21st Century Problems

Government should return forest lands to Hispanics: Op-ed

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Here’s the link to an op-ed in the ABQ Journal.

Here is an excerpt:

The recent decision by the U.S. Forest Service to ban motorized vehicles on 100,000 acres in the Carson National Forest (mostly in Taos County) is going to hurt tens of thousands of Hispanic families in northern New Mexico who rely on cutting their firewood each winter in these same lands to keep their families warm during the cold winters.
This Forest Service ban will effectively put all this land off-limits to the Hispanic families and communities of northern New Mexico starting immediately and will make it very difficult – if not impossible – for Hispanic families to cut their firewood for next winter and all future winters, unless this decision is reversed soon.

In addition to firewood cutting, this ban will effectively make it impossible for Hispanic families in northern New Mexico to use these lands for our traditional cultural uses as we have for 400 years.
These traditional Hispano cultural uses include grazing our small cattle herds in these lands, hunting, fishing, and piñon and herb gathering, among other traditional uses.

It seems the Forest Service is now allowing the anti-Hispanic environmentalists to ban the Hispanic families from using these lands controlled by the Forest Service. The anti-Hispanic agenda of the environmentalists and their movement is well-known in northern New Mexico, where Hispanic families, individuals and communities – along with our Hispano culture – have been under attack by this anti-Hispanic movement for many years now.

These anti-Hispanic environmentalists have been running a campaign of lies for many years, falsely claiming their movement is so diverse and so helpful to the Hispanic communities. The reality is the environmentalists have a selfish, elitist and anti-Hispanic agenda whose goal seems to be the destruction of the Hispanic communities and culture in northern New Mexico

I’m assuming that the road closure is for environmental protection or to save money. If that were the case, I think it’s really hard to argue that something happening all over the country is anti-Hispanic. People of all races, and from the Native Americans to this decades’ immigrants use public lands. Note to readers: I disagree with Mr. Martinez that environmental groups are specifically anti-Hispanic. Closing roads may well have different impacts to different ethnic groups and social classes, though. Hopefully that’s addressed in the environmental justice part of the social analysis in the environmental documentation.

What is different for Native Americans, is that they have treaty rights are in a “government to government” relationship, so it’s fundamentally a legal difference compared to run-of-the-mill forest neighbors.

Considering that more than 90 percent of the lands claimed by the Carson and Santa Fe National Forests were stolen from the Hispanic land grant communities by corrupt and racist U.S. government officials, this latest ban is further proof that our government should return the land grant lands to the Hispanic land grant communities in northern New Mexico, who remain the legal owners of these lands.

Our Hispano families, communities and culture in northern New Mexico have a right to exist and a right to survive, just as the Native Americans and other group enjoys that right. Our Hispano communities’ right to exist and survive includes the return of our land grant lands.

If Mr. Martinez’s claim about the origin of the national forests in New Mexico is accurate, then Hispano families also have a unique property right to that land.

However, I hope that all “National forest neighbor” communities have some “a right to exist and a right to survive,” and their traditional uses should be respected.

How likely is a home to burn in wildfire? New scale rates the risk

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Below are excerpts from Rob Chaney’s article in today’s Missoulian:

It’s common to assume the walls of flame under a towering smoke column pose the biggest threat in a wildfire, said Jack Cohen, a scientist at the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula. That’s true for people, but not for houses.

“The same heat radiation that on my exposed skin will give me a second-degree burn in 5 seconds, takes 27 minutes to ignite wood,” Cohen said. “Firefighters are way more vulnerable to big flames than a house is. That tends to skew what we pay attention to.”

In most of the lost-house incidents he has studied, Cohen found the residential destruction took place eight to 10 hours after the big flame front moved through. That’s when embers finally ignited piles of pine needles in a rain gutter, or leftover lumber under a deck, and eventually burned the house down.

