Steve Wilent

Great article from July 20, but not news to foresters and tribes: “The Bootleg Fire, The Nation’s Biggest, Gives Scientists An Unexpected Experiment.” Excerpts:

Ecologists in a vast region of wetlands and forest in remote Oregon have spent the past decade thinning young trees and using planned fires to try to restore the thick stands of ponderosa to a less fire-prone state.

This week, the nation’s biggest burning wildfire provided them with an unexpected, real-world experiment. As the massive inferno half the size of Rhode Island roared into the Sycan Marsh Preserve, firefighters said the flames jumped less from treetop to treetop and instead returned to the ground, where they were easier to fight, moved more slowly and did less damage to the overall forest.

The initial assessment suggests that the many years of forest treatments worked, said Pete Caligiuri, Oregon forest program director for The Nature Conservancy, which runs the research at the preserve.

“Generally speaking, what firefighters were reporting on the ground is that when the fire came into those areas that had been thinned … it had significantly less impact.”

The reports were bittersweet for researchers, who still saw nearly 20 square miles of the preserve burn, but the findings add to a growing body of research about how to make wildfires less explosive by thinning undergrowth and allowing forests to burn periodically — as they naturally would do — instead of snuffing out every flame.

…

Historically, wildfires in Oregon and elsewhere in the U.S. West burned an area as big or bigger than the current blaze more frequently but much less explosively. Periodic, naturally occurring fire cleared out the undergrowth and smaller trees that cause today’s fires to burn so dangerously.

Those fires have not been allowed to burn for the past 120 years, said James Johnston, a researcher with Oregon State University’s College of Forestry who studies historical wildfires.

The area on the northeastern flank of the Bootleg Fire is in the ancestral homeland of the Klamath Tribes, which have used intentional, managed fire to keep the fuel load low and prevent such explosive blazes. Scientists at the Sycan Marsh research station now work with the tribe and draw on that knowledge.

This refutes some of Chad Hanson’s claims in his new book, Smokescreen, which we discussed here:

“Thinned forests often burn more intensely in wildland fires,” [Hanson] writes, “because thinning reduces the windbreak effect of denser forests, allowing winds to sweep through more rapidly, while also reducing the shade of the forest canopy and creating hotter and drier conditions.”

There may be some situations where fuels, weather, and topography can allow this to happen, but “a growing body of research” shows that reducing fuels and thinning works. I’m glad the NPR article mentioned the role of the tribe’s knowledge and practices.

Chief Christiansen sent this letter to top staff officers on July 14. Excerpts:

“We are seeing severe fire behavior that resists control efforts. Further, the seasonal forecast for the entire Western United States remains extremes for the next several months. We expect demand for resources to outpace resource availability, and our workforce remains fatigued and in need of recovery following last year’s record-setting fire season, active hurricane season, and strenous efforts to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

…

“I understand this direction requires us to make difficult trade-offs with our other high-priority mission work. This is especially challenging at present, when we are working diligently to accomplish performance goals and restoration outcomes. As the mission support workforce shifts priorities to fire, this also means trade-offs in non-fire contracts, hires, grants, payments, among others.”

I’m curious about why some folks are against commercial timber harvesting. Some environmental groups — the Sierra Club, for example — oppose commercial timber harvesting in general, especially on federal lands. Some groups/folks support fuels reduction and thinning, as long as it doesn’t involve commercial timber sales. Of course, some of this is the legacy of past “industrial timber harvest” practices – large clearcuts with no stream buffers, etc – the “salvage rider,” and so on. On the other hand, other groups/folks may accept commercial harvests if the rotation age is long, and this includes entities that seek income though selling forest carbon. The Nature Conservancy harvests timber, usually in selective harvests, and uses the income to pay for managing its lands.

Is “commercial timber harvesting!” merely a rallying cry, a marketing ploy? A deeply held political or philosophical position? Do most people and groups support it, to some degree? What’s your take?

NPR News has a Q&A with Scott Stephens, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in wildfires and forest management, entitled “What’s Needed To Manage Wildfires.” Stephens’ Fire Science Laboratory has a large collection of forest restoration and fuels management research.

Excerpt:

KURTZLEBEN: With climate change essentially ensuring that conditions will continue to get more suitable for big fires, do you have any hope in the state and federal governments’ ability to manage future fire seasons?

STEPHENS: This is a great question. And I actually have a lot of hope. You know, I really do believe that we could do some work now in the next 10 to 20 years, which is actually probably the most important period now, to do our restoration thinning, do the work that actually says we’re going to go into a forest and we’re going to actually identify what we want to leave for restoration and we’re going to take the excess of that. We’re going to do the prescribed burning to get the fire back into these systems. And then again, managed wildfire. I know that it’s such a big issue for this state. Look at what’s going on. So many people losing homes, smoking out communities, huge cities for months at a time, huge impacts to water quality. Lake Oroville just had a huge fire in the middle fork of the Feather River, the largest tributary to Lake Oroville, which is the largest lake in the state water project.

