Sharon

From Fire Suppression to Forplan to Carbon Sequestration: The Historical Advance of Grand/White/Hybrid Firs East of the Cascades in Oregon

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https://forestpolicypub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/39073908085_83128c2cde_h.jpg

The above photo is from 2007, by R6 State and Private Forestry of western spruce budworm defoliation. It wasn’t identified to location as far as I could see.

This one is on the Deschutes.  For those interested, there is an extensive historical record of photos about various spruce budworm projects here. If you worked on any of those projects you might find a photo of yourself!

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I think we’re having a great discussion about the East-Side screens and the 21- inch diameter rule. Here I’d like to throw in an Old Person observation from my time on the Ochoco during the 80’s.  It’s an Old Person observation about what seems to have changed and what has not changed in 40 years.  I worked for four forests (the Fremont, Winema, Ochoco and Deschutes), but I’ll focus on the Ochoco.

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Historical aside: The Ochoco Supervisor’s Office at the time was a large open, cubicle puzzle space.  I sat in the silviculture zone, next to the irrepressible Duane Ecker, the forest silviculturist, Don Wood and our boss, the Timber Staff,  Chuck Downen. But thanks to the wonders of the cubicle environment, I often heard conversations of the Law Enforcement Officer (finding that particularly interesting things were said when he lowered his voice.. “the perpetrator…”).  We all had Data Generals (DG’s). Unfortunately, but sometimes entertainingly, our Public Affairs Officer, Joe Meade (who was visually impaired),  had a DG that read his email out loud .. in a tinny.. monotonous.. slow… voice.  Apparently headphones were too technically or financially difficult to procure.

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At the time, people were running Forplan, and somehow we were involved in the tree-growing part.  It could have been John Cissel, our Forplan soothsayer or Bill Anthony, his Deschutes counterpart , who told us “Forplan tells us to cut the ponderosa pine and grow grand fir, because they grow faster and ultimately produce more volume.” Or something like that.  I know there are folks here who know more about what Forplan was supposed to be doing than I do.

So we silviculture folks explained why we thought that that was not a good idea.   White fir/grand fir/ hybrid (WGH) firs aren’t fire resistant.  They have a tendency to get spruce budworm, Doug-fir tussock moth, fir engraver, and a variety of root and other diseases.

So flash forward to today.. now “growing faster” is good idea-wise due to carbon.In this story about a study that Anonymous referred to:

“This is why specifically letting large trees grow larger is so important for climate change because it maintains the carbon stores in the trees and accumulates more carbon out of the atmosphere at a very low cost.”

The study highlights the importance of protecting existing large trees and strengthening the 21-inch rule so that additional carbon is accumulated as 21-30″  trees are allowed to continue to grow to their ecological potential.

As a former silviculture worker, this feels pretty much the same as the Forplan idea of 40 years ago.  Assume- no fires, bugs, diseases, drought (conceivably made worse by climate change) and the firs will do fine by themselves! No openings for establishment of PP or WL necessary.

But silviculturists, forest pathologists and entomologists, and fuels practitioners are dealing with the same biophysical realities-  that trees don’t grow- whether to be cut as in Forplan, or to sequester carbon-  if they’re dead and /or burned. It’s interesting to see that the body of resource professionals’ knowledge  haven’t changed much over time (the interaction of trees, bugs, diseases and fire), while ideas about what practitioners should be doing from Forplan to carbon..seem to come from, and have the imprimatur of, people (however well-meaning) generally from elsewhere; places, apparently where fire, bugs, diseases and drought are not a big thing.

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If you want to see how much people already knew in 1994, there’s an excellent round-up, at least as far as the Blue Mountains go, by  by the Malheur Forest Silviculturist, David C. Powell,  in 1994- 30 years ago now.  Same old..

White fir, the favorite food of spruce budworm, has flourished in the fir stands that have encroached on ponderosa pine sites over the last 80 years. By controlling natural underburns, land managers were inadvertently swapping ponderosa pines and western larches for white firs and Douglas-firs. (p. 5)

Ponderosa pine depends on fire to clear away accumulations of needles and twigs so its seeds can find moist mineral soil, and to kill encroaching firs that prevent seedlings from getting
the unobstructed sunlight they need.

By controlling natural underburns, land managers allowed fire-resistant pines and larches to be replaced with shade-tolerant, late-successional species. Many of the replacement species are susceptible to the effects of western spruce budworm, Douglas-fir tussock moth, Indian paint fungus, Armillaria root disease, and other insects and pathogens. (p. 19)

And there’s an interesting section on Native American burning practices:

Although some of the underburns were started by lightning storms in mid or late summer (Plummer 1912), many others were ignited by native Americans (Cooper 1961, Johnston 1970, Robbins and Wolf 1994). When analyzing early journals from the western U.S., Gruell (1985) found that over 40 percent of the fires were described as being started by native Americans.

Two major factors led to conversion of pine stands with underburning to laddered stands with shade-tolerant species.  One was fire suppression:

Many land managers would agree that wildfire suppression was a policy with good intentions, but it was a policy that failed to consider the ecological implications of a major shift in species composition. White firs and Douglas-firs can get established under ponderosa pines in the absence of underburning, but they may not have enough resiliency to make it over the long run, let alone survive the next drought. This means that many of the mixed-conifer stands that have replaced ponderosa pine are destined to become weak, and weak forests are susceptible to insect and disease outbreaks (Hessburg and others 1994).

