We’ve been discussing CO2 emissions from logging and wildfires. Now here’s an excerpt from Washington Post article, via the Yakima Herald, “Research shows smoke from wildfires could be surprisingly deadly.”

“Just like smokestacks and tailpipes, wildfires fill the air with the byproducts of combustion, including very dangerous small particles known as PM2.5, which can get into the lungs and bloodstream. A growing body of research has demonstrated that these particles degrade health and contribute to thousands of deaths each year in the U.S. alone by causing respiratory, cardiovascular and other health problems.

“So just how deadly is the smoke from wildfires? While the numbers presented are definitely preliminary, they suggest the cost could be severe indeed.

“Pierce presented the highest numbers at the meeting. He estimates that 5,000 to 25,000 people in the U.S. may die each year from PM2.5 that specifically comes from the smoke of wildfires burning in the U.S. and nearby countries such as Canada.”

FWIW, some perspective. In 2014, the World Health Organization reported that “Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year” primarily through malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea, and heat stress. However, in that same year WHO also reported that “indoor air pollution was linked to 4.3 million deaths in 2012 in households cooking over coal, wood, and biomass stoves.” [emphasis mine]

Article from a radio station in Montana….

Summer Wildfires Severely Affected Montana Recreation Industry

Last summer’s wildfires made for big headlines in the media, but the resulting destruction and smoke combined to keep out-of-state visitors away, and with them, millions of dollars in lost income.

Director of the University of Montana Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research, Norma Nickerson said the fires had a significant negative impact on tourism.

“In terms of our nonresident visitation, those fires potentially made us lose up to 800,000 out of state visitors to Montana with an equivalent of about $240 million dollars their spending around out state,” said Nickerson, who was also surprised to discover how most of those who chose not to visit found out about the wildfires. “It was a wide range of outlets, but the majority of them were saying that they looked at air quality reports. So, they obviously knew about the fires, and so they wanted to check and see how it affected the air quality. There was also a little bit of talking with friends and relatives that they had in the state, and that was a significant part of their decision.”

Sixty-nine percent of adults in Montana said the smoke affected their outdoor activities. This included 90 percent of those respondents saying activities such as hiking and fishing were occasionally or frequently affected and 75 percent who indicated their outdoor fitness activities were impacted due to smoke.

Nickerson said the information in her report is being passed on to other state officials who are closely involved with forest management.

“This was a long fire season, and that was probably the scariest part of it,” she said. “The climate scientists are saying that this is going to be our future, the ‘new normal’, so what can we do? That’s the discussion that needs to take place.”

NEWS RELEASE

For Immediate Release
Contact: (202) 205-1005
Twitter: @forestservice 

Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture reflects on year of progress

WASHINGTON, Dec 20, 2017 — The Forest Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, today highlighted some of the agency’s accomplishments during 2017 to improve the productivity, uses, and sustainability of national forests and grasslands.

“Our accomplishments this year demonstrate the Forest Service’s strong commitment to improving the economic health of rural communities; ensuring lands and watersheds are sustainable, healthy and productive; and mitigating wildfire risk,” said Forest Service Chief Tony Tooke. “As the Forest Service moves into 2018, our priorities will continue to tie directly to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue’s strategic vision for the Department.”

Here are a few highlights of Forest Service accomplishments during 2017, derived from and inspired by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s strategic goals:

Improved the Conditions of America’s Forests

• Employed the full suite of treatments and tools to improve conditions on more than 2.7 million acres of forestland. This work helped reduce fire severity and increase resilience;
• Harvested more than 2.9 billion board feet of wood, leading to improved forest conditions and contributing wood products to local economies;
• Used Farm Bill authorities to work on 60 projects addressing insect and disease infestations and partner with 35 states on restoration projects.

Worked toward a Fix to Fire Funding

• USDA informed members of a national coalition on the impacts of the high costs of suppressing wildfire totaling $2.4 billion in Fiscal Year 2017 alone.
• Built bipartisan support with key Congressional leaders to develop innovative options that fix the two-pronged problem of fire transfer and growing suppression costs;

Implemented the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Strategy

• Treated more than 1.3 million high priority acres nationwide to reduce fire risk and improve forest conditions. Agency personnel focused on areas with communities, areas of high fire potential, and areas where risk could most effectively be alleviated;
• Increased wildfire mitigation efforts in high-risk communities through partnerships with organizations such as the Fire-Adapted Communities Coalition and The Nature Conservancy;
• Improved 1.33 million acres of wildlife habitat, and treated over 73,600 acres for noxious weeds and invasive plants;

Responded to Record Wildfires and Hurricanes

• Confronted wildland fires that started in the Southeast and continued through the year in the Southwest, Pacific Northwest, Intermountain West and Pacific Northwest.  At peak season, more than 28,000 personnel were dispatched to fires, along with aircraft and other emergency response resources;
• Responded during three hurricane events; Harvey, Irma, and Maria. Dispatched highly skilled crews, incident management teams, and Law Enforcement Officers to Puerto Rico to rapidly clear roads, remove debris and protect public safety in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

The mission of the Forest Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is to sustain the health, diversity and productivity of the nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations.