“Unless houses are mitigated to be ignition-resistant, firefighters can’t be effective in well-developed residential areas,” Cohen said. “There aren’t enough firefighters and resources to assist and suppress ignitions on all houses exposed.”

Several new tools have appeared in the past year that may make the homes lost in Lolo Creek less common. A fire hazard scale developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and U.S. Forest Service can suggest changes in building codes similar to how the Richter Scale defines risk in an earthquake region.

Last month, a task force gathered by Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper proposed a way to rank homes based on fire risk. [Note: We discussed the findings of the task force on the blog here.]  Montana Building Association government affairs specialist Dustin Stewart attended the conference where it was unveiled.

“Every home would be given a grade on a sliding scale from 1 to 10 to determine its susceptibility to wildland fire,” Stewart said. “It’s not entirely clear who would use the grade. Insurance companies could potentially use it when developing policies for wildfire. Or it could trigger a mandatory fire mitigation for those homes with high grades.”

Stewart said the Colorado Homebuilders Association members he talked with were not in favor of the plan, warning it could “hang a scarlet letter on the house.”

“It could severely impact resale value,” he said. “And it becomes very politically unpopular when you tell 10,000 residents across the state they have to disclose this number when they sell their house.”….

“The ignition zone is usually on private property, and that changes the social dynamics,” Cohen said. “We don’t have the authority to go in and tell people to make changes or to make changes ourselves. We have to have homeowner agreement, engagement and participation in reducing their vulnerability.”

In other words, labeling people from space won’t save any houses next summer. Stewart, at the Montana Homebuilders Association, had a similar observation.

“I think incidents like Hurricane Sandy, the Oklahoma tornadoes, the wildfires in Colorado – they’re going to become a bigger part of the public discussion in new construction standards,” Stewart said. “But there are things people can do without creating another level of government. That’s a nice thing about living in Montana. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time there’s a storm or fire. We can find a solution that isn’t heavy handed and gets the job done. There may be a big national debate, but the tenor is different as a result of where we live. It would help everyone if a few more homeowners would take care of a few simple things on the to-do list before we enter that debate.”

See also:

Fire Prevention Plans: “Almost impossible unless we have a different mindset”

CO Task Force: Homeowners should pay to live in burn zones; developers/real estate industry oppose parts of plan

Fire Prevention Plans: “Almost impossible unless we have a different mindset”

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Huge kudos to Missoulian/Ravalli Republic reporter David Erickson for one of the best, factual and most candid looks at the issue of home/community wildfire protection, which appeared in today’s paper. Honestly, I have to believe that one of the reasons this article is so complete and interesting is because the reporter must have taped the entire conversation. So instead of a garbled collection of one sentence sound bites, the public gets huge chucks of information from Montana DNRC and U.S. Forest Service fire experts, spoken in their own words.

From my perspective, the heart of the article is the simple fact that way, way too many homeowners living in the Wildland-Urban Interface simply don’t take responsibility for conducting proven and effective FireWise measures, which need to occur on a pretty regular basis, and certainly long before a wildfire is cresting the ridge. Remember, on the Lolo Creek Complex fire professional “firefighters [from as far away as North Carolina] had been relegated to raking pine needles from yards while others cleared brush and limbed up trees surrounding homes.”  Yet,  many times (as the article points out) these are the same people who complain the loudest when U.S. Forest Service, state DNRC and even local volunteer fire department crews aren’t able to save their house during a wildfire.

The article really cuts to the heart of the issue regarding some of the politics in Montana, including what can best be described as simply anti-government sentiments.

The situation described by US Forest Service and Montana DNRC fire experts also seems to contradict one of the common refrains I hear all the time in Montana, and also on this blog when we talk about wildfire in places like Colorado’s Front Range. Basically, while some people want to give the impression that homeowners, neighborhood associations and communities have done absolutely everything possible to get FireWise and prepare for the wildfire, and all that’s left to do is increase “fuel reduction” efforts on public Forest Service lands, the experts in this article paint a much different picture. Perhaps this is just the situation and mindset in Montana, so I’m curious to see what others have experienced.

