Fire and Fuels

NY Times: Forest fire research questions wisdom of fuel reduction

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Yesterday, Jim Robbins (a Montana-based science writer for the New York Times) had a very interesting article in the paper, which featured a few of the scientists/researchers we’ve highlighted before on this blog.

Robbins was lucky enough to spend a day in the woods with Dr. Richard Hutto, professor of biology and the director of the University of Montana’s Avian Science Center.  Dr. Hutto’s research has been brought up on this blog a few times in the past.  A few years ago, Dr. Hutto put together a short video titled, “Portraits in Black,” which is a  series of images from severely burned forests to help illustrate the value of such forests to those who might not believe such value exists (such as some of the readers and commenters of this blog?).

MISSOULA, Mont. — On a forested mountainside that was charred in a wildfire in 2003, Richard Hutto, a University of Montana ornithologist, plays a recording of a black-backed woodpecker drumming on a tree.

The distinctive tattoo goes unanswered until Dr. Hutto is ready to leave. Then, at the top of a tree burned to charcoal, a woodpecker with black feathers, a white breast and a yellow slash on its crown hammers a rhythmic response.

“This forest may have burned,” says Dr. Hutto, smiling, “but that doesn’t mean it’s dead. There’s a lot going on.”

The black-backed woodpecker’s drum signals more than the return of life to the forest. It also may be an important clue toward resolving a debate about how much, and even whether, to try to prevent large forest fires.

Scientists are at loggerheads over whether there is an ecological advantage to thinning forests and using prescribed fire to reduce fuel for subsequent fires — or whether those methods actually diminish ecological processes and biodiversity….

Recent research [some ecologists and environmentalists] say shows that nature often caused far more severe fires than tree ring records show. That means the ecology of Western forests depends on fires of varying degrees of severity, including what we think of as catastrophic fires, not just the kinds of low-intensity blazes that current Forest Service policy favors.

They say that large fires, far from destroying forests, can be a shot of adrenaline that stimulates biodiversity.

Robbins also speaks with Dr. William Baker, a fire ecologist at the University of Wyoming who’s recent research we’ve also discussed quite a bit on this blog.

William Baker, a fire and landscape ecologist at the University of Wyoming, contends that the kind of limited fires that are being employed to control bigger fires were not as common in nature as has been thought.

For a recent paper in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography, published with Mark Williams, Dr. Baker employed an unorthodox method to reconstruct fire history that challenges current analysis of tree rings. (The study was financed by the National Science Foundation and the United States Department of Agriculture.)

Dr. Baker and Dr. Williams examined thousands of handwritten records created by agents of the federal General Land Office who surveyed undeveloped land in the West in the mid-19th century. The surveyors used an ax to mark trees at precise intervals and took meticulous notes on what the vegetation between marked trees looked like — meadow, burned forest or mature trees.

Altogether, Dr. Baker’s students combed through 13,000 handwritten records on 28,000 marked trees, and hiked miles in Oregon, Colorado and Arizona to find some of the trees and compare today’s conditions with those from the 1800s.

They found that low-intensity fires that occurred naturally were not as widespread as other research holds, and that they did not prevent more severe fires. Dr. Baker concluded that big fires are inevitable, and argues that it is best for ecosystems — and less expensive — to put up with them.

“Our research shows that reducing fuels isn’t going to reduce severity much,” he said. “Even if you reduce fuels, you are still going to have severe fires” because of extreme weather.

The article wraps up with some pretty good thoughts about the concept of “disturbance ecology” and a nice money quote from Dr. Hutto:

Proponents of the free-fire theory say that while human lives and property should be protected, beyond that widespread wildfires should be viewed as necessary ecological events that reset the clock on a landscape to provide habitats for numerous species for years and even decades to come. This principle stems from research into “disturbance ecology.” For instance, when a hurricane blows down a large swath of forest or a volcano erupts, it strongly stimulates an ecosystem, scientists have found.

“Disturbances are very important; they are huge,” said Mark Swanson, a Washington State University ecologist who recently published a paper noting that recovered areas thrived after the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980. “You actually have an increase in species richness, sometimes to regionally high levels.”

Dr. Hutto, the University of Montana ornithologist, said he believes the Forest Service approach was misguided. He pointed out that morel mushrooms thrive on charred ground, and birds, including the mountain bluebird and black-backed woodpecker, then move in.