By controlling natural underburns, land managers allowed fire-resistant pines and larches to be replaced with shade-tolerant, late-successional species. Many of the replacement species are susceptible to the effects of western spruce budworm, Douglas-fir tussock moth, Indian paint fungus, Armillaria root disease, and other insects and pathogens. (p. 19)

The other reason was the attraction of cutting pine and leaving the GWH firs.  Powell provides some detailed explanations of why that seemed like a good idea at the time (mo clearcutting, no expensive tree planting)(p. 27) . And there were interactions between controlling underburns and reducing tree vigor due to competition, so then they would want to take these stressed pines.

Since old pines often have low vigor and little resistance to insect attack, they were harvested before being attacked and killed by western pine beetle or mountain pine beetle. One reason for low vigor in oldgrowth pine trees was competition from a dense understory, an understory that would not have been present if underburning had been allowed to play its natural role.

In 1994 folks were thinking about climate change:

Reestablishing ponderosa pine and western larch on sites that are suitable for their survival and growth, and a thinning or prescribed fire program to keep those stands open and vigorous, would probably do much to address global warming concerns. Using a plan like that one would not only restore much of the pine and larch that was removed by partial cutting (see fig. 21), but it could also create healthy forests with an increased resistance to a variety of insects and pathogens.

And they were also thinking about (healthy=preEuro times) (p. 34)

Perhaps an appropriate yardstick of ecosystem health is natural variation: are the changes caused by budworm consistent with the historical range of variation for similar ecosystems and vegetation conditions? For the mixed conifer forests of the southern Blue Mountains, the answer is probably “no.” It seems that 80 years of fire suppression and 50 years of selective harvesting have resulted in vegetation conditions that differ significantly from those of presettlement times (Table 3).

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If some think that the FS wants to cut larger GWH fir unnecessarily, why would they want to do that?

Foster (1907) White fir, though occasionally used for fuel when no better species are available, makes poor fuel wood, while for saw timber it is all but valueless owing to the fact that nearly all mature trees are badly rotted by a prevalent polyporus, and the wood season-checks badly. (p.30)

Forest Service employees have sometimes been called p— firs due to the “badly rotted” characteristics of white fir.

Choosing a Fire Future: Lessons from Southwest Colorado

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Excellent story from the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network. While some of us think that NEPA via plan amendments would be good, the work that the San Juan is doing without a plan amendment is also good.

 Assessing local fire danger, weather data, and utilizing Risk Management Assistance (RMA) analytical tools, the Forest developed a plan to bring the fire out to the prescribed fire unit/POD boundary. The local team conducted a structured risk-based conversation using the Incident Strategic Alignment Process (ISAP) framework, where agency administrators and local stakeholders collaboratively evaluated critical values at risk, developed strategic actions, documented risks to responders, and determined the probability of success.

The story is worth reading in its entirety, I just excerpted the lessons learned below.

Key Lessons Learned

Identify windows of opportunity: Fuel and weather conditions and resource availability are dynamic. Thinking outside the box can help realize opportunities to manage wildfire differently. Additionally, this year’s large incident can be used as the next fire’s best holding feature – as demonstrated during Trail Springs. Incorporating new disturbances into pre-response planning can help maximize their potential as holding features.

Provide clear leader’s intent: Without clear intent from agency administrators, firefighters and IMTs default to their experience and often suppress fires at the smallest possible size and earliest possible opportunity. Clear intent is required to consistently execute an alternative approach, and ensure we leverage our highly skilled fire workforce in pursuit of strategies that will more effectively reduce long-term ecosystem, community and firefighter risk.

Invest in stakeholder engagement: Working with partners and local collaboratives well before a fire starts is imperative to fostering a sense of shared responsibility. Ongoing communication and dialogue with stakeholders before, during, and after fires is critical to a successful, long-term fire management strategy. These efforts build social capital to better support complex decisions both now and in the future.

Leverage analytics and facilitate risk-based dialogues: Using analytics to facilitate strategic, risk-informed, and transparent dialogues can improve alignment between incident leadership, land managers and firefighters on the ground, resulting in higher quality decisions and increased trust.

Be prepared: Facilitating and participating in collaborative pre-season strategic planning efforts, such as Potential Operational Delineations (PODs), can help prepare a landscape to manage fires more proactively by creating a common operating picture and institutionalizing local fire knowledge. Additionally, actively preparing for long-duration events, anticipating, and mitigating late-season workforce fatigue, and building local fire management programs with the needed skill sets to manage long-duration fires can help develop local capacity and evolve the fire management paradigm.

Communicate the “why”: Good decisions may come with considerable institutional and personal risk, but with thoughtful, inclusive, and transparent processes risks can be considered more holistically. Understanding the “why” behind decisions provides critical context and can help create alignment between land managers, incident teams, firefighters, and the local community.

Two Sides to Every Story: What’s the Other Side? Housing for Employees at Seeley Lake

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Thanks to Nick Smith, I ran across this from Scott Snelson in the Hungry Horse News. I know there are many Region 1 retirees out there, so would appreciate any info you would be willing to share, either in the comments or by contacting me directly via email.. “sharon at forespolicypub.com”.
In my experience, there are always reasons for peoples’ actions.

The lack of vision from the U.S. Forest Service Regional Supervisor, as well as her staff, helped sink Pyramid Lumber, with it taking the livelihoods of over 100 Montanans along with rich opportunities to help the climate and reduce fire fuel hazard risk. Solid and innovative solutions to significantly help the housing issues in Seeley Lake and other communities have been presented to Regional Leaders for years without any meaningful action.

A group of U.S. Forest Service District Rangers from the Northern Region began meeting in 2021 to work on solutions to the housing crisis faced by existing and future USFS employees. It was painfully apparent to the rangers that our ability to attract and retain high quality employees and get the public’s work done was unreachable unless we found solutions to the high cost of housing.