Finally, I also must highlight that the point made by Montana State Forester Harrington regarding the fact that “thinning and pre-treating forests” really doesn’t work when you have single-digit humidity, 95+ temperatures and high winds is basically the same exact point that environmentalists have been trying to make for the better part of two decades now. Reader’s may recall George Wuerthner’s piece “Wind Drives All Large Blazes,” posted on this blog as the Lolo Creek Complex fire was burning.

Please do read David Erickson’s entire article. Below are some highlight snips:

LOLO – How do you reconcile the fact that many private landowners in Montana are resistant to the government and local fire managers telling them what to do with their land when those same private landowners become outraged after a wildfire burns their property that wasn’t properly taken care of beforehand?

That’s the question a group of state legislators grappled with when they met with Bitterroot Valley fire managers and Montana Department of Natural Resources forestry officials on Thursday to tour the remains of the 11,000-acre Lolo Complex fire that ripped through the Highway 12 corridor west of Lolo this past August….

State Sen. Cliff Larson of Frenchtown, who represents Senate District 50, said he lives near where the Black Cat fire torched 12,000 acres in 2007.

“I know the Frenchtown Fire Department tried to work with local landowners on fuel reduction programs and protecting against fire hazards,” he recalled. “People said, ‘Just get off my property, don’t tell me what to do.’ And there are two people that I know of personally that were outraged when the fire department didn’t come there right away and because they had 15 cords of wood stacked behind their house they had to hose them down to protect their house.

“And they are outraged that they didn’t get that attention, even though the fire department went there in advance and warned them that they have some serious fire hazards right there on their property. And those two families are still complaining. So how do we force people to cooperate with the DNRC and the fire departments and the Forest Service? It’s frustrating.”

Bob Harrington, the Montana DNRC state forester, said that community wildfire prevention plans are really good in some counties but not great in others.

“We in the fire service have been at it for 15 to 20 years now, really intensely trying to impress on those homeowners that live in the wildland/urban interface to treat their property,” he explained. “We do public media, we do workshops, and there are individual consultations that the fire departments do, that our folks do. A lot of the landowners do it and take advantage of it. But we have a lot folks that that isn’t enough of an incentive yet. Whether it’s pressure from insurance, pressure from banking or peer pressure from their neighbors. Sometimes that works, sometimes that doesn’t. Unfortunately, sometimes we as Americans, there’s a lot of us that don’t respond unless it hits us in the wallet.”…

The fire managers agreed that the Lolo Complex’s main blowup was the type of fire behavior that is not easily controlled….

Harrington said a variety of factors contributed to the fire’s wild blowup.

“That’s a part of the public dialogue that we’ve been having since this fire happened,” he said. “We have folks on one side who are saying, ‘See, forest management doesn’t do anything to stop forest fires,’ because there was so much Plum Creek land that had been managed, and that also burned. The reality is, when we are talking about thinning and pre-treating forest, we’re not talking about fires like this. This was one of the most extreme fire days that you are going to see in western Montana. Single-digit humidity, close to triple-digit temperatures, and then winds 20, 30 and 40 miles per hour.

“The analogy I always give is that we still give flu shots even though we have influenza outbreaks because we are trying to minimize the effect of that, so we’re still treating forests. Reducing fire risk and prioritizing some sections in the wildland urban interface, and it gets a little bit trickier on private land and industrial forest land, which the majority of this fire happened on, areas that had been intensively managed in the past. A lot of what carried the fire was second-growth trees. Everything was burning, grass and downed logs, everything.”

Harrington said he has noticed that some landowners take advantage of educational programs and cost-sharing programs to prepare their land for fire danger, but others do not….

“So the innovators that understand where they live, they’ve taken advantage of it. But even then, like these guys saw managing this fire, we had a lot of folks in Sleeman Gulch where we had firefighters out there doing that work at the last minute.”….