Similarly, a plant called snowbush can remain dormant in the soil for centuries until heat from a fire cracks its seed coat, and it blooms profusely.

“The first year after a fire is when the magic really happens,” Dr. Hutto said.

UPDATE (Sept 19): The most recent issue of High Country News contains a related feature article, Fire scientists fight over what Western forests should look like.

Another UPDATE (Sept 26):  Here’s an interesting comment made by Dr. Hutto on the HCN website:

Richard Hutto

Sep 19, 2012 09:02 AM

Swetnam and Brown “…questioned how ponderosa pines could regenerate if Baker and Williams are correct about severe fires having scarred Western landscapes for generations.” They regenerate the same way most wingless pine seeds do–by animal dispersal. I have numerous photos of Clark’s nutcrackers and Mexican jays extracting seeds from cones on severely burned ponderosa pines (see photo evidence on our facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/AvianScienceCenter). The more you learn about severe-fire ecology, the more it all makes sense–plant, beetle, and bird adaptations that are apparent even in many of our dry mixed-conifer forest types!

Post Article on Wildfires: ” Disastrous wildfire era set to continue in Colorado “

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Here’s a link to a Denver Post article on wildfires from Sunday.

Below is an excerpt

The houses on Red Cedar Drive stood at the very edge of the High Park fire, which for several weeks was called the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history. One of these homes burned. Another survived flames that firefighters doused 2 feet from the door.

“That’s a concern with a lot of these places. One way in, one way out,” Schulz said, edging upward. “You’re trying to get emergency vehicles in while you’re trying to get people out.”

Above the neighborhood, it looks like someone firebombed the state park. The ground is scorched black. The trees are scorched black. On the black hills, tons of hay have been air-dropped to keep the soil from polluting the Horsetooth Reservoir below.

This was a ponderosa pine forest that hadn’t burned in a century. Now, “when a fire does get going, it’s crown to crown,” Schulz said.

At 5 a.m. on June 10, Butterfield had answered an emergency call. Evacuate the park; we’re evacuating the neighborhood, he was told. Now. The fire closed the state park for 17 days.

Yet, a few hundred yards down this rutty road, a green oasis appears in the blackened landscape. Here, in a series of fuel treatments from 2006 to 2009, the ponderosa pines had been thinned.

The fire burned through here and burned some of the trees but not all. Because it burned at a lower temperature, a green carpet of grass quickly regrew, creating a pretty meadow in the midst of a fire zone. Fifteen wild turkeys meandered through the meadow, feasting on the new vegetation.

Without this fire break, Schulz said, the homeowners on Red Cedar Drive and the reservoir serving Fort Collins would have been counted among the High Park fire victims.

“The work absolutely protected the safety of the surrounding community and the quality of the water in the reservoir,” he said. “I walked up to the incident commander, handed him a map of the treated areas and said, ‘Here’s an area where you can stop this fire.’ Luckily, they did that.”

Weeks later, when the Waldo Canyon fire eclipsed the High Park fire, destroying 346 homes, Colorado Springs credited another fire break with saving another neighborhood. The fire stopped a mile above Cedar Heights, leaving every house untouched.

I think it’s interesting that in protesting a project on the Helena NF on September 6, Matthew Garrity AWR press release here says:

Mike Garrity, Executive Director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies said, “One of the stated reasons of this timber sale is to reduce the threat of wildfires but a recent Forest Service study concluded logging has little effect on how a fire burns with the exception that wildfires may burn more intensely in logged areas than in adjacent unlogged stands due to the higher wind speeds that occur in open forests and the heavy amount of slash left after logging. The report called for a change of approach. Instead of continued logging in the back country that has proven ineffective in moderating wildfires during extreme wildfire conditions, the focus should be on reducing the fire threat within the immediate vicinity of homes.”

I think he’s thinking of the report on the Fourmile fire, which we have discussed already (if you are trying to treat the fuels, but you don’t finish treating them…) But folks’ observations of the fires in Colorado are more mixed, as we see above. If a fire does not burn through a forest, but scientists are not asked to do a report, did it really happen?

And perhaps more importantly, if you believe that fuels treatments are an excuse to do logging and for the Forest Service to get money, why would people who aren’t with the Forest Service in Colorado, and have to spend money to do it, where forest industry is mostly long gone, still think it’s a good idea, as in the above Denver Post article?

