Sharon

Dear TSW Readers,

This is the beginning of a new approach- DIY analysis and data interpretation.  I will present my data and findings, and you get to reanalyze them and come up with your own conclusions.

Here’s what data I asked for from the FS- I asked for WFU (Wildland Fire Use) acres by year.  The nice folks at the National Press Office sent me this handy table, which includes prescribed fire, mechanical treatments, and other. Here’s a sample:

Here’s what “other” is..”Treatment Category that describes work involving the use of chemicals, grazing, or biological methods to achieve Fire Management Plans objectives.”

So I made an Xcel spreadsheet of the WFU acres, and added the NIFC total acres for that year.

Then I subtracted the WFU from the NIFC total for each year, to get what I call “unwanted wildfire acres.” Here’s the Xcel spreadsheet. It’s altogether possible I did something wrong, so perhaps you all can check it.
Here’s what I plotted.

If the data are accurate and my spreadsheet used the correct data,  then the fitted line for unwanted fire acres (UWF) is almost straight from 2003 to 2022.  Which means that there has been little or no increase in unwanted acres burned through time.  Which is quite against what you read in the press, so check my figures!

If my data is true, here is my narrative.  Despite everything we’ve read about increased fire weather and so on, our fire suppression folks have done an amazing job at keeping the unwanted acres burned basically the same for the last 20 years.  They deserve a great big thank you from all of us.. oh and the correct policy solution is to… Pass The Tim Hart Act!!!!

I’m sure there are other interesting things that could be found in both the FS accomplishment table and the WFU/UWF  (I think UWF should be pronounced “oof”.. just kidding).  And what happened in 2016 where the WFU was almost as large as the UWF acres?

This is posted with the permission of the author, Sarah Hyden. Here is a link to the original. I thought she raised some interesting questions worthy of discussion.

Forest Service wildfire management policy run amok

From suppressing fires, to confining fires, to expanding fires, to igniting fires

One of the most important roles of the US Forest Service is to contain wildfires. Firefighters can often help to prevent wildfires from becoming disastrous to the human environment — they can help to protect communities, along with homeowners’ own efforts to fireproof their properties. However, Forest Service wildfire management policy can also cause the destruction of communities, and result in excessive and overly-frequent burning of some of our most valuable natural resources such as old growth, sensitive species and their habitats, and watersheds.

Conservation scientists strongly support “managed wildfire for resource benefit,” which means allowing naturally ignited wildfires to burn when safe to do so. When this is done, fire lines are built to protect communities and other values that could be impacted by the wildfire. This helps to return the natural role of fire in our forests, because fires of all intensities have a role in forest ecology and can promote biodiversity. However, there is also a limit on how much fire is beneficial to forests – too much fire can occur too fast when fires are intentionally ignited.

An increasing trend in Forest Service wildfire management tactics has been to combine intentional burning (prescribed burning) with emergency fire suppression. During at least three fires in New Mexico in just a little over a year, the Forest Service has utilized aerial and ground firing operations to expand wildfires, and to implement intentional burns on landscapes that would not have burned otherwise. These are the Black Fire in the Gila and Aldo Leopold Wildernesses, the Pass Fire in the Gila National Forest and Gila Wilderness, and the Comanche Fire in the Carson National Forest.

During the more than 325,000 acre Black Fire which ignited on May 13, 2022, it appears from ArcGIS aerial fire hot spot maps, that a very large area of the Aldo Leopold Wilderness was ignited by the USFS up to 10 miles to the south of the main fire with aerial firing operations – meaning dropping incendiary devices from helicopters or drones. See map below. This was clearly not any kind of large-scale back burn intended to contain the main fire, due to its distance from the main fire and its position relative to the wind direction.

This intentionally-ignited fire was herded to the north over several days until it joined the main fire. Then, on the Forest Service’s official fire perimeter map, both fires were suddenly joined together as one fire. There was no distinction made between the original fire which was not caused by USFS actions, and the sections of the fire to the south, amounting to a separate fire, that were directly ignited by the Forest Service. The agency had also expanded the main fire in other directions.

The intentional fire was only stopped by monsoon rains and by the intervention of a Sierra County Commissioner. Shouldn’t there have been a public analysis process before burning most of the Aldo Leopold Wilderness?

The ignitions by the Forest Service, along with the main fire, created a boxing-in formation — fire burning in almost every direction, so that which was in the midst of the formation was surrounded by fire. During wildfires, and also during traditional prescribed burns, wildlife has the opportunity to escape because the fire is generally approaching from just one direction. In a boxing-in fire formation, wildlife can become trapped and either injured or incinerated. There are no opportunities before such on-the-spot firing operations to seriously consider habitats of sensitive and endangered species, or to protect old growth forest and other values.

During the Pass Fire, which was ignited by a lightning strike on May 18, 2023, a substantial section of pinon and juniper in the Beaver Points area was intentionally burned through aerial firing operations, and many other areas were burned in ground firing operations. The ground firing operations were described by the Forest Service as burn out operations, in order to contain the fire and to protect structures. However, those burn out operations seemed very excessive, and some observers considered them to also be intentional burning.