At the same time, it was clear to the rangers that unless there was an expanded market for small diameter wood, our ability to treat meaningful acres of overstocked stands to reduce wildfire risk was also unreachable.

The nexus of these challenges also provided incredible opportunity for the communities in the Seeley/Swan Valley and the Flathead. An emerging small diameter cross-laminated timber (SDCLT) industry that utilizes the very type of wood we need to remove from our stands for fire hazard reduction, could have been further catalyzed by the purchase of “temporary” panelized houses. These units could be rapidly deployed on USFS administrative sites to give Forest employees and others an opportunity to transition into tight local housing markets. Should the housing crisis wane, the SDCLT units are designed to be easily dismantled and easily moved to other locations. This type of construction is wood (carbon) intensive and stores the carbon for the life of the panels (designed to last decades longer than traditional frame construction).

The District Ranger at Seeley Lake had identified approximately 20 acres of USFS lands that could have been rapidly developed for USFS and other community housing to meet the housing crisis. These concepts were presented to the Regional Forester and her team years ago and were met with the standard chorus of excuses why the status quo needed to be maintained.

Providing employee housing at administrative sites is far from novel. Until the 1980s, it was common for the USFS.

In my nine years as a USFS line officer in Region 1, I haven’t seen any indication there is meaningful leadership capacity in the USFS Regional Office to face the multiple crises we are encountering; climate, fire hazard, housing, and employee recruitment and retention. The guardians of the status quo have circled the wagons and armed themselves mightily against change and innovation.

Are Forest Products on the Way Out in Montana? And How Does the Wood Innovations Program Intersect With Struggling Producers?

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Roseburg Forest Products’ Missoula particleboard plant will close on May 22, the company announced Wednesday, March 20, 2024. Credit: Credit: Roseburg Forest Products

Before we dig into the timber details I talked about last week, and some examples of what I like to call “Post Timber War Convergence” (like my agreeing with Andy Kerr on something), I’d like take a look at the situation from the 30,000 foot level (as my former boss, Richard Stem, would say).

There have been many stories in the past few weeks about mills closing in Montana. Here’s an excellent one, thanks to a TSW reader.

Within the span of six days, both Pyramid Mountain Lumber in Seeley Lake and Roseburg Forest Products’ Missoula particleboard plant had announced they were shutting down permanently and eliminating a combined 250 jobs. The closures mark the final knockout punch locally to an industry that helped build Missoula and put food on tables here for over 150 years.

To put it another way: Sawmills were once as ubiquitous in Missoula as marijuana dispensaries are now.

There are smaller businesses in the area that still make wood products, there are still lumber mills operating in Montana, logging will still continue in the region and Pyramid Mountain Lumber’s facility could still be purchased and operated again in the future. But to many industry watchers, last week’s news was the final nail in the wooden coffin of the sector that’s paid the wages of tens of thousands of workers over the last century and a half.
“I mean, it’s huge, what’s happened to the wood products industry in Montana in the last five years,” said Zach Bashoor, the chair of the Missoula Area Chamber of Commerce, when asked how big of a deal last week’s news was. “Pyramid was the last sawmill in Missoula County and Roseburg was the last wood products manufacturing facility here.”
Bashoor has actually worked for both Roseburg and Pyramid in the past.

“When a mill closes there’s a whole contractor base built around those mills that’s going to be affected, too,” he explained. “There’s a contractor out of Seeley that told me he thinks he’s going to hang up his hat.”

By contractors, Bashoor is referring to loggers who have a contract to sell logs to Pyramid. Oftentimes, they’re doing forest thinning for wildfire risk management or forest ecology restoration projects that require thinning.  “They make a living out of selling timber to the mill, that’s how the system was built,” he said. “The demand of land management has changed to much more of a restoration aspect.” Bashoor owns a company called Montana Forest Consultants that services landowners and agencies doing forest management work.
“Without those (loggers), there’s no way to get our work done,” he said. “If they’re not around we can’t do things like watershed restoration projects or thinning small trees for hazardous fuels
reduction.”

In places in the West, say with Blue Mountains Forest Partners, or the Yosemite Stanislaus Solutions folks, sawmills and their downstream ilk are thought to be useful partners. In my own neck of the woods, an entirely private fuelbreak project is being supported by landowner donations, state grants and .. selling logs.

Without forest products industry around, we can expect fewer fuel projects to be done on federal land, they will cost more to the taxpayer, and less private mitigation is likely to be done. That’s just the cost element. What else will be done with the material removed? Will it be burned in piles, giving off smoke and carbon? And perhaps the old “fuel treatments and creating openings for species diversity are just an excuse for logging” argument will be at rest (as it currently is in places without mills). How would that change the litigation environment?

Meanwhile, the Congress/USDA/Biden Admin (wherever bucks come from) is giving out funding to help:

Today, the Biden-Harris Administration announced the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service is making nearly $50 million in grant funding available for proposals that support crucial links between resilient, healthy forests, strong rural economies and jobs in the forestry sector. Made possible by President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, a key pillar of Bidenomics, this funding will spark innovation, create new markets for wood products and renewable wood energy, expand processing capacity, and help tackle the climate crisis.

“A strong forest products economy contributes to healthier forests, vibrant communities and jobs in rural areas,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “Thanks to President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, we are investing in rural economies by growing markets for forest products through sustainable forest management while reducing wildfire risk, fighting climate change, and accelerating economic development.”

This announcement is part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda to generate economic opportunity and build a clean energy economy nationwide. The grants are made possible by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate investment in history and a core pillar of Bidenomics, as well as President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, an historic investment to rebuild America’s aging infrastructure.

The above paragraph may take the prize for number of mentions of President Biden per word.