Ehli said that in his experience, telling property owners what they need to do on their land to mitigate fire danger isn’t going to work.

“When we start talking about a wildfire prevention plan, I was the chief of the Hamilton Volunteer Fire Department when that came through and there was a huge pushback,” he said. “Oh my God, the resistance you got from county personnel, county commissioners and huge, huge pushback. So when you start talking about a community wildfire prevention plan, it’s not as simple as drawing lines on a map. Not only because of the enormous amount of property you have to think about, but also the political aspect as well.

“So we have got to be honest with ourselves when we start talking about prevention plans, I’m going to say it, it’s almost impossible unless we have a different mindset put in. And maybe we’re going to get there someday within the state of Montana and get people on board and get property owners on board about what we need to do, but we’ve really got to talk about the near impossibility of getting something like this in play, mostly from the political standpoint.”….

Liane said that he hopes a fire like the Lolo Complex will convince people to listen to local fire departments about taking steps to protect their property during the winter.

“Those of us who have served in natural resources committees would love to hear more about how do you convince those individuals who are knotheads to take the firewood off their back porch?” he said. “We need to build a plan that encourages people through local service activities, and the fire department in Frenchtown is very proactive. They have the same problem that Lolo does. People are sitting ducks when a fire like this comes through.”

Hansen said not a lot has changed since the big fires of 2000 rolled through the Bitterroot Valley.

“It’s the short-term memory thing that kills us,” he said. “I mean, if you had come down here last winter knocking on doors to sell people on the idea of fuel treatment, they would have told you to pound sand. Now the next three years, they’ll be begging for it. And three years from now they’ll have forgotten how bad the fire was. And we’ve seen it happen since the fires of 2000. You know, two years after the fire, they are back to not wanting anybody to tell them what to do.”

“Until the fire comes knocking at their door,” Ehli added.

CO Task Force: Homeowners should pay to live in burn zones; developers/real estate industry oppose parts of plan

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The Denver Post’s Bruce Finley had this article in the paper a few days ago.  Below are some highlights from the article:

Gov. John Hickenlooper’s wildfire team unveiled an overhaul of how Colorado deals with the growing problem of people building houses in forests prone to burn, shifting more of the responsibility to homeowners.

The overhaul recommends that lawmakers charge fees on homes built in woods, rate the wildfire risk of the 556,000 houses already built in burn zones on a 1-10 scale and inform insurers, and establish a state building code for use of fire-resistant materials and defensible space.

Sellers of homes would have to disclose wildfire risks, just as they must disclose flood risks. And state health officials would adjust air-quality permit rules to give greater flexibility for conducting controlled burns in overly dense forests to reduce the risk of ruinous superfires….

Protecting homes from wildfires is increasingly costly, with the state’s share going up from around $10 million a year to $48 million in 2012 and $54 million this year – some of which may be reimbursed by the federal government.

Yet construction in the mountains and foothills is accelerating. A Colorado State University study found development will cover 2.1 million acres in wildfire-prone areas by 2030, up from about 1 million today.

But parts of the plan face opposition from developers and the real estate industry.

“When you put a number 10 on a house, it can change the game. In a lot of cases, it could make property un-sellable,” said Colorado Association of Home Builders chief Amie Mayhew, a task force member.

Under the risk ratings recommendation, a home classified as high-risk would go through a “mitigation audit” to specify how to protect it against wildfire. Homeowners who do so could have their risk ratings reduced, said Barbara Kelley, director of the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies, who ran the task force.”Homeowners in the wildland-urban interface should take on more of the responsibility” for protecting against wildfire, Kelley said.

Developers and the real estate industry also oppose a state building code unless implementation and enforcement is left up to local authorities.

And the Colorado Association of Realtors – not represented on the task force – rejects requiring disclosure of wildfire risks before home sales, vice president Rachel Nance said. House contracts could simply include a website address where buyers could conduct their own research into risks, she said.

