Steve Wilent

Well, of course. I was thinking about our discussions of post-fire hazard tree cutting as I was looking at the maps and photos of the Cedar Creek Fire in the central Oregon Cascades, which blew up on Friday and over the weekend to 18K acres. It ran north along the west side of Waldo Lake, a vert popular recreation area. North of the lake is the area burned by the 1996 Charlton Fire, which burned 10,000 acres on the north shore, mostly in the Waldo Lake Wilderness (the Pacific Crest Trail runs though it). The Cedar Creek Fire burned well into the older fire scar. This image from Google Earth Pro — 2016 imagery — shows a portion of the newly re-burned area in the wilderness, near a small lake. The image is interesting because it shows how little timber has returned — no restoration was done, since it’s a wilderness area. It also shows many downed trees (as well as the shadows of those still standing). Many of those downed trees probably stood for years, but of course over time they weakened and fell. This scene is typical of the Charlton Fire burn area. Dead trees do fall, which is one reason to cut them before they fall onto roads, power lines, and so on.

“Counteracting wildfire misinformation,” a paper by 13 authors in Frontiers in Ecology and Environment (open access), is worth a look. The authors do not mention Chad Hanson by name, but this seems to fit, IMHO: “Some scientists use their credentials to advocate for specific policy outcomes that they support personally, which may or may not be driven by robust frameworks of evidence.”

One of the supporting documents is an excellent resource: WebTable 1. “Prebunking prominent examples of wildfire misinformation related to in western North American forests.” For example:

Misinformation: Fuels reduction is a Trojan horse for commercial logging.

Description: Pre-fire fuels reduction is motivated by timber outputs, not fire hazard reduction; the result is serious harm to the land from practices similar to commodity-driven logging.

Consequence of misinformation: Distrust in land management agencies. [As well as collaborative groups and other stakeholders who support fuels reduction.]

Information from more robust knowledge frameworks: Mechanical fuels reduction focuses on retaining medium and large-sized fire-tolerant trees, to foster their survival of the next fire. Fuels reduction treatments restructure and remove woody material and fuel ladders that built up during fire exclusion, and are often of limited economic value. In other cases, removal of medium-, or large-sized fire-intolerant trees that recruited during fire exclusion is essential to improve fire-tolerant tree survival. The catchphrase “fuels reduction logging” deceptively conflates two very different types of forest management.

Key evidence: Agee and Skinner 2005; Schwilk et al. 2009; Stephens et al. 2009, 2020, 2021; Collins et al. 2014; Prichard et al. 2021; Hessburg et al. 2022.

The subtitle of this Undark article is “In setting fines for timber poaching, experts are looking at different ways to calculate the financial value of trees.” It’s by Lyndsie Bourgon, author of Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America’s Woods.

Excerpts:

At last estimate, the Forest Service reported that 1 in 10 trees logged on their land is poached. The financial impact can be hard to pin down, but some sources estimate poaching amounts to up to $100 million per year, contributing to a broader $1 billion annual valuation of all timber poaching in the United States.

…

In British Columbia, natural resource officers who patrol provincial forest lands have started to argue for steeper penalties that take ecological value, wildlife corridors, recreational use, and aesthetic beauty into consideration. It’s in those issues that the gravity of poaching is most felt, one officer told me, not simply the loss of a marketable resource.

Across the border, in Washington, similar arguments have been made in large timber poaching cases. In a 2012 case of tree theft, a man pled guilty to poaching bigleaf maple, Western red cedar trees, and Douglas fir, at least one of which was 300 years old, from Olympic National Forest. The market value of the wood was estimated to be between $59,510 and $118,660. But when it came time for sentencing and restitution, federal attorneys argued that the ecological value of timber should also contribute to the overall fine.

The prosecution used something called an “ecological valuation” — a method factors in considerations like the tree’s value as habitat for endangered birds, as well as a single old-growth’s influence on forest health. “Because the Forest Service is charged with stewarding the forests for the public benefit (and not simply with marketing timber), consideration of ecological factors is necessary,” the restitution memo said. Notably, it also stated: “Courts have recognized that a restitution order should reflect the value of stolen property from the victim’s perspective. Market value does not adequately reflect this value.”

This essay from the PERC website is interesting. Emphasis added….

A Judicial Threat to Conservation

The recent nullification of environmental regulations by a federal court sets a dangerous precedent.

Folks, this USFS paper may be of interest: “Modeling the risk reduction benefit of forest management using a case study in the Lake Tahoe Basin.”

Authors: Evans, Samuel G.; Holland, Tim G.; Long, Jonathan W.; Maxwell, Charles; Scheller, Robert M.; Patrick, Evan; Potts, Matthew D.

