain) with a bunchgrass understory. The issue was wind and flashy grass fuels that were weeks ahead of schedule for dryness, similar fuels to what happened near Boulder Colorado a few years ago. Other than a very different housing suburb layout (one where houses are farther apart), the only way I could see to prevent what happened would be to enact and enforce strict defensible space regulations and mow, graze or Rx burn the land adjacent to the area burned. Also note, if this were the situation, prescribed fire and managed fire would likely be possible at a much larger scale due to reduced risk from a hardened community. In general, I think we need to separate our discussions of forest wildfire resilience from those on urban firestorm resistance. We can have a fire resilient forest next to a firestorm-prone community.
A. I think there’s also a species difference. In Colorado lodgepole tends to grow up, get old, get attached by bark beetles and if you keep a few trees they blow down. And ponderosa stands are different, as are spruce.
Yes, clearcutting still occurs. The Bighorn NF is currently clearcutting lodgepole pine. Lodgepole often does not do well with partial cuts as it is more susceptible to windthrow. This is also true for Virginia Pine in the South. Clearcutting is appropriate for these species.
The Forest Service needs to make a significant investment in training for both Rx burning and WFU. The military spends a lot of money on training and so should the Forest Service. When things go wrong with fire, the consequences can be catastrophic. Spend the money up front on training.
That’s what the Chief Fennessey wants to do. My guess is that the FS will adopt the same training program or close.
Dave, I think you need to upgrade your silviculture skills and knowledge on situational variances of LP Pine…🤣. I agree with you on most of your characterization but LP occurs on many different sites across the West. Up high, here in Colorado, the thinning works great when done out of wind acceleration zones. About the only one worse for blowdown here is spruce. However, we have stands that were thinned 40 years ago that are doing real well. We have stands that were regenerated, then pre- commercially thinned that are as wind firm as anything around.
Most of our experience was learned from the Gunnison NF, then transitioned over on this side 50 years or so ago. Because of MPB, most of the stands north of us were wiped out; I doubt we ever reached 5% mortality over here – who knows why that is…. At any rate, I think LP on the landscape is a cantankerous species that needs more, or better understanding on its management!
My experience with lodgepole is limited, really just on the Bighorns long ago. We did some thinning but mostly clearcuts. I did see examples where the thinning did not work out so well with the wind and others that did ok.
A lot of this was at high elevation, 8-9,000 feet. We laid out a big sale in 1983 and I have since been back there and those clearcuts have lodgepole that is only 15-20 feet tall. Pretty slow growing. A lot of the lodgepole that burned in Yellowstone in 88 now looks pretty good! So yes, there is a lot of variation. It’s a cool tree species!
Thanks for letting him (and others) speak for themselves. They show exactly who they are, their lack of understanding and vendetta against the Forest Service. Landscapes are different, weather is different, local staffing is different. Zero can be done when the wind is 40 MPH and the fire is spotting a quarter mile ahead of itself. There is no overwhelming force that can win in those conditions. Crews shouldn’t be in front of it or aircraft over top of it.
A. I don’t understand what you’re saying, besides claiming that people who disagree with you have “a vendetta against the Forest Service”.. The rest of us aren’t enlightened by name-calling (the vendetta vs. fiefdom protection discussion).
Certainly winds and spotting happen all the time. Fire folks have ways to deal with it. Do you believe that they are changing those ways? Or they should disengage?
Well, I did see that the San Bernardino NF clearly stated on their public ‘for sale’ Forest Maps that they never let fires burn. (Of course, it is perfectly OK to let unburned vegetation inside the firelines burn off.)
Interesting, what’s the date on the map?
2002
So the policy doesn’t seem to be related to this Admin.
Clearcuts are called “regeneration openings” now…..