What Our Forests Need: A Forum

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This is reposted from Dan Botkin’s blog of June 23. here We’re discussing the more philosophical aspects in Virtual Book Club here. But he raises other topics that we can discuss here..

Foresters and Ecologists thinking about forest practices on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington State, as part of a project about effects of forestry on salmon. (Photo by D. B. Botkin)
Foresters and Ecologists thinking about forest practices on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington State, as part of a project about effects of forestry on salmon. (Photo by D. B. Botkin)

This is a forum open to anyone who has thoughts to share about forests and forestry. I will start by expressing how I see current problems about America’s forests and forestry.

I have spent almost half a century trying to understand how forests work, and to use that understanding to solve forest related environmental problems, and to come to know what our place within forests should be, both for the best for us and best for forest ecosystems. My recent visit with Certified Forester Bob Williams in the New Jersey pine barrens reinforced by concern that today we face serious problems about our nation’s forests, and it is time to open a discussion of what needs to be done (See my post Woodsmanship and Naturecraftsmanship).

To understand— to even have a rudimentary notion— about forests as environment, and how we are and should manage and conserve them, we have to deal with three questions: Who owns and controls our forests; how do management, conservation, and the concepts on which these depend have to change, and what has happened to public attitudes, interests, and appreciation of forests.

As I see it, here are the major issues:

We have to accept that nothing in the environment is constant; everything is always changing. Our management and conservation of forests must take this into account in ways not yet dominant.
Forest ownership has changed greatly in the past 40 years, but few people know about this. Who owns forests and what their emphasis is on research and actions has changed.
Forestry research has declined.
Public interest in forests has declined. While it used to be one of the major environmental issues, today, except for wildfires and deforestation of tropical rainforests, we hear relatively little about forests and forest management.

Implications of these major Issues

Since the environment has always changed and is always changin, all life has evolved with and adapted to environmental change. Many, perhaps most, species require environmental change to persist. Another consequence of the ever-changing character of nature is that there is no single best state of nature. As long as people believed in a balance of nature, then there could only be one best state of nature, its (supposedly) constant state. In an every-changing nature, it is possible in the abstract that there might be one best state. But in reality this is not the case.

Our approach to conservation and management of forests must also accept a humility: We can affect, but only partially control, Earth’s environment. As Buckminster Fuller put it, our problem is that we live on a planet that didn’t come with an instruction manual. Globally, our environment is a set of very complex systems, none in a steady-state, each affecting the others, and which we are only beginning to understand.

People have altered the environment for at least 10,000 years, probably much longer. What people used to consider virgin nature never-touched by people is turning out in surprisingly many cases to have been greatly affected by people.

Consequences of changes in forest land ownership: Until the 1980s, most large-scale private forests were owned by 15 major timber corporations, and forest research was expanding. Today, none of the major timber corporations owns any significant forest land. They sold their forests. The major large private owners are REITs and TIMOs. One cannot overestimate the importance of this change. But oddly, almost nobody knows about it. Almost nobody talks about it.

Lack of basic data and monitoring. In this information age, this time of data-mining, massive ability to gather data, forest research is declining and some of the most basic and information data are not being gathered.

Consequences of changes in public and media attention to forests and forestry. Today, much less media and public attention is on forests than in 1980s. During much of the twentieth century, most aspects of forest use were the subjects of lively discussions, including the importance of old-growth, the role of forests in affecting salmon habitat, the certification of forest practices as sustainable, whether timber corporations and the U.S. Forest Service were managing forests properly, what were the ecological and biodiversity roles of stages in forests succession other than old growth.

Today we hear about forests as possible carbon sinks and players in climate change, and we get alarmed about forests when there are major wild fires. Much of public and media attention about forests is reduced to very simple statements, such as “stop tropical rainforest deforestation.” Agreeing with this statement may make us feel good as environmentally-concerned people. This is a convenient sympathy, because tropical rainforest deforestation is a problem far from our shores, about which we can do little and actually do less. In short, when we even bother to think about forests today, it is in a feel good but do little sense.