Date: 2022

Source Ecology and Society. 27(2):18

Abstract: Across the United States, wildfire severity and frequency are increasing, placing many properties at risk of harm or destruction. We quantify and compare how different forest management strategies designed to increase forest resilience and health reduce the number of properties at risk from wildfire, focusing on the Lake Tahoe Basin of California and Nevada. We combine landscape change simulations (including climate change, wildfire, and management effects) with scenarios of current and plausible fuel treatment activities and parcel-scale fire risk analysis. Results suggest that more aggressive fuel treatment activities that treat more area on the landscape, whether through mechanical and hand thinning or prescribed fire, dramatically lower the fire probability in the region and lead to a corresponding lower risk of property loss. We estimate that relative to recent practices of focusing management in the wildland–urban interface, more active forest management can reduce property loss risk by 45%–76%, or approximately 2600–4900 properties. The majority of this risk reduction is for single family residences, which constitute most structures in the region. Further, we find that the highest risk reduction is obtained through strategies that treat a substantially greater area than is currently treated in the region and allows for selective wildfires to burn for resource objectives outside of the wildland–urban interface. These results highlight the importance of more active forest management as an effective tool in reducing the wildfire risk to capital assets in the region.

Fairly good article overall, except (in my view) its gives far too much space to Chad Hanson’s views, albeit with a note about other scientists’ criticism of them. The title ought to have been “Will logging and prescribed fire save them?” The article is apparently not behind the Post’s paywall….

Excerpt:

Thanks to Nick Smith for this link to a Sierra Nevada Conservancy page.

“Forest restoration and wildfire risk reduction projects are complex, involving many steps and moving parts that determine whether a project will succeed and how long it will take. In the infographic below, we take a look under the hood of forest restoration projects to understand each of the steps necessary to get a project on the ground and through completion.”

Folks, here’s the Forestry section of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Apologies for the formatting. I cut and pasted this from the text of the act. The full text is here. Note the definition of hazardous fuels reduction project….

Subtitle D—Forestry

SEC. 23001. NATIONAL FOREST SYSTEM RESTORATION AND FUELS REDUCTION PROJECTS.

(a) APPROPRIATIONS.—In addition to amounts other wise available, there are appropriated to the Secretary for fiscal year 2022, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, to remain available until September 30, 2031—

(1) $1,800,000,000 for hazardous fuels reduction projects on National Forest System land within the wildland-urban interface;

(2) $200,000,000 for vegetation management projects on National Forest System land carried out in accordance with a plan developed under section 303(d)(1) or 304(a)(3) of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 (16 U.S.C. 6542(d)(1) or 6543(a)(3));

(3) $100,000,000 to provide for environmental reviews by the Chief of the Forest Service in satisfying the obligations of the Chief of the Forest Service under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4321 through 4370m–12); and

(4) $50,000,000 for the protection of old-growth forests on National Forest System land and to complete an inventory of old-growth forests and mature forests within the National Forest System.

(b) RESTRICTIONS.—None of the funds made available by paragraph (1) or (2) of subsection (a) may be used for any activity—

(1) conducted in a wilderness area or wilderness study area;

(2) that includes the construction of a permanent road or motorized trail;

(3) that includes the construction of a temporary road, except in the case of a temporary road that is decommissioned by the Secretary not later

than 3 years after the earlier of—

(A) the date on which the temporary road is no longer needed; and

(B) the date on which the project for which the temporary road was constructed is completed;

(4) inconsistent with the applicable land management plan;

(5) inconsistent with the prohibitions of the rule of the Forest Service entitled ‘‘Special Areas: Roadless Area Conservation’’ (66 Fed. Reg. 3244 (January 12, 2001)), as modified by subparts C and D of part 294 of title 36, Code of Federal Regulations; or

(6) carried out on any land that is not National Forest System land, including other forested land on Federal, State, Tribal, or private land.

…

(3) HAZARDOUS FUELS REDUCTION

22 PROJECT.—The term ‘‘hazardous fuels reduction project’’ means an activity, including the use of prescribed fire, to protect structures and communities from wildfire that is carried out on National Forest System land.

The Wilderness Society says:

On July 29, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5118, The Wildfire Response and Drought Resiliency Act. H.R. 5118 is a package of nearly 50 bills aimed at curbing wildfire and drought and improving forest management. The Wilderness Society applauds the inclusion of the Roadless Area Conservation Act in the package.

The Roadless Area Conservation Act would codify the 2001 Roadless Rule, and would provide permanent protection for inventoried roadless areas in the National Forest System by barring the construction and development of roads, timber harvesting and other development.

I looked at the text of the bill and found this:

The Secretary of Agriculture shall not authorize road construction, road reconstruction, or the cutting, sale, or removal of timber on National Forest System lands subject to the Roadless Area Conservation Rule as published on January 12, 2001 (66 Fed. Reg. 3243) except as provided in—

The bill was sent to the Senate, where my guess is it’ll die.

“Climate forests”? Nice idea, but…. see this article in Phys.org is here. Excerpt:

Researchers “found that the estimated carbon losses from wildfires within the offset program’s first 10 years have depleted at least 95% of the contributions set aside to protect against all fire risks over 100 years. Likewise, the potential carbon losses associated with a single disease and its impacts on a single species are large enough to fully hinder the total credits set aside for all disease- and insect-related mortality over 100 years.

“In just 10 years, wildfires have exhausted protections designed to last for a century. It is incredibly unlikely that the program will be able to withstand the wildfires of the next 90 years, particularly given the role of the climate crisis in exacerbating fire risks,” said co-author Dr. Oriana Chegwidden, of CarbonPlan.