The open funding opportunity comes through the Forest Service’s three key grant programs to support the forest products economy: Wood Innovations Grant, Community Wood Grant, and Wood Products Infrastructure Assistance Grant Programs. The agency is seeking proposals that support innovative uses of wood in the construction of low carbon buildings, as a renewable energy source, and in manufacturing and processing products. These programs also provide direct support to expand and retrofit wood energy systems and wood products manufacturing facilities nationwide.

(Note that 2023 funded proposals are listed here.

Let’s compare Colorado, Montana, and Oregon.

I just looked at these three states and noticed grants to the Endowment and the Gates Family Foundation in Colorado.  It seems like the USG is giving grants to.. traditionally grant-making groups. I also wonder if there is a bias toward “starting new things” vs. “helping keep existing things going” perhaps something like a “forest products facility rescue” as in reality TV.

Maybe our economist friends can help me here, if there isn’t a way for the USG to help keep sawmills open rather than letting them close and starting over with something new in the future. I think of nurseries.. we wanted them, we got really good at them (and reforestation), then we assumed natural regen would take care of everything, so we lost the capacity and the know-how and basically have to start over, now that the people have retired and the infrastructure has been sold off. Resilience, it seems to me, requires some redundancy and keeping skills and some infrastructure on board. Though that’s not actually redundancy in the engineering sense. Maybe it’s more like making sure that useful skills. knowledge and workforce are maintained at some level.

The ‘Mother Tree’ idea is everywhere — but how much of it is real? And Variable Tree Retention as a Current Practice, But Maybe Not in BC

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After experimenting with different approaches to retention, the Plum Creek Timber Company found aggregated retention, as seen here on the Cougar Ramp Unit, was an effective approach to integrating environmental and timber management objectives. This cutting opened the senior author’s mind to the potential of aggregated retention, which today is generally viewed as the most important approach for conserving a broad array of biota (according to Franklin and Donato (2020)

It’s always fun to look at another scientific controversy around trees and forests.  TSW had posts on various facets of this issue, here, here and here. Thanks to Nature for making this article open source!

A brief recap:

Their concerns lay predominantly with a depiction of the forest put forward by Suzanne Simard, a forest ecologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, in her popular work. Her book Finding the Mother Tree, for example, was published in 2021 and swiftly became a bestseller. In it she drew on decades of her own and others’ research to portray forests as cooperating communities. She said that trees help each other out by dispatching resources and warning signals through fungal networks in the soil — and that more mature individuals, which she calls mother trees, sometimes prioritize related trees over others.

The idea has enchanted the public, appearing in bestselling books, films and television series. It has inspired environmental campaigners, ecology students and researchers in fields including philosophy, urban planning and electronic music. Simard’s ideas have also led to recommendations on forest management in North America.

What’s the role of scientists in presenting their and others’ work?

Then, a third academic, mycorrhizal ecologist Justine Karst, took the lead. She thought speaking out about the lack of evidence for the wood wide web had become an ethical obligation: “Our job as scientists is to present the truth, as close as we can get to it”.

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Simard says of her critics.. “They’re reductionist scientists,” she says when asked about criticism of her work. “They’ve missed the forest for the trees.” She is concerned that the debate over the details of the theory diminishes her larger goal of forest protection and renewal. “The criticisms are a distraction, to be honest, from what’s happening in our ecosystems.”

It seems to me that there are robust and fun scientific discussions to be had.  As depicted by this journalist (Simard might not have been quoted accurately), Simard thinks having discussions about science distracts us from what seems like advocacy. 

Roger Pielke Jr. has written (much, here’s one example) about what he calls “stealth issue advocacy” in the scientific community.  This doesn’t seem stealthy at all. It seems like sometimes you have to pick a lane between science and advocacy; and I’d prefer if scientists picked science.
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There’s a description of the differing scientific views. There are technical differences, and even apparently emphasis or focus differences.

Johnson’s view is that it “makes complete sense” that there are CMNs linking multiple forest trees and that substances might travel from one to another through them. Crucially, he says, this is not due to the trees supporting one another. A simple explanation, compatible with evolutionary theory, is that the fungi are acting to protect the trees that are their source of energy. It is beneficial for fungi to activate a tree’s defence signals, or to top up food for temporarily ailing trees. Pickles, who spent six years working with Simard before moving to the University of Reading, UK, says Simard’s ideas are not incompatible with competition, but give more weight to well-known phenomena in ecology, such as mutualism, in which organisms cooperate for mutual benefit. “It’s not altruism. It’s not some outrageous idea,” he says. “She certainly focuses more on facilitation and mutualism than is traditional in these fields, and that’s probably why there’s a lot of pushback.”

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Simard maintains that her critics attack her in the academic literature for imagery she has used only in public communication: “I talked about the mother tree as a way of communicating the science and then these other people say it’s a scientific hypothesis. They misuse my words.”

She argues that changing our understanding of how forests work from ‘winner takes all’ to ‘collaborative, integrated network system’ is essential for fixing the rampant destruction of old-growth forest, especially in British Columbia, where her research has focused. Indigenous cultures that have a more sustainable relationship with forests have mother and father trees, she says — “but the European male society hates the mother tree … somebody needs to write a paper on that”. “I’m putting forward a paradigm shift. And the critics are saying ‘we don’t want a paradigm shift, we’re fine, just the way we are’. We’re not fine.”

But does a “network system” “Indigenous culture-based” worldview lead us anywhere different in practice than the “ecological forestry” of the lower 48? Can the same kinds of practices be invoked, or even carried out, without a what we might call a “myco-centric” worldview? And if everyone used VRH, what would the scientific controversy be about.. would it be more theoretical (how important is mutualism vs. competition generally?) or more specific (more mycological experiments in the field?).