Giant Sequoia Plantation!

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We ran across this Giant Sequoia plantation, within our restoration project. I’m not sure of the age of this plantation but, it was probably back in the late 70’s or early 80’s. It is mostly south-facing, and not really like where they normally grow but, a “renegade” culturist did several experiments. I’m not sure what future management ideas are. This one needs some thinning, as their vitality seems quite variable.


Sequoia National Monument.. So Few Trees, So Much Planning and Litigation

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Trail of 100 Giants, Forest Service photo

Thanks to Terry Seyden for this link.

Perhaps the Californians on this blog can help me. I can’t understand this story…

This is about the Sequoia National Monument- which has probably had more planning investment per acre than any other unit of the National Forest System.

Although the monument designation bans commercial logging, that didn’t stop the Forest Service from issuing a plan in 2004 that would have allowed enough timber cutting in the monument to fill more than 2,000 logging trucks a year — all in the name of reducing the risk of wildfire.

Although the new plan reduces the size of trees that can be felled, it allows the cutting of some young sequoias, no larger than a foot in diameter, and other trees as big as 20 inches in diameter to reduce fuel loads and promote ecological restoration. Any young sequoia trees that were felled would not be sold, the agency said. But other conifers and trees could be. The diameter limit would also not apply to trees considered a hazard along roads or in public areas.

I don’t understand how there can be a ban on commercial logging and trees can be sold.

The Forest Service’s long policy of fire suppression has been blamed for the decline of the sequoia groves. In the nearby Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, managers primarily use prescribed burns to create sequoia-friendly conditions.
Conservationists want the Forest Service to adopt the U.S. Park Service approach. But Elliott said that “fire alone is not going to fit the bill. Mechanical treatments are appropriate.” The many private holdings and small communities scattered across the forest demand more aggressive fuel reduction, he added.
Sequoia ForestKeeper has argued that the agency used the hazard tree provision to cut down commercially valuable old non-sequoias in 2005, when it removed about 200 trees near the popular Trail of 100 Giants and sold 67 of them as timber. Judging by the number of rings on the stump, Marderosian said one of the felled trees was 320 years old.
According to documents released Tuesday, mechanical tree thinning would be allowed on about 23% of the monument acreage. But Sierra Club staff attorney Kristin Henry said other provisions in the plan could potentially open the door to tree cutting on much more land.
“I’m just a little bit skeptical,” Henry said. “It seems as though this plan is geared to a lot of logging.”

Hmm they sold 67 non-sequoias identified as hazards in 2005.. it seems a bit of a micro-scale to me to be much of an issue. Again, there must be more to this story… maybe Californians can help provide some background. I’m also curious exactly what the judge said in this case and why.

FYI, in Colorado, we do cut trees (more than 67) and the State temporarily stopped doing prescribed fire, which these folks advocate because of the dangers.

Note: in browsing for a photo I found this neat picture gallery here of sequoia groves on the Sequoia National Forest.

Did Sen Tester claim his logging bill would have stopped wildfire?

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Yesterday I wrote about a new study from the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research station, which found that fuel reduction logging and thinning prior to the Fourmile Canyon Fire outside of Boulder, Colorado was ineffective at moderating the fire’s behavior, having had a minimal impact in affecting how the fire burned or the damage it caused.

Below that article from yesterday, frequent commenter Ed made an interesting point worthy of highlighting here:

Some people just refuse to accept the reality of this…that when you get really extreme conditions of humidity, temps, and high winds, there is no power, no planning, no treatment, no nothing that will stop a fire from going where it wants.  Nada.  I am tired of reading statements from pols (and others who should know better) that “demand this fire be stopped”…. We are now experiencing more and more extreme weather, for whatever reason that none of us are smart enough to explain. We will have to learn to live with these blowup fires, and concentrate our prevention efforts in and around the homes and structures along the forest perimeter.

Well, we know that at least one politician – and their staff – was apparently too busy on the campaign trail to actually have time to read the findings from Forest Service’s Fourmile Fire Report about the fact that fuel reduction logging and thinning had a minimal impact in affecting how the fire burned.  This morning I woke up to see Senator Jon Tester (D-Mont) quoted in Montana newspapers with this amazing claim:

This election is about an area between here and Whitehall that is burning. If we could
have gotten my Forest Jobs Act past [sic] we would have been able to cut those trees.
– Senator Jon Tester

It’s worth pointing out that Senator Tester is referring the 19 Mile Wildfire, a 3,000 acre fire, which according to inciweb, is burning in grass, brush and some timber mainly on private lands west of Whitehall, Montana (see official maps below).   The cause of the fire is under investigation.  Yesterday, the weather at the fire was 97 degrees, 13% humidity and 20 mph winds blowing out of the southwest.

