Fire and Fuels

Tracking the News… The Chiminea Otra Vez

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chiminea

I referred to this “fire policy letter in 2012” in this recent post as a “tempest in a teapot” or “a wildfire in a chiminea.” Then Larry wondered about this question “does putting out fires early actually cost less than paying to watch them burn”?

Probably based on statements like this:

In May 2012, Forest Service Deputy Chief Jim Hubbard issued a “fight all fire” directive. This may be why the feds spent more than $1 billion fighting fires last year. They came in $400 million over budget.

Now, our understanding was that someone had told Mr. Hubbard to be careful with fire so that the FS didn’t go too far over budget. So if is correct, then efforts to reduce firefighting costs had exactly the opposite effect. However, another way to look at it is that the FS might have even more over budget without the policy. Do we have any evidence that would support one explanation over the other? Certainly watching fires for months and then suppressing larger fires than you started with would cost more than suppressing a smaller fire. But maybe many of the “watched” will go out on their own instead of blowing up. Seems like the experts might have some relevant data on this.

So what is the source of these news articles?

Well the first one I found was this on March 6:

http://www.publicnewsservice.org/index.php?/content/article/31203-1

BOISE, Idaho – For decades, the U.S. Forest Service let small fires in remote areas burn naturally in recognition that fire was part of the natural landscape – and that by letting some fires burn, future large fires could be prevented. Last year, however, every fire was battled unless granted special status.

That’s been recognized as part of the reason the Forest Service spent more than $1 billion fighting fires in 2012.

Now, the agency is taking the “fight all fires” directive off the books.

Jonathan Oppenheimer, senior conservation associate at the Idaho Conservation League, said plenty of science and economic sense are behind the decision.

“Putting out every single fire is not good for firefighter safety, it’s not good for the environment, and it’s not good for the bottom line and the taxpayers,” he said.

The forest official who required that all fires be suppressed in 2012 had a goal of keeping all fires small.

Oppenheimer said the history of letting some fires burn got its start in Idaho with a fire in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness being allowed to burn in 1972 – the first time the Forest Service had made such a decision. The Gem State is home to millions of acres of backcountry.

“We’ve got a huge 4 1/2 million, 5 million-acre wildland complex in central Idaho,” he said, “where it simply doesn’t make sense to be putting firefighters’ lives at risk to go and put out small fires.”

Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell issued the decision on the policy shift for the upcoming fire season.

Who is the Public News Service?

“The Public News Service (PNS) provides reporting on a wide range of social, community, and environmental issues for mainstream and alternative media that amplifies progressive voices, is easy to use and has a proven track record of success. Supported by over 400 nonprofit organizations and other contributors, PNS provides high-quality news on public issues and current affairs.”

I wonder how you can provide high-quality (reasonably neutral) news and at the same time “amplify progressive voices.”

Friday, there was this story, which discusses the opinions of Timothy Ingallsbee, the Executive Director of FUSEE link here.

In this story, it says that:

In May 2012, Forest Service Deputy Chief Jim Hubbard issued a “fight all fire” directive.

But that’s not exactly what it said. If I had to wager a guess, I would have to wonder if there is something to the Hubbard=bad, Tidwell=good plotline that someone somewhere found worthy of promoting. Or as one journalist reader said “it’s just sloppy.”

So you might want to review what we said about this letter last year, when it came out here…on what I called, at the time, the “temporarily be careful about a let-burn” policy.

Although the Forest Service said the directive is temporary and will likely be suspended come winter, Manning’s article makes it seem like the decision is a complete reversal of the 1995 federal fire policy that made restoration of wildland fire a national priority. He argues that the conditions that led to the temporary change—hot, dry weather and budget shortfalls—aren’t likely to go away anytime soon, suggesting the fire suppression policy might stick around, too.

Stahl thinks so, too.