This fire was managed as a “confine and contain” operation – an operation intended to allow a wildfire to burn within a determined fire perimeter for the purpose of reducing the intensity of future fires and to ecologically benefit the landscape. At the beginning of the fire, the Forest Service published on the Gila National Forest Facebook page a map of an approximately 75,000 acre planned fire perimeter. The current fire perimeter almost exactly matches the originally published planned perimeter. See overlay of both maps here.

The Comanche Fire, which began on June 8, 2023, was essentially a prescribed burn, except that the USFS utilized a 20 acre lightning strike ignition as the “match” that lit the fire. They stated in a fire update on June 21 that they have completed, not contained, 1% of the operation at 99 acres, making it clear that they were burning intentionally. The designated “focus area”, which appears to be a planned containment perimeter, was about 10,000 acres, broken into burn units. The intent was to expand a small lightning strike fire to at least 100 times its original size, utilizing both aerial and ground firing operations. The current size of this fire is 1,974 acres.

Such operations are now a substantial part of the work of firefighters across the West. Firefighters are essentially being used as intentional burn crews to implement fuels treatments, carried out with emergency fire suppression funding and no National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysis. Some Forest Service personnel believe that we conservationists, by “holding their feet to the fire” to analyze intentional burn operations according to NEPA, are slowing down implementation of burn treatments. So, by expanding wildfires, or even starting new ones in the vicinity of wildfires, the Forest Service is able to greatly expand the implementation of burn treatments, and thereby meet agency quotas.

Any statistics or research about the extent of wildfire in recent years, in relation to climate change or presumed increases in wildfire activity, may be distorted by a substantial portion of total reported wildfire acreage being actually ignited by the Forest Service. This occurs while managing wildfires under full suppression, and in confine and control operations.

The Forest Service has put the concept of managed wildfire for resource benefit on steroids, often using wildfires as opportunities to ignite yet more fire, and to broadly burn landscapes. This is not managing wildfire, but essentially creating fires. They are now using our firefighters as agents to carry out this dangerous and possibly illegal policy that sometimes causes severe unintended consequences to forests and communities. That some burns are ultimately ecologically beneficial does not make it acceptable to carry out fuels treatments without a NEPA process.

Forest Service Chief Randy Moore’s “Wildfire letter of intent 2023” provided direction to agency staff regarding wildfire suppression, stating “We will also continue to use every tool available to reduce current and future wildfire impacts and create and maintain landscape resilience, including using natural ignitions at the right time and place in collaboration with tribes, communities, and partners.” While there is not necessarily a legal basis at this point even for this direction, Forest Service firing operations that expand wildfires cannot be considered to be using natural ignitions. Drones or helicopters dropping incendiary devices are clearly not natural ignitions. And firing operations miles from a wildfire cannot reasonably be considered back burns that are necessary to contain a wildfire.

We have no national wildfire policy that either allows, or places any limits on such operations, and emergency fire suppression funding is not allocated for implementing fuels treatments. The Forest Service has given themselves virtually a carte blanche to conduct intentional burns over a wide area nearby wildfires — all without NEPA analysis or any public involvement in the planning process.

A genuinely cohesive national wildfire policy is essential, analyzed through a comprehensive and open NEPA process. It is necessary to make sure fires are managed safely, and that values like old growth trees, wildlife and their habitat, water quality, and soils are protected. Public health in relation to the smoke generated during intentional burns must also be considered.

The purpose of NEPA is so agencies will “look before they leap,” and therefore avoid causing environmental disasters. We have had more than enough disasters occur, culminating with last year’s Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire. If we allow the Forest Service to largely jettison NEPA and to freely implement fuels treatments under the guise of emergency fire suppression, we are giving up our primary means of protecting our forests and our communities, and it will affect other important conservation priorities. NEPA law acknowledges and supports our right to have a say on what occurs in our forests, and requires comprehensive analysis of the impacts of proposed actions.

The Forest Advocate is investigating USFS firing operations and will report more later. In the Forest Service Southwestern Region, a substantive FOIA request can take years to be fulfilled, so some records are difficult to obtain. The Sierra County Commission made an information request to the Forest Service to provide records of aerial ignitions during the Black Fire, but were told by the Southwestern Region that they have to put in a FOIA request through the standard process.

We need our elected representatives to urge the Forest Service to disclose the extent of all ignitions intended to expand wildfires or ignite new fires, especially during the Black Fire – and to move forward with a revised, comprehensive and clear national wildfire policy, accomplished in a transparent way, in accordance with environmental law.

Background on this topic.  The below post may be highly controversial. I’m posting it because it’s a voice I haven’t heard in some of the media, which equates more burned acres simply to climate change and hence more future wildfire acres, in a fairly apocalyptic framing.  There are two problems with this in my view 1. it’s complex, so simplifying to one cause is actually not true and 2. it ignores all the levers we have to deal with wildfires before our energy is decarbonized, even ones we’re spending megabucks with defense contractors on like new technologies. 