Where do we go from here? That’s the question. There are many professional foresters and forest scientists, and I’m sure many have thoughts about what we need to do. This is a forum to allow that discussion.

Check out the comments as well…you’ll see people we hear from often, like Derek, and some we seldom hear from (e.g. Jim Coufal). What ideas do you think are important, and worthy of bringing to this blog for discussion?

Rim Fire Op-Ed by Dr. Thomas Bonnicksen

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Yosemite-air2-web

This is where the Rim Fire “ran out of fuel”, in Yosemite National Park. Kibbie Lake is near the northeast flank of the fire, where there will be no firelines. Ironically, I was planning a hike to this area, a few weeks ago. (I shot this picture while flying with a forestry buddy, back in 1990. )

“Fire monsters can only devour landscapes if we feed them fuel. More than a century ago, we began protecting forests from fire. We did not know that lightning and Indian fires kept forests open and immune from monster fires. More recently, we adopted an anti-management philosophy that almost completely bans logging and thinning on public lands, even when it is designed to restore historic forests and prevent monster fires. Now, fallen trees and branches clutter the ground and young trees and brush grow so thick that it is difficult to walk through many forests. It is not surprising that the gentle fires of the past have become the fire monsters of the present.

Even so, we keep feeding fuel to the fire monster while blaming global warming, high winds, drought or any other excuse we can think of that keeps us from taking responsibility for the death and destruction these monsters create. We know the climate is warming just as it has done many times for millions of years. We also know that fires burn hotter when the temperature is high, fuel is dry and winds blow strong. Even so, these conditions only contribute to fire intensity. It is a scientific fact that a fire can’t burn without fuel. The more fuel the bigger the fire, regardless of drought or wind.”………. Dr. Thomas Bonnicksen

This article Here is in the local paper, here in Calaveras County, just an hour away from the Rim Fire.

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5 Groups Appeal Tongass Timber Sale: 6,000 acres of old-growth would be logged, 46 miles of new roads constructed

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The following was sent to me by the Greater Southeast Alaska Conservation Community (GSACC). If you have any questions about the release and the info contained within it, please contact the GSACC directly. Thanks. – mk

On August 16, GSACC and four other organizations filed an administrative appeal of the Tongass Forest Supervisor’s decision to proceed with the Big Thorne timber project. The appeal went to to the next highest level in the agency, Regional Forester Beth Pendleton. The appeal is known as Cascadia Wildlands et al. (2013), and other co-appellants are Greenpeace, Center for Biological Diversity and Tongass Conservation Society.

The project would log 148 million board feet of timber [enough to fill 29,600 log trucks], including over 6,000 acres of old-growth forest from heavily hammered Prince of Wales Island. 46 miles of new logging roads would be built and another 36 miles would be reconstructed. Our points of appeal encompass fundamental problems with the concept of the project, its economic problems, aquatic impacts from roading and logging, and severe impacts to wildlife including wolves, deer, bear, goshawks and flying squirrels. Our Request for Relief is that “the decision to approve the ROD and FEIS be reversed and that the project be cancelled in its entirety because of multiple failures to comply with the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), National Forest Management Act (NFMA), Clean Water Act (CWA), Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), Tongass Timber Reform Act (TTRA), Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) and various regulations and policies implementing these statutes.”

Included with the appeal were three expert declarations. One is by Dr. David Person, who did 22 years wolf and other ecological research on Prince of Wales Island and recently retired from the Alaska Department of Fish & Game. It says that the predator-prey system on the island (which includes wolves, bear, people and deer) is likely at the point of collapse, with the Big Thorne project being the tipping point. Another declaration is by Jon Rhodes, an expert on the sediment impacts of logging roads and their effect on fish. The third is by Joe Mehrkens, GSACC board member and former Alaska Regional Economist for the Forest Service, on the failings of the economic analysis in the Big Thorne EIS and economic nonsense this project embodies.