Mike Archer, who edits the Wildfire News of the Day newsletter, sent along a link to a Cal Fire press release issued today.

“The U.S. Forest Service today announced that an additional 27 million trees, mostly conifers, died throughout California since November 2016, bringing the total number of trees that have died due to drought and bark beetles to an historic 129 million on 8.9 million acres. The dead trees continue to pose a hazard to people and critical infrastructure, mostly centered in the central and southern Sierra Nevada region of the state.”

Randy Moore, Regional Forester, says “we need to fix how fire suppression is funded.”

This article from The Conversation isn’t aimed at the USFS, but at federal agencies in general: “Want to change federal policies? Here’s how.”

An excerpt:

“Federal agencies need the expert information that scientists and professionals can provide. An analysis by the U.S. Forest Service found that the majority of public input was value-based. While these comments provided agency employees with critical information on public opinion, value-based comments were not as helpful to the planning staff as detailed comments that provided technical feedback. Only 9 percent of the comments sampled were classified as having a high level of detail.”

A Nov. 7 article in The Missoulian by Rob Chaney.

Public lands advocates push collaborative approach

Collaboration brings people together. Lawsuits divide them. Reaching the first without triggering the second remains the challenge for those interested in the future of forests.

Montana public lands currently have between 30,000 and 40,000 acres left in legal limbo because of litigation, participants at Montana Forest Collaboration Network conference heard Tuesday. Getting beyond that might take congressional legislation or simply better local relationships, according to panel moderator Brian Kahn.

“Blaming environmentalists for litigation is politically inflammatory,” Kahn said. “It’s said by people who don’t know that eight out of 10 environmentalists are participants in collaborative efforts. That kind of polarization is fertile ground for demagoguery.”

Collaborative forest projects occupy a special slice of work in the woods. They depend on a group of local residents, county and state officials, clubs and organizations and businesses to semi-formally advise the U.S. Forest Service on how to manage a particular part of a national forest.

Projects developed through the collaborative process should have more value than traditional agency-industry deals because they reflect local knowledge about jobs, habitat, wildlife, recreation and other on-the-ground knowledge.

That hasn’t protected them from scrutiny by critics of the Forest Service, who sue the agency over alleged violations of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Endangered Species Act, and other federal requirements. In 2013, the last year with complete data available, national forests in Montana had 13 of 29 forestry project decisions challenged in court.

“If you can’t find a NEPA violation in a document, you’re not trying hard enough,” American Forest Resource Council attorney Lawson Fite said. “These are policy matters. It’s not: Are you following the law? It’s: We want you to do different things.”

The Wilderness Society forest campaign manager Megan Birzell said making an environmental assessment “legally bombproof” was virtually impossible. She said her organization worked more to show where broad arrays of support existed for a project, in order to convince a judge that lots of different perspectives had been fairly considered.

“Collaboration is making a lot of progress in Washington, Oregon and California,” Birzell said. “That’s true across the west, except in Montana where it’s bogged down.”

“Some environmental groups agree” — including the Wilderness Society — but the article doesn’t mention opposition from anyone….

The bill applies to state trust lands, but it would be very helpful if other state and private land exchanges were easier. In my neck of the woods, some county-owned parcels surrounded by USFS and BLM lands could be exchanged in the same way.

Just came across this item from the PSW Research Station…. Key point: Owls look for tall trees, not dense canopies.

Study: Supporting owls compatible with managing forests for fire, drought

For Immediate Release: October 5, 2017

ALBANY, Calif. — In what is believed to be the largest spotted owl study in terms of area analyzed, remote sensing technology is providing a more precise look at habitat preferences for the sensitive species with implications for greater flexibility in forest management.