But what about variable retention harvesting as espoused by Jerry Franklin? In this open-source paper by Franklin and Donato (2020) (from the abstract):

Variable retention harvesting evolved in the Douglas-fir region of the Pacific Northwest gradually in response to increasing dissatisfaction with the ecological consequences of clear-cutting, from the standpoint of wildlife habitat and other important forest functions. It is a harvesting technique that can provide for retention (continuity) of such structures as large and old live trees, snags, and logs. Variable retention is based on the natural model of the biological legacies that are typically left behind following natural disturbances, such as wildfire, wind, and flood

This approach actually sounds more holistic (plants, animals, viruses) than one solely focused on CMNs, while providing opportunities for CMNs. Franklin seems to be in the camp of aggregated variable retention rather than dispersed. Conceivably the Mother Tree approach would be dispersed, which might be good for CMNs and possibly not so good for other ecosystem values.

According to Franklin and Donato’s historical narrative, aggregated retention was seen to be effective at conserving a broad array of biota around 1987 with experiments by the Plum Creek Timber Company. Perhaps these ideas did not migrate north to BC? But later in the history there is mention of the Clayoquot Sound Science Panel.

. This was part of a governmental response to major social disorders over the logging of old-growth forests in this region led by Native Americans (known in Canada as First Nations) and participated in by other Canadian citizens. The science panel conducted its activities and completed its report over the next year (Scientific Panel for Sustainable Forest Practices in Clayoquot Sound 1994). The Clayoquot Sound Science Panel recommended adoption of the “variable-retention silvicultural system” for all timber harvesting on Crown Lands in the region. The panel actually created the term “variable retention” to reflect the reality that the amount and other details of retention should vary depending upon management objectives and the nature of the stand being harvested. The panel recommended that harvests should “retain a minimum of 15% of the original stand on all cutting units … [excepting] very small cutting units” and that the retention should “retain a representative cross-section of species and structures of the original stand.” In areas with very high values for resources other than timber (such as wildlife habitat, slope stability), the panel recommended retention levels of at least 70%. Hence, the Clayoquot Sound Science Panel contributed significantly to the concept as well as the name “variable retention.” The panel’s recommendations also helped set the stage for MacMillan-Bloedel Corporation’s decision to replace clear-cutting with variable retention a few years later (Beese et al. 2019).

Anyway, this post started out by being about mycological networks and the scientific controversies therein, and that article is certainly interesting. But I also thought the Franklin/Donato paper, being historical in perspective, also deserves a look by those among us involved during those time periods. And am I the only person who remembers “big messy clearcuts”? Was that the same as “variable retention” or different?

Hidden stories of fire: tree rings reveal fire histories of Pacific Northwest rainforests: FS Webinar April 25

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Historical fire regimes and the 2020 Labor Day fires on the west side of Oregon and Washington with locations of large (>10,000 ha) and small fires (<10,000 ha), b) Reburns following the 1902 Yacolt Fire in 1902 in the western Washington Cascades,

Historical fire regimes and the 2020 Labor Day fires on the west side of Oregon and Washington with locations of large (>10,000 ha) and small fires (<10,000 ha), b) Reburns following the 1902 Yacolt Fire in 1902 in the western Washington Cascades, c) Reburns following the 1933 Tillamook Fire in the Oregon Coast Range.

2020 fire perimeters and mapped extent of “stand-replacing fire” in 1902 and perimeters of known large westside fires.

2020 fire perimeters and mapped extent of “stand-replacing fire” in 1902 and perimeters of known large westside fires.

I know many folks are interested in this topic…here’s the link.  We might have talked about these studies before. Thanks to Nick Smith !

Hidden stories of fire: tree rings reveal fire histories of Pacific Northwest rainforests

Webinar Date
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Andrew Merschel and colleagues at the Pacific Northwest Research Station and Oregon State University have constructed dozens of new fire histories in the western Cascades of Oregon and Washington. These histories refine our understanding of historical fire regimes in Pacific Northwest rainforests. For the first time, this research pairs direct evidence of historical fires with precisely dated tree establishment data. The novel fire and forest development histories reveal tremendous diversity in the tempo of historical fires and their influence on forest development and conditions.

Contrary to conventional theory, many old trees and forests in the Pacific Northwest were shaped by recurrent low- to moderate-severity fires. Across these landscapes, variation in the number of fires, their timing, and their effects increased diversity in forest successional conditions (e.g., ages) and diversity in tree structure and species composition. Many of the remarkable and beloved features of old forests in the Pacific Northwest including old trees with enormous and complex crowns, multi-layered canopies, and a diverse mixture of tree species developed with fire, not without fire.

In some study locations, exceptionally high fire frequency prior to European colonization is indicative of Indigenous fire stewardship practiced for millennia by Indigenous cultures. This highlights the critical role that Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest had in stewarding and shaping the old trees and forests that contemporary forest management is aiming to restore and conserve. Merschel’s innovative research is sparking a shift in how we think about fires in the Pacific Northwest. Tune in to this webinar to learn some surprising things that we are learning about historical fire regimes and forest dynamics, and how this information might inform restoration of old-growth forests, fire mitigation, and adaptation to a warmer and drier climate.

Does Anyone Have the Rest of the Story? Navajo Nation Lawsuit Over Forestry Management Program

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Hopefully someone out there has more information on this one from Law 360. I can’t access it.

Law360 (March 27, 2024, 7:09 PM EDT) — The Navajo Nation claims the U.S. Department of the Interior unlawfully withheld more than a million dollars in funding for its contracted forestry management program, telling a D.C. federal judge the department should be forced to provide the money and accept the funding ..

That’s all we get.