The appeal and the declarations are available for viewing and download at this link. Because the appeal is 127 pages, you will likely find the clickable table of contents useful. This series of e-mails illustrates the kind of biological knowledge that the State of Alaska has withheld from the NEPA process for the Big Thorne timber sale project on the Tongass National Forest.

How we can fix wildfire funding: Oregonian Op-Ed by Hank Kashdan

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Here’s the link.

By Hank Kashdan

When U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell announced on Aug. 16 that the agency would “borrow” $600 million from non-fire-suppression funds to cover the cost of wildfires this season, I could feel the gut shot to Forest Service employees across the nation.

The national forests compose 8 percent of the nation’s land base and provide 40 percent of its fresh water. Imagine having a job where your work contributes directly to improving forest health and reducing the risk of wildfire, only to have funds for your project taken at the last minute.

As director of budget for the Forest Service during the height of fire borrowing in 2000 through 2005, I managed the largest fire borrowing in the agency’s history, including 2002, when $999 million was moved from other budget lines to cover fire-suppression costs. Then in 2009, I thought this senseless process was over with passage of the FLAME Act (Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement Act). Not so. As the Forest Service enters its second consecutive year of fire borrowing, it is clear the FLAME Act has been ignored.

Although this year’s borrowing of $600 million may not be the largest, it will likely be the most impactful. With sequestration, the Forest Service is increasingly getting work done through third-party partnerships. In greater proportions, this on-the-ground work is focused on treating the land to make it less vulnerable to serious wildfire, and it is exactly this work that is being cancelled, with the cooperating third parties left “holding the bag.” Our first responders who risk their lives on the fire lines, the communities and residents who live and work adjacent to these lands, and employees of the land management agencies deserve more. And in fact, with only a reasonable legislative effort, this problem can be fixed.

Recent press articles cite critics who say Congress is to blame. As a Forest Service employee who lived wildfire funding for the last 15 years of my career, I know the blame is very shareable. Former President George W. Bush, President Barack Obama and Congress own this problem equally. Even Mother Nature takes a hit in the blame game.

During the FLAME Act development, the Bush administration opposed alternatives to the funding process that caused fire borrowing. With the nation in economic crisis, the Obama administration wanted no distraction from focus on recovery and continued the Bush administration’s opposition. Only through advocacy from a coalition spanning the spectrum from the most active environmental organizations to the largest forest products producers was Congress compelled to enact FLAME. It was a victory for good government and an example of cooperation among diverse interests.

Then came Mother Nature, delivering successive years of “below average” fire seasons that resulted in budgeted suppression funds being sufficient (2009 through 2011). The good news: Reserves of cash totaling $1.16 billion were generated, which under the FLAME Act would be available for “above-average fire years.” The bad news: Nature’s kindness erased the short-term memories of the Obama administration and Congress. As the nation faced its economic woes, the cash reserves were ripe for the taking, and it didn’t take long. Considering these reserves, the administration low-balled its request for suppression funding, and Congress obliged by erasing the reserves from the ledger. Nature then retaliated with two years of hot and dry conditions, leading to large wildfires and the fire borrowing that Forest Service Chief Tidwell announced Aug. 16.

With the nation’s budget challenges a national priority, it is unfortunately certain that any cash reserves from below-average fire years will be too tempting a target for use by the administration and Congress. Thus, we must acknowledge that the FLAME Act is ultimately not going work. Thankfully, there can be a permanent solution. It now appears the administration and Congress are willing to consider a fix. The solution is to amend the Stafford Act (authority under which FEMA covers the cost of national disasters) to include wildfire. Hurricanes are like wildfires; a specific date for the event can’t be determined, but future occurrence is a certainty. The Stafford Act provides FEMA with funding that doesn’t disrupt its internal operations. This same authority could be available to the states and federal land management agencies to cover the cost of wildfire suppression.