These are enormous issues. On top of that, giant sequoia areas in southern Sierra Nevada last year – severe fires killed, we think, 10% of the giant sequoia old growth trees in the state. So it’s not as if we’re wondering what’s going to happen. It’s happening right now. So that just tells me that we have to get on the system to get this work in earnest. My estimate is we need to do 10 times more restoration thinning and prescribed burning to start to change the rudder of the ship.

National Geographic has an article published yesterday, June 24:

Despite massive effort, spotted owl populations at an all-time low

A threatened owl could disappear from much of its range unless old-growth forests are protected and invasive barred owls are controlled.

“Inhabiting older coniferous forests in the Pacific Northwest, the federally listed northern spotted owl species has been on the decline across its range, triggered by habitat loss. The two leading threats to its habitat are competition from increasing barred owl populations and decreasing forest area, due to wildfires and logging. Without strong intervention, northern spotted owls may face extirpation.”

Kudos to the Mount Hood National Forest for its excellent story map about last summer’s Riverside Fire. It’s an interesting overview and a great use of Esri’s GIS technology.

Bloomberg News has a pretty good article today:

Scientists Are Trying to Make California Forests More Fire Resilient

As the threat of wildfire looms, a debate has emerged in the state about the best way to plant trees.

Some interesting photos, too.

As someone who helped with numerous timber sales on the El Dorado NF in the 1980s, and helped suppress a few wildfires there, I agree that broad landscapes of plantations of evenly spaced trees are far from natural, and in a changing climate, perhaps are a liability — unless they are managed to be more like natural stands, with groups of trees and spaces in between. That can be done with “industrial” plantations, if thinning aims to leave groups/skips/gaps rather than maintaining relatively uniform stem density. Of course, this is site-specific. In some areas, even-aged, production-oriented silviculture is appropriate, and in other areas, nature has created dense, even-aged stands on its own. In between, group planting may help guard against the incineration of entire watersheds. Here is where desired future conditions, with due recognition of likely future climate conditions, might best guide management.

Another article from the May edition of the Journal of Forestry is worth a look: “Changes in Relationships between the USDA Forest Service and Small, Forest-Based Communities in the Northwest Forest Plan Area amid Declines in Agency Staffing.”

The authors note “chronic budget cuts and shrinking resources,” but not the shift of a large portion of the budget it does have to suppressing wildfires.

The paper rings true for me, as a resident of a small community in the NW Forest Plan area. The local agency staff are good folks, but they are too few to meet the management needs on a diverse, high public use national forest. I’m interested to hear from others on Smokey Wire whether the situation is similar outside of the NW Forest Plan area.

Abstract

Study Implications: We found evidence that staffing declines, turnover, and long-distance
commuting may contribute to decreasing agency engagement in some communities, and that
diminished engagement by federal forest management agency employees may contribute to
negative attitudes toward the agency. Agency employee interviewees suggested that incentives
(i.e., promotions, opportunities to live elsewhere), internal conflicts, and a lack of opportunities
and services for their families are reasons that staff commute from neighboring communities
or leave their jobs. Our findings suggest that the USDA Forest Service may improve agency community
relationships by supporting its staff in ways that reduce turnover and long-distance
commuting and incentivize community engagement.

The New York Times today: “What to Save? Climate Change Forces Brutal Choices at National Parks.”

For decades, the core mission of the Park Service was absolute conservation. Now ecologists are being forced to do triage, deciding what to safeguard — and what to let slip away.

Probably available only to subscribers. However, the article has a link to this USF&WS web page on the topic.

NY Times excerpt:

The first one [of Park Service two papers], titled “Resist, Accept, Direct,” aims to help park employees triage species and landscapes. In some cases, that will mean giving up long efforts to save them. The second outlines how to assess risks when relocating species. That may be crucial to saving plants and animals that can no longer survive in their natural habitat.

Those two papers were the basis for the guidance published last month. On the very first page of that document, set over a photo of the charred Santa Monica Mountains after the 2018 Woolsey fire, the authors state that “it will not be possible to safeguard all park resources, processes, assets, and values in their current form or context over the long term.”

Decisions about what to protect are especially imminent for forests, where changes are leading some researchers to wonder if the age of North American woodlands is coming to an end.

In the United States Southwest, for example, research suggests that, in the event of wildfires, up to 30 percent of forestland might never grow back because global warming favors shrubs or grasslands in their ranges. Joshua trees appear likely to lose all of their habitat in their namesake national park by the end of the century.

Excerpt from a Greenwire article today:

The Bureau of Land Management is asking its employees for input into how to potentially revamp its headquarters to improve the bureau’s “function” after a massive Trump-era reorganization that included moving the leadership office to Colorado.

BLM, in an internal survey sent yesterday to all employees, asks staffers to gauge, on a scale of 1 to 10, the “Impact of BLM HQ Relocations” to Grand Junction, Colo., and other state offices in the West, on “employee morale” and “the function of the BLM overall.”

It also asks staffers point-blank: “In light of the recent relocation and current distribution of HQ positions in Grand Junction, Washington D.C. and other locations in the West, how should the BLM move forward?” Among the four answers employees can choose from: “Restore all positions to a D.C. location” and “Leave all positions as they are now.”

The survey also seeks employee input on how best to move the headquarters back to Washington, if the Biden administration ultimately decides to do so.