If we look at the past, we have this..from Holland and Knight in 2020:

Native American Law Partner Philip Baker-Shenk is representing the Navajo Nation in a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) claiming the department is illegally holding back money for the tribe’s forestry program that the government owes under a self-determination contract. In its complaint, the Navajo Nation said that the DOI’s Bureau of Indian Affairs violated the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act by failing to deliver over $700,000 under a funding agreement for the tribe’s forestry management program, even though a representative for DOI Secretary David Bernhardt had recommended that the tribe’s proposal be approved.

Now if the DOI Sec at the time recommended it.. and the government isn’t sending it.. there’s an interesting story of some kind out there.  Does anyone have access or further info? If so, please share in the comments.

Forest Management: The Words Matter- Guest Post by Sarah Hyden

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Graphic: Jonathan Glass and Sarah Hyden

Until reasonably accurate and ecologically appropriate language is used by the Forest Service and their collaborators to describe their forest management strategies and activities, fundamental ecological issues will not be well understood, and the necessary paradigm shift to protect our forests and communities will not occur.

A range of misleading language and terms, picked up by many including the media, create confusion and miscommunication. For example, the term “forest restoration,” when used by the agency, often means aggressive cutting and too-frequent burning of large tracts of forest, sometimes removing as much as 90% of standing trees and most of the natural forest understory. Generally conservation organizations and members of the public do not consider such activities, with the resulting damage to soils and waterways, to be ecological restoration. Instead they consider restoration to be strategically improving the overall structure and function of forest ecosystems and processes while causing minimal impacts. Strategies to achieve this include replanting riparian areas, protecting soil microbiomes, promoting beaver habitation, fencing out cows, and decommissioning excessive forest roads. The goal is to create conditions that hold moisture in forest ecosystems, which makes landscapes naturally more fire resistant and bring them into a state of greater ecological integrity.

“Restoration” has become a euphemism the Forest Service uses, borrowed from the language of conservation, that makes what the agency actually does to our forests more palatable. Other misleading agency forest management terms are “thinning” (removing most of the vegetation from a forest is too heavy-handed to be considered thinning), “fuels treatments” (trees and understory are so much more than fuels), “forest health” (there are no clear parameters for forest health), and forest “resiliency.”

“Resiliency” means the capacity of an ecosystem to return to its previous condition after impacts, such as fire. Forests that have been impacted by having had large amounts of vegetation removed due to aggressive cutting and continued too-frequent prescribed fire do not tend to return to their previous condition, and perpetually remain in a degraded state. Untreated or very lightly-treated forests that are allowed to regenerate after a fire may return to their previous condition. So which is resiliency?

The Forest Service concludes analysis of the vast majority of its vegetation cutting and burning projects with a “Finding of No Significant Impact.” Such findings are based on criteria of significance although the findings are often challenged, but the actual words imply that the impacts are relatively minor and not substantive enough to be particularly concerned about – even though we can often plainly see otherwise. A Finding of No Significant Impact is routinely applied to highly damaging projects that leave forests ecologically broken for decades to come. The impacts of such projects cannot be reasonably called “not significant.”

Interested parties trying to obtain information about Forest Service landscape management often must rely on FOIA, or the Freedom of Information Act. However, substantive FOIA requests can now literally take years. When the requests are finally fulfilled, it’s often too late to be useful. To call this “Freedom of Information” from the Forest Service is yet another misnomer. It might be more accurately called the “Nearly Impossible to Obtain Information Act” at this point.

In 2022, three wildfires were ignited by the Forest Service in the Santa Fe National Forest during implementation of prescribed burns, which escaped and burned a total of 387,000 acres. There have been many articles and op-eds written locally and nationally about these fires that point to them as examples of why we need even more thinning and burning of our forests to moderate the effects of wildfire, without mentioning the fact that the fires were actually caused by escaped prescribed burns — or that fact was included, but as more or less a footnote. The Cerro Grande Fire, which was ignited in 2000 due to an escaped prescribed burn (by the US Park Service that time) has also been used as such an example. To do so, without acknowledging the importance of agency prescribed burns having precipitated these same wildfires, amounts to a kind of circular reasoning that suggests we need even more of what caused much of the wildfire we are trying to prevent  – albeit with some procedural changes and further safety measures. It’s a misuse of both language and logic, and clouds the underlying issues.

Articles and op-eds concerning the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire often make statements such as “the Forest Service accidentally triggered New Mexico’s largest wildfire.” This is not entirely false, as the fire was not started on purpose. But what is much more accurate to write is that the Forest Service recklessly or negligently ignited New Mexico’s largest wildfire. The agency had to know it was a substantial risk to ignite the Las Dispensas prescribed burn, which precipitated the Hermits Peak Fire, during a particularly intense high wind pattern, with red flag warnings nearby. The agency had to be clear that if the fire did escape, it would likely spread fast and be very difficult to extinguish until the monsoons came months later. Locals were warning those responsible for the burn not to light up a burn at that time, because it was obvious to them that it would be very dangerous. The Forest Service did not heed their warnings. The Chief’s review of the Hermits Peak Fire indicates that the Forest Service was feeling pressured to catch up on implementing prescribed burns, because they have committed to greatly increasing cutting and burning treatments in our forests, even though safer burn windows are decreasing due to the warming and drying climate.

Additionally, Forest Service personnel knew fire was spreading from the Calf Canyon burn piles 10 days before the Calf Canyon Fire officially broke out during a high wind event. They made efforts to contain the spreading pile burns. They also carried out aerial surveillance over the pile burn area during those days. It was predictable that in early April, the winds could rapidly spread any escaping fire. That the agency did not make a full out effort to address every pile, considering that they knew some of them had been smoldering and that high winds were coming, has at least the appearance of recklessness and/or negligence. Almost two years later, no analysis of this fire has been released by the Forest Service. To use the word “accidentally” in regards to the ignition of this destructive wildfire, which burned entire communities, does not provide any realistic understanding of what likely occurred. A realistic understanding could be a basis for making sure such a catastrophe never happens again.