I’m not sure if the Forest Service has an official threshold that needs to be crossed in order for “extreme fire weather conditions” to be met, but suffice to say that temps near 100, humidity in the low teens and winds blowing 20 miles an hour qualify.  Once a wildfire gets going under these types of weather conditions any wildfire expert will tell you there’s not much you can do to put the fire out.

But not Senator Tester. Nope, apparently he wants us all to believe that if Congress would have simply passed his mandated logging bill, which calls for a minimum of 5,000 acres of logging on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest annually for the next fifteen years, that this 19 Mile Wildfire, which has burned mainly on private land (and is burning mainly toward more private land and BLM land) would have prevented this wildfire from either starting and/or spreading.  Incredible….

According to inciweb, the 19 Mile Wildfire in Montana has burned through grass, brush and timber on about 3,000 acres of mostly private land west of Whitehall, Montana.
Another map of the 19 Mile fire from the official inciweb site of the U.S. Forest Service clearly showing this fire has barely burned any Forest Service land. Also note that the fire is moving towards the northeast, towards more private, BLM and state of Montana lands, and away from any Forest Service lands.
This screen shot taken from the official Montana land ownership map (http://svc.mt.gov/msl/mtcadastral) shows that the 19 Mile Wildfire has burned mainly on highly-subdivided private land with small portions of BLM, State of Montana and U.S. Forest Service lands also impacted.

Report: Prior fuel treatments ineffective at moderating Fourmile Canyon Fire

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station has just released an August 2012 study titled, “Fourmile Canyon Fire Findings.”   We’ve discussed the 2010 Fourmile Canyon wildfire outside of Boulder, CO a few times before on this blog, including this post from Andy Stahl titled, “Fourmile Canyon Fire Report Confirms Firewise.”

Here’s an excerpt from the Rocky Mountain Research Station’s abstract to their new study:

“Fuel treatments had previously been applied to several areas within the fire perimeter to modify fire behavior and/or burn severity if a wildfire was to occur. However, the fuel treatments had minimal impact in affecting how the fire burned or the damage it caused….This report summarizes how the fire burned, the damage it caused, and offers insights to help the residents and fire responders prepare for the next wildfire that will burn on the Colorado Front Range.

On Tuesday, Bob Berwyn wrote this article for the Summit County Citizens Voice titled, “Report: Wildfire mitigation work largely ineffective in moderating Fourmile Canyon Fire.” Below are some excerpts from Mr. Berwyn’s article:

A report on the 2011 Fourmile Canyon Fire will probably raise more questions than it answers for firefighters and land managers, concluding that, in some cases, the ferocious fire near Boulder may have burned more intensely in treated areas than in adjacent untreated stands.

That may have been due to the relatively high concentration of surface fuels remaining after treatments, as well as the higher wind speeds that can occur in open forests compared to those with denser canopies, Forest Service researchers concluded in the report published last month….

The report also concluded that beetle-killed trees had “little to no effect on the fuels within the area burned by the Fourmile Canyon Fire, the fire’s  behavior, or the final fire size,” explaining that crown fires are “driven by abundant and continuous surface fuels rather than beetle-killed trees.”….

In the end, the report found no evidence that fuel treatments changed the progression of the Fourmile Canyon Fire, and that the treated areas were “probably of limited value to suppression efforts on September  6.” Large quantities of surface fuels in the treatment area also rendered them ineffective in changing fire behavior.

Satellite photos taken after the fire clearly showed that the fire burned just as intensely inside treatment areas as it did in adjacent untreated stands. In some cased, the fire appears to burned more intensely in treated areas, the investigators said, explaining that additional surface fuels, as well as higher wind speeds, may have been factors….

[T]he report once again calls for a change of approach — instead of increasing expensive fire protection capabilities that have proven to strategically fail during extreme wildfire burning conditions, efforts should be focused on reducing home ignition potential within the immediate vicinity of homes, the investigators concluded.