“Things like this have a tendency to become indelible,” he said. In order to reverse the policy next season, he thinks the Forest Service will have to make the case that budget and weather conditions are significantly different than this year—something he worries might not happen.

Hmm…

USFS Proposes Building 7.5 Miles of Permanent Firebreaks in Ventana Wilderness

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Ventura_WildernessAccording to the folks at Wilderness Watch, the U.S. Forest Service has proposed to build 7.5 miles of permanent firebreaks within the Ventana Wilderness on the Los Padres National Forest in California, using chainsaws, heavy equipment and vehicles. Wilderness Watch is opposing this proposal as a violation of the Wilderness Act, among other things. The issue is complicated by a series of special provisions that Congress added to laws that expanded the Ventana Wilderness over time. These special provisions authorized the use of some “presuppression” work within the Ventana additions, but none authorized chainsaws, heavy vehicles, or permanent 150-foot-wide firebreaks within an area that is supposed to remain “untrammeled by man.”

You can read Wilderness Watch’s detailed comments on the issue here.

Fanning the Smouldering Pile of Controversy… Last Year’s Fire Letter

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chiminea

From a story in E&E news titled:
Firefighters group optimistic U.S. will let more forests burn

An Oregon-based group that supports using fire to reduce fuel loads in national forests said today it hopes the Forest Service has abandoned a 2012 policy that made it difficult to use wildfires to improve forest health.

Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology said a letter last month from Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell indicates the agency has ditched an aggressive suppression strategy laid out last May by James Hubbard, the agency’s deputy chief of state and private forestry.

“Hubbard’s decree set Forest Service fire policy back 40 years to the days when all wildfires were attacked no matter what the risk to firefighters, the cost to taxpayers or the long-term damage to ecosystems from fighting those fires,” said Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of FUSEE. “Tidwell should be commended for getting the agency back on track with science-based and economically rational fire management policy that is both safer and smarter for firefighters and the public they serve.”

While Tidwell last year told reporters that the Hubbard memo was not a change in policy, it sparked debate among environmental groups and forestry experts who warned it would stifle some beneficial fires that thin overstocked Western forests and allow certain tree species to regenerate.

Decades of wildfire suppression are widely blamed for the dense, fire-prone forests across the West today.

The Hubbard memo first surfaced in an Aug. 7 article in OnEarth magazine, which is published by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Ingalsbee said Tidwell’s new wildfire response protocol for 2013 directs line officers to allow some fires to burn for restorative purposes in areas where there are low threats. “Line officers desiring to use wildland fire as an essential ecological process and natural change agent must follow the seven standards for managing incident risk to the highest level of performance and accountability,” Tidwell wrote.

That’s a break from the Hubbard memo, which forced line officers to obtain approval from regional foresters before they let a fire burn for restoration, Ingalsbee said.

Ingalsbee said the Forest Service spent $1.3 billion fighting fires last year, which was $400 million more than was budgeted.

Now if the reason Hubbard issued the letter last year (which I read as “let’s be careful out there”) was because someone told him to be careful (OMB? The Dept.?) (or are we thinking he walked to work one day and said “hmm, I think we’ll require RF approval this year??”) And now we don’t have to be careful (did OMB or the Dept change its mind?) or no, they still have to be careful, but now they don’t have to ask the RF (calling the guy or gal on the phone, not particularly onerous). But perhaps being careful is not “science-based”?

Also it seems to me that if folks were more careful, then they would have spent less than they would have otherwise, which was the point, right?

This thing seems to be a tempest in a teapot (or a wildfire in a chiminea)? There must be something more that has started all the drama.. can anyone help fill in the blanks?

Tidwell Fire Season Letter the Chief’s letter.
Forest Service Wildland Fire Response Protocol the Response Protocol.

Wilderness Fires: Who’s For What???

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Prescribed fire in Eagle Cap Wilderness
Prescribed fire in Eagle Cap Wilderness

I find that what people think, or don’t think, goes in wilderness, and why to be fascinating. If it’s trammeled you can act to untrammel, because that would be trammeling.. Oh, well.