During the weeks after the Calf Canyon Fire began, the Forest Service identified the cause of the fire as “under investigation,” even though they had been surveilling and attempting to contain the escaping pile burns from the beginning of the incident. Given this, “under investigation” cannot be construed as a reasonably accurate description of what the Forest Service knew about the cause of the Calf Canyon Fire. They surely knew the cause from the very beginning with an extremely high degree of probability. It took several weeks for the Forest Service to finally announce that the Calf Canyon Fire was also precipitated by their own actions. This lack of transparency created even more distrust and anger in an already traumatized community.

In a recent article about the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, the Forest Service was quoted as stating “Record-setting blazes have become common in the West, where risks have reached crisis proportions.” This statement is somewhat true, and yet highly misleading at the same time. It would be substantially more accurate to at least mention that much of the total “wildfire” burning in our forests is intentionally ignited by the agency.

In August of last year, I wrote an article titled “Forest Service Wildfire Management Policy Run Amok.” In it, I described three New Mexico wildfires in just over a year that were greatly expanded due to intentional ignitions by the US Forest Service. I provided evidence, based on thermal hot spot maps, that during the over 325,000 acre Black Fire, New Mexico’s second largest wildfire, up to half of the fire was likely intentionally ignited by the Forest Service.

Since that time, I met with some local Forest Service leadership along with other conservation organization representatives, and a Forest Service fire specialist confirmed that the agency did intentionally ignite much of the Black Fire, from approximately 10 miles to the south and 6 miles to the northwest of the main fire.

Of course, I asked why the Forest Service expanded and ignited the fire to this extent, burning most of the Aldo Leopold Wilderness, and with substantial collateral damage. We were told it was done for “resource management objectives.” That means the fire expansion was essentially a huge Forest Service intentional burn, similar to a prescribed burn, but with no prescription or advanced planning and/or NEPA  (National Environmental Policy Act) analysis. Yet the Forest Service has continued to call this a “wildfire.” with no mention of the role they played in the expansion of the fire. That is a misleading use of the word “wildfire,” since much of the fire was deliberately ignited by the agency. This perpetuates a cycle of even more cutting and burning, since the Forest Service is trying to moderate the effects of the seemingly increased amounts of wildfire.

So what actually is the wildfire “crisis” that the Forest Service is talking about? I believe it’s possible that overall, the Forest Service ignites or expands wildfires to an extent approaching a third to a half of what is counted as wildfire acres burned. No one should simply accept the Forest Service’s use of the term “wildfire crisis” when the agency is expanding and igniting such a major proportion of the fire on our landscapes. Such wildfire expansions have become policy — it’s referred to as applied wildfire. If we are experiencing a wildfire crisis, then it’s a crisis that can be quickly mitigated by the Forest Service simply refraining from igniting so much unplanned wildfire in our forests.

Fires of all intensities are natural and beneficial to fire-adapted forested landscapes. An open and honest process that defines clear parameters for managing wildfire is required in order to safely and effectively allow moderate amounts of naturally-ignited wildfire to burn in our forests. A revised wildfire management policy must be created through a transparent NEPA process. This means using language that is not loaded with unproven and controversial assumptions or agendas. Otherwise, what has happened to the residents so severely impacted by the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, and to our forests, many of which have become over-cut and over-burned, will happen again and again. We should not accept the agency’s statements about a wildfire crisis uncritically.

As long as the media, conservation organizations, and the public continue to accept euphemisms and double-speak to describe forest management strategies and activities, we will not collectively have the understanding to resolve the underlying issues. The issues must be publicly acknowledged with clear and direct language, even though there will always be substantial differences of opinion. The Forest Service and their collaborators should be thoroughly questioned on their use of misleading language. Somehow, the Forest Service and their collaborators, along with conservation organizations, conservation scientists, and the public, will have to come together with a mutual ecological language and understanding. Then, we can design ecologically beneficial projects that allow our forests to reset in a warming climate.

 

Graphic composite photos:
Top left – Santa Fe watershed, thinned in the early 1990’s and burned twice. Photo: Fred King.
Top right – Prescribed burn smoke over the Santa Fe ski basin. Photo: Satya Kirsch.
Bottom left – A USFWS firefighter watches a prescribed fire. Retweeted by Santa Fe National Forest. Photo by USFWS.
Bottom right – La Cueva Fuel Break, thinned in 2017 and burned once. Photo: Lyra Barron.

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Sarah Hyden is the co-founder and director of The Forest Advocate. The Forest Advocate is a not-for-profit organization that advocates for forests and publishes news and resources for forest protection, with a focus on the Santa Fe National Forest.

Is it A Time for Peace Yet? Chief Thomas Quotes our Old Friend Kohelet

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PERC’s photo

Awhile back I attended a Western Governors conference, and Lesli Allison of Western Landowners Alliance asked the question “what if we think of ranchers as partners, rather than antagonists”? Could we actually make more progress toward conservation?”

I thought of her question when I recently read about PERC ‘s Brucellosis Compensation Fund.

PERC’s collaboration with—and listening to—area ranchers produced an innovative means to help them bear the burden of brucellosis risk. If successful, the fund will help lay the groundwork to address similar challenges throughout the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and beyond.

Yes, I realize that PERC advocates free-market solutions, but if they work, at no cost to the taxpayer, what’s not to like?  They listened and respected the ranchers.  They found a way to resolve a conflict and improve conservation.