Certainly one new study about one wildfire isn’t the be-all, end-all. However, how does the new research and scientific findings coming from a comprehensive look at the Fourmile Canyon Fire mesh with the constant drum-beat supporting logging for “fuel reduction” and “thinning” we see coming from some quarters at this very blog?

Debt standoff makes Forest Service fight all fires

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Rocker Barker with the Idaho Statesman has the full story here…excerpts below:

The FLAME Act of 2009 was supposed to ensure the Forest Service had enough money to fight fires without having to cut into programs to provide recreation, protect habitat and improve forest health.  But after Congress raided the fund established by the law during the 2011 standoff over the debt ceiling, and after further cuts this year, the fund is empty. That has the agency preparing to make cuts elsewhere as the fire season is hitting its peak in Idaho and just beginning in California.

The agency that manages 193 million acres nationwide and 20 million acres in Idaho foresaw the shortfall coming in May. It quietly ordered managers to fight every fire as soon as it starts, which it says goes against its own science and goals. It also required regional foresters to approve “any suppression strategy that includes restoration objectives,” wrote James Hubbard, Forest Service deputy chief for state and private forestry, in a May 25 memo. “I acknowledge this is not a desirable approach in the long run,” Hubbard wrote.

Today, just one fire nationwide, a blaze in the Teton Wilderness near Yellowstone, has received that approval. The Interior Department, which did not issue a similar directive, is letting one fire burn for restoration purposes in Yellowstone National Park.

Most scientists and fire managers agree that fire is a healthy and necessary part of the forest, and that fighting these blazes serves only to build up fuels and boost the size and frequency of fires that do turn catastrophic. Federal agencies still put out 97 percent to 99 percent of all fires that start….

The Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement Act, or FLAME Act, set up separate funds for the Forest Service where surplus firefighting funds in quieter fire years could be saved for big years like this. But Congress took $200 million from the fund in 2011 as a part of the deal to keep the government running in the debt-ceiling standoff. Congress took another $240 million in surplus funds in 2012. Before the FLAME Act, Congress passed bills to cover the extra cost of firefighting every year from 2002 to 2008. But with Congress divided and the pressure to reduce government spending growing, the chances for a supplemental spending bill this year are uncertain….

Thinning in the Sierra Nevada

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I tried my hand at some “digital thinning”, with a picture of the Stanislaus National Forest, above the Mokelumne River. I couldn’t really remove as many of the bigger trees as I should, without sacrificing photorealism. I did “enhance” some of the oaks, which is a keystone of the new paradigm of ecosystem wildlife values. I am sure there are some home habitats of ESA birds, here. There would also be some pockets of undisturbed forest, and maybe some bigger openings around the oaks.

Below is the original picture

I think we can all say that there is, indeed, some excess trees to thin out, in this stand.

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Fire expert blasts Lassen officials for letting blaze grow

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Contributed post from Bob Zybach:

Here is an article that appeared in yesterday’s Redding Record Searchlight and that has already drawn 70 comments on their website:

Excerpted from: http://www.redding.com/news/2012/aug/16/fire-expert-blasts-lassen-officials-letting-blaze/

Excerpts:

A former Shasta-Trinity National Forest supervisor and fire expert blasted the National Park Service on Thursday for allowing the Reading Fire to smolder for more than a week, feeding on overgrowth, before it exploded into an inferno that so far has decimated 42.5 square miles.

He said it could take a century to repair the damage the fire has wrought.

“I can’t believe they went ahead with letting a fire burn for the ecosystem’s benefit in a season that, for the entire nation, is record dry,” said Steve Fitch, a retired Shasta-Trinity National Forest supervisor, fire behavior expert and national firefighting teacher. “That fire is creating its own weather. It’s extreme temperatures there. … They probably nuked 10 percent or 15 percent (of the land).”

Fitch retired from the Forest Service in 1995 to work as an adviser on natural resources to the state Assembly until 2003.

His comments came as the blaze raged across 27,163 acres and grew another 4 acres overnight. The fire remains only 28 percent contained and 1,068 firefighters in the park braced for a weekend that could bring strong winds and thunderstorms. . .

. . . However, a host of other issues made the bad decision even worse, he said. The Forest Service’s aerial tanker fleet was at one-quarter strength this year.

“Everybody in fire management knew that,” he said. “That country up there, there’s no way to get into it. You’re relying on aerial firefighting resources.”