This kind of reporting also ignores the people who actually work with wildfire and their views, which I’m sure are diverse, like any other group.  I see this as part of an ongoing trend to amplify the voices of coastal media and academics (people who work with words) and downplay the voices of people who work directly with things.  The downside of this amplification and deamplification, as I see it, is that by not hearing those voices, we (the people) think we can’t do the things we can do (to improve wildfire suppression, like the Tim Hart Act); and can do the things we can’t do (e.g., finishing forest plans in three years; putting it in a reg did not make it so). And weirdly (feature or bug?)  some disagreements, rather than discussed and understood, are simply dismissed by ad Partiem (I made that up and TSW Latin scholars can help) arguments (e.g. “Republicans are against WFU”).

So Murry can be right, wrong, or anywhere in between. I don’t know, this isn’t my area. But I think his voice needs to be heard and I’m not sure I’ve heard it elsewhere.

Guest post by Murry Taylor

I put this up on the Smokejumpers Facebook page yesterday. It’s in response to an article in a Seattle newspapter about the North Cascade Smokejumper Base in Winthrop, Washington. It’s gotten some attention with various groups pushing for more effective intial attack on wildfires in the west. Here’s what I wrote:

Murry Taylor here. I had 33 seasons fighting fire, 26 as a smokejumper. And now I’ve had 22 seasons on a Cal Fire lookout, so I’ve seen a lot of what I’m talking about. I’m also the author of Jumping Fire: A Smokejumpers Memoir of Fighting Wildfire. While I fully agree that poor forest management (as in accumulated fuels) has led to many of these big fires in the west, I want to point out something else here. One of the big reasons so much public land in the west has burned is the under-utilization of smokejumpers the past couple decades.  

I agree that this article is a pretty comprehensive look at current smokejumping, the work, the demands, the deep satisfaction. Glad I got to read it, but I wish it had included the fact that since 2020, the jumpers only averaged 4.5 fire jumps a season. That’s a terrible under-utilization of such a critical resource. In the past we easily jumped twice that many, and some years four times as many. I’ve seen it many times while on the lookout, Duzel Rock. Fires have not been staffed for a day or two and then gone big and cost tens if not hundreds of millions while the jumpers sat unused. There seems to be a lack of understanding among fire managers in the Forest Service about the capability of these jumpers. Dispatchers have said they didn’t put jumpers on a fire because the “trees were too tall,” or the “winds were too strong.” Clearly they didn’t understand that the jumpers carry 150 let-down ropes, and have a spotter in the plane throwing streamers, and know EXACTLY what the wind is over the fire. The good news is that things seem to be changing for the better. Allowing jumpers to get back to 10 plus fire jumps per season would save big money and lots of acres. For those who think we need to get more fire back on the land, all I can say is, Don’t worry, there’s going to be plenty of that given the way fires burn now. The policy of putting ALL these early season fires out while small would be a big help. That way, when August–the toughest part of fire season– comes the handcrews wouldn’t be scattered all over hell, exhausted, and the skies wouldn’t be filled with smoke so that Air Ops are critically limited. As I mentioned above, things seem to be changing, using jumpers more here and there on various forests in the west. Hopefully that will continue.

To go on here,  I talk with jumpers and hotshots all the time and they tell me that “Yes, sometimes the fuels and new fire weather are a factor in making fires harder to catch.” But MOSTLY, they say, there’s always something that can be done to catch these fires if they are hit while small. As I wrote in Smokejumper magazine last summer, the Rouge River-Siskiyou N.F. in Southern Oregon has taken a more aggressive approach to putting fires out small. In the last three seasons they’ve had 192 fires and ONLY burned 50 acres. This was achieved by prepositioning jumpers during lightning storms, better utilization of rappellers, and contract fire resources. You can read the full article on Wildfire Today by finding it in the archives here. It seems other forests are looking at that now and changes are in the wind. My latest novel, Too Steep and Too Rough tells the story of what I’ve seen as the big problem with weak initial attack here locally in the past two decades. Over and over, while on my lookout, Duzel Rock, I here that certain fires weren’t attacked early because the country was “too steep and too rough.”  

Here’s an interesting story from the WaPo (thanks to Nick Smith!).

The challenge now is what to do with all those piles of sticks, which create fire hazards of their own. Some environmental scientists believe they have an answer: mushrooms. Fungus has an uncommon knack for transformation. Give it garbage, plastic, even corpses, and it will convert them all into something else — for instance, nutrient-rich soil.

An alternative to fire

Down where the Rocky Mountains meet the plains, in pockets of forest west of Denver, mycologists like Zach Hedstrom are harnessing this unique trait to transform fire fuel into a valuable asset for local agriculture.

For Hedstrom, the idea sprung from an experiment on a local organic vegetable farm. He and the farm owner had introduced a native oyster mushroom to wood chips from a tree that fell in a windstorm.

When slash piles are set alight, they burn longer and hotter than most wildfires over a concentrated area. This leaves behind blistered soil where native vegetation struggles for decades to take root. As an alternative, foresters have tried chipping trees on-site and broadcasting the mulch across the forest floor, where it degrades at a snail’s pace in the arid climate. Boulder County also carts some of its slash to biomass heating systems at two public buildings.

“We’re removing a ton of wood out of forests for fire mitigation,” Hedstrom said. “This is not a super sustainable way of managing it.”