“For the last 25 years, forests in the western United States have been managed to protect habitat for spotted owls based on ground surveys that were limited by plots with a small sample area and what could be seen from the forest floor,” said Malcolm North, a research ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Research Station and lead author of the study. “We’re employing relatively new technology to get a new vantage point into the forest canopy – across an unprecedented amount of terrain – to better understand what that means for spotted owls.”

Using Light Detection and Ranging imaging, or LiDAR, North and colleagues from partnering organizations studied forest attributes across 1.2 million acres, encompassing 316 documented owl territories, along California’s Sierra Nevada. LiDAR uses laser pulses shot from an instrument mounted in an airplane that can measure a forest’s canopy, including tree height, distribution of tree foliage and any forest gaps.

Whereas previous research led to the assumption that spotted owls needed dense canopy cover (generally estimated at 70 percent or greater) across a broad landscape, LiDAR data revealed it’s more the height of the canopy, as opposed to the expanse of it, that matters most to owls.

“Cover of tall trees best predicts California spotted owl habitat,” recently published online by the journal of “Forest Ecology and Management,” reports spotted owls typically were found in forests with high concentrations of tall trees measuring at least 105 feet in height, but preferably taller than 157 feet. Meanwhile, dense stands of trees measuring 52 feet or shorter were generally avoided by the owls.

“We rarely found owls in high canopy cover without tall trees. We also found owls in areas with tall trees but low surrounding density,” North said. “It’s really the big trees that the owls are selecting for.”

The study’s findings could have implications for land management strategies to improve forest resilience to wildfires, drought, insects and diseases. Forests with tree densities greater than historical ranges – especially with high densities of smaller trees – are more susceptible to extreme wildfire behavior or vulnerable to the effects of drought, insect infestations and disease.

“While land managers may have felt compelled to maintain these abnormally high densities to adhere to the 70 percent canopy cover threshold, it might also have placed forests and owls at risk,” North said. “The large trees favored by spotted owls can typically withstand low to moderate wildfires and other disturbances. But when exposed to extreme wildfires from high fuel loads or when their vigor is compromised by too many trees competing on the landscape, these tall trees can become vulnerable.”

Researchers also studied how large openings in the canopy or gaps in the forested landscape, ranging from 0.03 to greater than 2.5 acres, impacted owl use or nest site selection.

“Land managers may have been leery of creating gaps in the landscape because of the reduction in canopy over,” North said. “But other than avoiding placing their nests directly adjacent to a gap, owls showed no difference in the areas they used compared to the surrounding landscape with regard to gaps.”

North and his colleagues’ study comes on the heels of a newly available report synthesizing the last two decades of research pertaining to spotted owls. “The California Spotted Owl: Current State of Knowledge” was made available online by the Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Research Station. The report represents a comprehensive review by scientists of the ecology, habitat use, population dynamics and current threats to the viability of the California spotted owl.

The American Forest Resource Council has a section-by-section summary of the Resilient Federal Forests Act. This is a complex bill with much to discuss and debate. Here are three provisions that you may have not heard about — yet:

Sec. 301. Establishes a Pilot Program for Utilizing Arbitration for Resolving Legal Challenges to Projects Carried Out Under this Act.

Sec. 905. Prohibits the Application of the 21″ “East side Screens” Requirements on National Forests east of the Cascades in Region Six.

Sec. 911. Technical Corrections to the O&C Act of 1937. Affirms the original 500 mmbf minimum timber volume requirement of the O&C Act by requiring the BLM to annually offer for sale the greater of 500 mmbf or the sustained yield.

NCFP Bloggers,

You may recall that I am editing a book, a collection of essays called 193 Million Acres: Toward a Healthier and More Resilient U.S. Forest Service. The aim is to present constructive proposals for increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of the agency — solutions that would address challenges the agency faces. I have about two dozen first drafts that need reviews (constructive criticism) by folks with experience and expertise with the agency, either inside or outside of it. Topic areas include fire management policy/funding, legal/regulatory issues, collaboration, recreation, appeals and litigation, research and development, timber harvesting, leadership, agency history, etc. Essays range in length from about 2,000 words to 40,000 words. The review process is double blind: Authors will not know the identity of the reviewers, and vice versa.

If you’re interested in reviewing one or more essays in the next month or two, please let me know. Send me a brief summary of your experience and background and/or a CV, along with your contact information. I can’t pay you (or the authors, for that matter), but I’ll list you in the book, if you wish, as a reviewer. The book is scheduled to be available by August 2018.

Steve Wilent
Editor, The Forestry Source
The Society of American Foresters
503-622-3033
[email protected] or [email protected]