I think free-range “enemyism” can keep us from solutions, and needlessly subject groups to a position of “forever enemy-hood.”  And we all know who the bad guys are… the forest products industry, ranchers, miners,  oil and gas folks.. and OHV people.  “Enemyism” is particularly annoying (in my view), when it co-occurs with moralizing.   For forest products, oil and gas, and mining, it seems to me that there is a certain element of hypocrisy- some people use these things, and rich people use a lot of them.  For me, as a person with a Judaeo-Christian background, it’s bit like God saying in Deuteronomy  “it’s OK to eat camels but only if the Canaanites prepare them.”

Awhile back I posted this about an interview with Michael Webber, Prof at UT, who thinks we need an “all hands on deck” approach to decarbonization.

Is there a way to work with them, rather than against them, to promote a low-carbon future?

Unquestionably, many oil and gas companies have been bad actors. At best, the petroleum industry has ignored the problem while making a profit off the products that worsened the situation. At worst, it actively worked to delay action by funding misinformation campaigns or lobbying to delay policy action.

But blaming the industry leaves out our own culpability for our consumptive, impactful lifestyles. Oil consumption is as much about demand as supply.

Rather than finding someone to blame, let’s look for who can help.

Meanwhile, around the National Forests, collaborative groups are working together across different interests. But is there anyone whose job it is to find common ground at the national or regional level?  Bless their hearts, it seems that politicians are generally more interested in rewarding their friends and punishing their enemies than seeking long-term peace and expediting things everyone agrees on.  In fact, it could be in their parochial interests to prolong and intensify divisions.  At least some think that it is in their interests. So yes, that’s a difficulty under our current system.  What would it take to change this dynamic?

I’d like to go back to this 2001 interview of Chief Jack Ward Thomas (128 pages, lots of interesting history, recommended).

HKS: You’ve introduced a subject that I’d like you to talk a little bit about. I hadn’t heard the term “conflict industry”—eco-warriors and other things. You’ve been critical of the environmentalists. You have said that they have won the war and now they’re wandering the battlefield bayoneting the wounded.  They’re not helping anything. They’re only opposing. Do you think it’s because these guys are making three hundred thousand dollars a year, that that’s part of why they are not doing something?

JWT: Let’s not go too far with that. For everybody in the environmental industry that’s making several hundred thousand dollars a year there are probably some number of hundreds working for minimum wage, if that, working for what they think is right. But it matters not what the reason is, people are dedicated to the fight for the environment. There is a time to fight. There is a time for all things under the sun. There is a time to make peace. I think the general environmental war related to the Forest Service is over. In reality, industry needs to abandon sponsoring “ghost dances” to bring back the buffalo—i.e., the good old days. Those days aren’t coming back. It is time for the environmentalists to ease up. They are not going to finish off those who extract natural resources. Now we’ve come to where we stand today. And it is time to ask, “What are some of the things that we could agree upon?” Certainly
an appropriate, well-maintained road system should be one, and there may be others. If one performed an analysis of public opinion related to the management of the national forests considering protection and extraction of resources, you would be looking at a standard U-shaped curve. You might surmise that there was no room for agreement there, but I suspect if you conducted a public opinion poll you would find that the results yield a curve that resembles a bell. This leads me to the conclusion that in a democracy decisions are made by the majority of the minority that cares about the issue. Those that care enough about national forests to participate in planning efforts seem to be split in their opinions. I don’t know how we get them to middle ground, but the general public is much more inclined to accept some middle ground.

HKS: Did you ever discuss this directly, one to one, informally over a cup of coffee with the head of one of these organizations? Why don’t you guys help us?

JWT: Yes I tried that, and most of those from the “industry” believed me to be prone to accept the environmentalists’ view, and most of the environmentalists believed me to favor the industry position. So I guess I did not do so well as a moderator and a broker for the “middle ground.” I think the American people are wearing out with this unrelenting battle, and sooner or later they will insist on some middle ground approach to management. There are management actions by the Forest Service upon which both sides ought to be able to agree. Things such as dealing with issues of forest health. Extreme environmentalists might say, “That’s just another Forest Service excuse to whack down trees.” I’ve even been told that if the trees removed were decked and burned, support for restoration activities might be forthcoming. In other words, there should be no commercial use of trees removed. Well, I think that is a bit goofy.

Here in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana you would think from reading the newspaper reports that the Forest Service is moving ahead with salvage and that dealing with forest health issues in burned areas is overwhelmingly opposed by local people. Yet public opinion polls indicate the vast majority want to move ahead with such activities. They might argue about what “something” is but the vast majority of those polled, at least at this point, are adamant that active management is required. But that is not what you would think after attending public hearings or reading the newspaper.

(my bold)

What do you think? Could we have gotten further down the “national or regional” peace path since 2001?  What opportunities have we had that may have been missed?  Do you think the NWFP revision/amendment has the ability to lead to a lasting peace? What would you recommend to lead to peace?  Do you think real collaboration is only possible at the local level?  Why?

Some Timber-y Followups to Last Week

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We had some interesting discussions last week. I am going to do more research on some topics, so I will list the ones I’m working on here.  Please see if I missed any that would be worthy of more discussion or digging for more info, and please add in the comments.

1. Why did BLM volume numbers go down in Oregon?

2. Diameter limit on East Side

a. what does the EA say about alternatives?

b. the mechanics of the “dripline” idea

3. What diameter and length of logs can mills use nowadays?

4. Paper submitted  by TSW commenter on no-bid timber sales.

5.  More background on Amicus briefs; what are they generally used for and why.

(for this one it would be helpful if someone could find what they think is a good explanation and send me some links).

Others?