An end to this senseless process is possible, but only if the president and Congress know they have to act. Let’s get this fixed.

Something we can all support?

Let’s Just Transfer FS Land to the Park Service: Why or Why Not?

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Gil asked a really good question, in my mind, one that is another way of asking what are our public lands for? But a bit more concrete.

Here’s his question. I’m hoping regulars on the blog will answer as well as perhaps some newbies.

The National Park Service (NPS) approach seems to be what the Forest Ecology Scientists and a lot of environmentalists want.

So, my question to all is: how many people in the NCFP group would think that things would be better off if all USFS lands and budget monies (less any economies of scale savings) were transferred to the NPS along with any resources that the NPS requested?

If you don’t choose the transfer, then please tell us what advantages you see for some federal lands being managed by the USFS over NPS management.

As far as I am concerned, with things the way that they are now, I see no reason not to turn all management over to the NPS. It would get the stigma of the USFS being logger friendly off of the table and maybe give the environmental groups a degree of collaborative confidence that is missing to a large degree with the USFS.

Let’s begin this discussion by assuming that there would be no obligation to log any lands.

SO MUCH FOR RESTORATION TO HISTORICAL NORMS

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Gil sent this in and suggested it as a new thread.. but I thought it was an interesting juxtaposition with this piece in the Denver Post on Park Service fire policy.

Otherwise, park officials prefer to herd fires where they want them to go and allow blazes to burn out on their own.

It’s a science-based approach that serves the same function as offseason forest thinning and controlled burns. But those arguments often fail to stand up to public distaste for trees burning in beloved national parks.

and..

As the Rim fire invades Yosemite, park officials pore over maps that reflect the historic fire return interval — the frequency that natural fire goes through an area. Every acre of the park is mapped in this fashion, and each has a fire “prescription.”

So, for instance, when the blaze hits an area of the park where fire returns every 12 years — but hasn’t been burned in 16 years — the prescription for that area is to let it burn.

“In the national parks, a major part of our job is to protect a place so that nature can work,” said Yellowstone spokesman Al Nash. “In many large parks in the West, fire is one way that nature works.”

I wonder if these folks are even aware that Nature is an idea and managing to a historic frequency is based on an idea and value, not “science.” These people are in dire need of Botkin and his book. IMHO.

So back to Gil’s post. Like I said, interesting juxtaposition.

SO MUCH FOR RESTORATION TO HISTORICAL NORMS <–

Click to access FS_Climate1114%20opt.pdf

– "By the end of the 21st century, forest ecosystems in the United States will differ from those of today as a result of changing climate. Although increases in temperature, changes in precipitation, higher atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), and higher nitrogen (N) deposition may change ecosystem structure and function, the most rapidly visible and most
significant short-term effects on forest ecosystems will be caused by altered disturbance regimes. For example, wildfires, insect infestations, pulses of erosion and flooding, and drought-induced tree mortality are all expected to increase during the 21st century. These direct and indirect climate-change effects are likely to cause losses of ecosystem services in some areas, but may also improve and expand ecosystem services in others. Some areas may be particularly vulnerable because current infrastructure and resource production are based on past climate and steady-state conditions. "

– PNW – "Climate is projected to become unfavorable for Douglasfir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco) over 32 percent of its current range in Washington, and up to 85 percent of the range of some pine species may be outside the current climatically suitable range." Bye, Bye NSO, Hello Barred Owl.

– NE – "A warmer climate will cause a major reduction of spruce-fir forest, moderate reduction of maple-birch-beech forest, and expansion of oak-dominated forest. Projections of change in suitable habitat indicate that, of the 84 most common species, 23 to 33 will lose suitable habitat under low- and high-emission scenarios, 48 to 50 will gain habitat, and 1 to 10 will experience no change."