Here’s a link and below is an excerpt.

These prescribed fires in wilderness areas wouldn’t have this
preparation. There are no plans to thin before the fires, Larkin said.
And firefighters would be using trails and natural features, such as
rock outcroppings, as fire breaks rather than scratching in fire lines.
While the Forest Service has used prescribed fire in wilderness
elsewhere around the country, this would be the first time it would be
done in Central Oregon.
The Cascade Lakes and Scott Mountain burns are planned for fall days
when temperatures are cooler than the prime fire season of summer but
forests are still dry enough to burn hot.
Along with helicopters, the plan says firefighters on the ground may use
flame-dripping torches to start the fires. The goal is to have high
severity fires, burning through the tops of the trees and killing many
of them. Firefighters would wait to start to the fires when the weather
forecast calls for impending snow or rain.
The fires would create a patchwork of burned and unburned woods, where
lightning-sparked blazes would not grow as large as they do now, said
Geoff Babb, a fire ecologist with the Forest Service and U.S. Bureau of
Land Management in Central Oregon.
Such a patchwork would mimic the forest seen in century-old,
black-and-white photos of the forests near Bend and Sisters. For much of
the 100 years since, the Forest Service and other agencies were quick to
snuff wildfires even in the wilderness, creating an overgrown forest
prone to big fires.
“I think if many of those were allowed to burn, they would have created
those patches that we are talking about,” Babb said.
Opposition
The Forest Service plans go against the intent of the Wilderness Act of
1964, which set aside lands to be left in their natural condition, said
Karen Coulter, director of the Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project in
Fossil.
“We are strongly opposed,” she said.
She offered threes reasons for her opposition to prescribed fire in
wilderness:
* Prescribed burning is the type of human management not intended for
wilderness.
* Protecting communities and other assets outside of wilderness is best
done by treating the forests close to them, not the backcountry.
* The fires wouldn’t burn the same as natural, lightning-started fires.
“Prescribed burning in wilderness is de facto management of wilderness
and contradicts the intention of the Wilderness Act to set aside
untrammeled wild places for spiritual solace, recreation and wildlife,”
she said.
While he considers lightning fires to be a natural part of wilderness
forests, Kevin Proescholdt, conservation director of Wilderness Watch,
said he is skeptical about the idea of prescribed fires burning in
wilderness. Proescholdt lives in Minnesota but works for the
Montana-based nonprofit focused on wilderness conservation. His
criticisms of the idea were in line with Coulter’s.
“It basically is a form of manipulation of the wilderness ecosystem by
humans that we are not supposed to do under the Wilderness Act,”
Proescholdt said.
Forest Service’s reasons
The Forest Service plans are legal, said Larkin, the Bend-Fort Rock
ranger, and he contends they are in the spirit of the Wilderness Act.
Larkin offers three reasons for doing the prescribed fires in the
wilderness:
* Returning the forest to a state where fire can plan a natural role and
lightning fires may be allowed to burn.
* Keeping wildfires that start in the wilderness in the wilderness.
* Increasing the safety for firefighters who respond to wildfires.
Babb and Larkin both emphasized that the burning would be done in a
relatively small piece of wilderness at a time, at most a couple hundred
acres, and the intention is not to burn the entire section outlined in
the plan.
“This is really the start of a process that we envision taking 20 to 30
years to finish,” Larkin said.

Also, I wonder why some people would think it is OK in some places but not in others.. or maybe it’s just a function of who is watching what forests.