Then, there’s the Chips Fire, which has scorched almost 43,000 acres last Thursday and has run up $17.5 million in suppression costs.

“The killer for me: the Chips Fire took off on (July) 20. That should have shut this prescribed natural fire down immediately … it went to several thousand acres in the first 24 hours,” Fitch said. “That was just south of them. That’s going to draw on them. If anything went wrong, they knew they were going to have very limited resources to do anything with it.”

The Reading Fire didn’t take off until August — and it could get worse, owing to the weather. . .

. . . Even beyond containment, Fitch said the fire will blacken the park and forest’s legacy for decades.

The soil will be caked and unable to absorb moisture, leading to soil erosion, and the high temperatures also sterilized the dirt, meaning seeds won’t germinate in the charred land for many years, Fitchsaid.

Mostly brush will replace the vast towering pines that blanketed the park, he added.

The fire has sparked harsh criticism of the National Park Service policy that allows for control burns even in hot, dry weather.

Old Station residents, business owners and north state politicians all have weighed in over the controversial law, with some crying for reform to avoid a similar incident.

The park’s superintendent, Darlene Koontz, was out of the office all day in the field, her secretary said, and couldn’t be reached for comment.


Commentary: Here is a good example of what we have been discussing in this blog — situations where wildfires are allowed to burn in Wilderness areas (and often doing significant damage to wildlife and wildlife habitat in the process) until they escape and cause major damage to adjacent lands and communities, too.

Fitch’s references to “prescribed natural fire” and letting a fire burn for “ecosystem benefits” are a little chilling, though. Apparently Darlene Koontz made a “local decision” to let a wildfire burn within her jurisdiction and is now unavailable for comment. Wow. If history is any indicator, she will keep her job, no questions asked, and perhaps even be due for a promotion or a paid leave of absence due to stress in the coming weeks and months.

These types of decisions are clearly not based on science or common sense, yet there seems to be few consequences, if any, for the people who make them. Isn’t it time that resource managers and policy makers were made responsible for their actions? Especially when human lives and billions of dollars are involved?

HIgh Country News on the “Temporarily Be Careful About Let-Burn” Policy

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Thanks to Matthew for finding this one… thought it worthy of its own post.
Here’s the link:
Here is an excerpt:

It’s hard to tell how big a deal this requirement for higher-level approval really is.

In an interview with the Helena Independent Record, a Washington Forest Service spokesman, Joe Walsh, said the memo “isn’t a change in policy.” Small fires may still be allowed to burn, but a regional supervisor must make that decision, not a lower-level supervisor like an incident commander or local land manager. A regional forester, he said, “just has a better idea of what’s going on strategically and what (firefighting) resources are available.” (Interestingly, the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management have not adopted the Forest Service’s directive).

But Jennifer Jones, spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center, said it was unlikely many fires would be allowed to burn “given current fiscal constraints.” And Brenda Halter, the Superior National Forest supervisor in Minnesota, told the Duluth News Tribune the change was “a national directive that means we’re going to be much more aggressively suppressing wildfires in wilderness.”

That appears to be happening in the northern Rockies. In an article for OnEarth, Richard Manning found that of the 28 naturally-caused wildfires burning in wilderness areas in Region One this year, all were being suppressed.

Andy Stahl, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, says bumping the decision to a regional forester just decreases the chance a fire will be allowed to burn.

“This takes what was an operational-level decision and makes it into a political-level decision,” he said.

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.

I totally agree with Emily in that it’s hard to tell how big a deal this really is. I don’t think we can actually tell until next year. I disagree with Andy that taking it to the RF makes it more “political”. That is, if Andy means it in the sense of “cognizant of the opinions of those at higher levels of the Executive Branch.” In general I have found that political folks of every stripe are pretty good at making sure that line officers understand their preferences, including forest supervisors.

Using an analogy, in the Colorado Roadless Rule there are a number of places where the Regional Forester has to make a determinations about projects. The idea is that it makes people be more careful and think things through if they know someone else, like their boss and hers/his staff, will be looking at it. If that’s true for a pipeline crossing a roadless are, it seems like a small step to think it’s more true for something that could cost the taypayer, the homeowner, and business in communities millions, and risk human life (with either decision).

Seems like Manning, and to a lesser extent. Andy, are assuming the worst, while Greg has an “it’s not great but let’s wait and see” attitude.