Here’s an interesting paper I found on the topic on wilderness.net:

Interpreting the Wilderness Act
Varying interpretations of the specific language of the Wilderness Act contributes to the philosophical
split over manager-ignited fire. The Forest Service often equates historic conditions with naturalness.
However, Ryan wonders what point in history was natural – the point in time when white people arrived
or the point in time when the area was designated as wilderness or some other point? Whether or not
human actions are natural or can be natural is also a major question, in light of the Act’s focus on
humans as visitors. This question is further complicated by the history of Native American burning in
many places.
While restoration of naturalness or natural conditions is often the stated goal of manger-ignited fires,
the Wilderness Act also re quires that wilderness be untrammeled. According to Worf untrammeled
means that “you don’t control it, you don’t net it. You let nature’s processes go wherever you can.”
There is clear agreement that past fire suppression represents trammeling of wilderness. According to
Arno a mixed-severity fire region is “absolutely incredible for biodiversity,” and taking it away is
trammeling, “a much greater trammeling than most other things you can do in wilderness.” Morton also
agrees that suppression of fire has been a form of trammeling.

Nickas and Morton agree that manager-ignited fire also constitutes a trammeling. Morton claims that
they are trammeling to restore naturalness. Eckert calls this the “double trammel” and considers it the
crux of the issue. Do we trammel wilderness again to reduce the effects of previous trammeling? For
Morton “natural and untrammeled are 180 degrees apart,” meaning that they are in conflict with one
another regarding the issue of fire.Another trammel is required, in Morton’s view, to make wilderness
natural again.

Perhaps we need to hire more Forest Service philosophers to figure this out? We could get the “best available philosophy” ;)?

One Person’s “Red Tape” Is Another Person’s Following Legitimate Legal Processes: And That’s OK

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For many years, I carpooled in DC with a person who worked a lot in fire. We had more than our share of conversations about air tankers…this was about 10-20 years ago. It seems like there’s always something going on with them. A good business to get into for young people who want to follow the same issue for a long time.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting that Senator Udall was complaining about Forest Service “red tape” in this article, when the delay seems to have been caused by appeals of contracting procedures. But there is an emergency clause, that Udall seems to be thinking should be invoked. I like the idea of agencies being able to cut through “red tape” of all kinds; but perhaps different mechanisms could be invoked for different kinds of “red tape” or procedural processes..

Here is a post by Bob Berwyn and below is an excerpt:

Udall, who serves on the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is urgin private contractors to respect the U.S. Forest Service’s upcoming decision to award contracts to several U.S. companies to supply next-generation air tankers.

More information on the air tanker contract issue is online at Wildfire Today and Fire Aviation, where a recent post indicates the Forest Service expects to finalize contracts in the next couple of months.

Protests and challenges of past contract awards have already delayed the Forest Service’s acquisition of seven next-generation air tankers. Additional protests could leave Colorado and the West without adequate tanker resources for the 2013 wildfire season, Udall said.

Federal contracting rules allow private companies not awarded government contracts to protest contracting decisions without penalty. Previous protests by unsuccessful bidders have already delayed the delivery of the next-generation air tankers by at least eight months. Federal agencies, however, are allowed to override a protest in cases where there are urgent and compelling circumstances.

“Air tankers are critical firefighting resources that can save lives and prevent small blazes from becoming catastrophic wildfires,” Udall said. “When I met with Northern Colorado firefighting and emergency-management officials this week, they all agreed that we need to ensure that Colorado and the Forest Service have the resources they need to fight fires now. If contractors continue to challenge agency decisions, I will urge the Forest Service to use its emergency authorities to override the challenges and finalize the tanker contracts as soon as possible. Colorado cannot wait.”

New Video: Forests Born of Fire

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morel
The Wild Nature Institute has produced a new video, “Forests Born of Fire.”  Western US forests burned by high-intensity fire are important and rare wildlife habitat – but widespread policies of salvage logging and logging intended to prevent the likelihood of fire on private and public lands harms this habitat. a

The video was filmed in burned forests of the Lassen National Forest of California.  The idea was conceived, the script written, the footage gathered, and the video narrated and edited entirely by biologists studying wildlife that use burned forests.  Read more about WNI’s work to study and protect wildlife in burned forests.

Science synthesis to help guide land management of nation’s forests

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clean_salvage-06

Key findings from the synthesis were:

  • Efforts to promote resilience of socioecological systems increasingly consider the interaction of social values and ecological processes in pursuit of long-term mutual benefits and social learning for local communities and larger social networks.

  • Research indicates that strategic placement of treatments to reduce hazardous fuel accumulations and to restore fire as an ecosystem process within fire sheds can lower the risk for undesirable social and ecological outcomes associated with uncharacteristically large, severe, and dangerous fires, which include impacts to wildlife species of concern, such as the fisher and California spotted owl.

  • Science generally supports active treatment in some riparian and core wildlife zones to restore fire regimes. However, adaptive management, including experimentation at large landscape scales, is needed to evaluate which areas are priorities for treatment and what levels of treatment produce beneficial or neutral impacts to wildlife species and other socioecological values over long periods.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-02/ufs–sst022013.php

Yep, this is what we are already doing on my Ranger District. It is always important to focus on what we are leaving, rather than what is being removed. We still have longstanding limitations of protecting old growth and a ban on clearcutting. The picture is an example of salvage logging just six months after completion.

Molly Mowery on Wildfire Costs

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1-12_Wildfire_Watch KR.indd

Here is the link and below is an excerpt:

Recent wildfire seasons have provided mainstream media with plenty of material for dramatic images and attention-grabbing headlines, some more accurate than others. We often worry that misleading coverage can deliver the wrong message to the public, but it can also be a problem among wildfire professionals. Lately, I’ve had to re-evaluate my own methods of understanding wildfire news and where it comes from, as well as how I transmit that information to colleagues and the public.

Every year, the USDA Forest Service spends an extraordinary amount of money fighting wildfires. The budget for these activities in 2012 was nearly $2 billion dollars, the bulk of which went to fire suppression costs — aviation, engines, firefighting crews, agency personnel, and more — to protect threatened communities, people, and property. The federal government will soon announce its 2013 budget for wildfire management activities, and there is no reason to think that the price tag will be any less than it was last year.

One of the problems associated with this very large number is that it’s often interpreted as the “cost” of wildfire, when in fact it’s more like the tip of the iceberg of what wildfire actually costs. Focusing solely on suppression costs can blind us to a long list of additional direct, indirect, and associated costs, including damages to utilities and other facilities, timber and agricultural losses, evacuation aid to displaced residents, long-term rehabilitation costs to watersheds and other affected areas, post-fire flooding mitigation and damage, business revenue and property tax losses, public health impacts from smoke, and, in some cases, the tragic loss of human life. Costs such as private property losses are often included in media coverage of fires, but even these figures can hide associated costs that are buried in the details or are difficult to calculate.

Many of these unacknowledged costs are assumed by states and local communities, and continue long after the immediate impact of a wildfire. A 2009 report released by the Western Forestry Leadership Coalition looked at six different wildfire case studies between 2000 and 2003, and found that total expenses were anywhere from two to 30 times greater than the reported suppression costs. New Mexico’s Cerro Grande Fire in 2000, for example, destroyed 260 residences and caused extensive damage to the area’s cultural sites and utility infrastructure, and to equipment at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory. While the suppression bill was $33.5 million, estimates of the total cost, including immediate repairs, short-term rehabilitation, and long-term restoration, exceeded $970 million.

Another example is Colorado’s 2002 Hayman Fire, which burned nearly 138,000 acres (55,847 hectares) and destroyed hundreds of residences and outbuildings. Total suppression expenses were more than $42 million, but direct costs of property losses, utility losses, and Forest Service facility and resource losses brought the bill to more than $135 million. Adding other rehabilitation expenses, including tax revenue and business losses, reduced value of surviving structures, and other special costs such as losses to wilderness scenery, boosted the total to $207 million.