Fire and Fuels

Summertime Blame-Game Ritual: Ash Creek Fire and the Beaver Creek Logging Project

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Ash Creek Fire along Highway 212 in extreme southeastern Montana.

You may have noticed that within the past few days some people are attempting to make a connection between the 186,800 acre Ash Creek Complex Wildfire burning in grass, sage, juniper and pine in extreme southeastern Montana with the Forest Service’s proposed Beaver Creek project, which in March was halted by a federal court judge due to a number of deficiencies in the agency’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).  That project, proposed for the Ashland Ranger District of the Custer National Forest, called for commercial logging on 1,487 acres and prescribed burning on 8,054 acres and also would have required 35 miles of new road construction and reconstruction.

According to a late March 2012 article in the Billings Gazette [emphasis added]:

A federal judge has ordered the Forest Service to halt implementation of [the Beaver Creek] logging project in the largest island of public land in southeastern Montana and to issue a supplemental environmental impact statement to address deficiencies in its first one.

On Monday, District Judge Donald Molloy ruled in favor of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council on some of their complaints filed in July, and dismissed others.

Molloy found in favor of the environmental groups concerning the failure of the EIS to consider stormwater runoff from road construction. Molloy also said the Forest Service failed to explain why it analyzed road density only at the project level and ranger district level, why it applied the road density standard only to forest land and for failing to analyze road density during the project’s implementation.

Not deterred by the fact that the Ash Creek Complex wildfire burned across nearly 300 square miles of grass, sage and scattered pockets of trees on various land ownerships before finally reaching a portion of the proposed Beaver Creek logging project, some people seem to have no problems trying to tie the current wildfire with the proposed logging project in some sort of ridiculous summertime blame-game ritual.

Even the Forest Service couldn’t resist trying to make a connection in this recent article [emphasis added]:

“Had we been able to move forward with the [Beaver Creek] project, the management action could have helped,” said Marna Daley, a public affairs officer for the Gallatin and Custer national forests. “But it’s impossible to predict to what degree.“

“The project would not have prevented a [186,800 acre] fire from occurring,” Daley said. “That was not the purpose of the project. But it could have moderated the fire behavior. I say ’could’ because with the extreme fire activity and behavior we’re seeing, it’s unknown.“

“Impossible to predict.” “Could have.” “It’s unknown.”  Well, if that’s all the case, then why in the world is the Forest Service trying to make hay with a ridiculous attempt at trying to connect a wildfire that burned through 180,000 acres of grass, sage and scattered trees before finally reaching portions of a proposed logging project?  And in reality, it’s not as if a logging project always results in less fire risk, as we pointed out back in 2004 when we produced this Wildfire primer, which was inserted into newspapers across the western United States.

Finally, speaking of “extreme fire activity and behavior” it’s worth pointing out today’s official weather forecast for the Ash Creek Fire:

There is a Red Flag Warning for the fire area today with temperatures forecasted to reach up to 106 degrees, relative humidity levels between 5 to 15% with southerly winds at 10-20 mph and gusts that could reach 35 mph.

Best of luck to the firefighters, as that’s not exactly ideal firefighting weather.  Since the firefighters are already dealing with plenty of hot air, hopefully those people looking to play the annual Wildfire Blame-Game will take a break and cool it.

Cattle herd in post-fire area.

Goodbye to Mountain Forests?

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Thanks to Marek Smith for this piece in the New York Times Green blog:

Here’s an excerpt:

Using data from tree ring studies, scientists have reconstructed a history of fires in the Southwest. The wildfires of the past were frequent and massive, but they stayed close to the ground and mainly helped prevent overcrowding. Take 1748. “Every mountain range we studied in the region was burning that year,” Dr. Allen said. “But those were surface fires, not destroying the forest but just keeping an open setting.” Cyclical wildfires were the norm.

But beginning in 1900, when railroads enabled the spread of livestock, cattle devoured the grassy surface fuels and the fire cycle stopped. A decade later, a national policy of forest fire suppression formalized this new normal. Over the next century, forest density went from 80 trees per acre to more than 1,000.

Then in 1996, the climate emerged from a wet cycle into a dry one — part of a natural cycle for this region. Winters became drier. And “we immediately began seeing major fires,” Dr. Allen said.

With so many trees crammed into the forest, fires climbed straight to the canopy instead of remaining on the ground.

“These forests did not evolve with this type of fire,” said Dr. Allen. “Fire was a big deal in New Mexico, but it was a different kind of fire.” The result, he said, is that the species that now live there — ponderosa pines, piñon, juniper — cannot regenerate, and new species are moving in to take their place.

“Ecosystems are already resetting themselves in ways big and small,” Dr. Allen said. The challenge for managing these ecosystems, he said, is to try to help them adapt.

Seeking to preserve existing systems is futile, he said.


Note from Sharon: While I can’t disagree with his conclusions in the last two sentences (although I don’t believe in the concepts of “ecosystems “resetting” themselves”) (note that Dan Botkin said much the same thing in Discordant Harmonies), I wonder about a couple of things.

First, is that getting trees back in dry climates has always been a bit of a stochastic process; seed source, ground conditions, wetness of years of establishment. Humans can help this out by planting. Could we? Should we? It doesn’t come up in this piece and I wonder if it’s because that’s not the expertise of the interviewed person. A

Second, as did some of the commenters I’m not sure of this version of history. Cattle used to be driven to the railroads which implies that they did not require railroads to spread.

The comments are fairly interesting also.

Two More Denver Post Stories

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Smoky Denver metro area from White Ranch Open Space July 1, 2012

Let me tell you about some of my favorite things this fire season. Not raindrops on roses, although raindrops in general would be good.

First, is people who send fire photos, so we don’t have to worry about copyright or lack photos.
Second, is people who resist the temptation to frame today’s issues as partisan or reflecting battles from the past. The question is what do we need to do today and going forward.

There were a couple of interesting fire stories again in the Denver Post. I think it’s important from the perspective that the Denver Post is thought to be one of the major interior west media outlets.

Here’s one about wildland fire in urban areas, below is an excerpt:

As a psychologist at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Benight has studied disasters since Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and examined evacuees and their psychological adjustments during the massive Hayman fire, which charred nearly 140,000 acres and claimed 133 homes nearly 100 miles from Denver in 2002.

Now, he’s witnessing the psychological impact of a different sort of wildfire — one that has wreaked devastation on the fringe of an urban setting.

“In general, we often live in a sort of lulled state,” Benight said. “The potential threat that’s there when these things push into our world is serious, and it’s real. In our setting, wildfires have been a potential, but they haven’t directly affected a metropolitan area more recently.

“This is a teachable moment.”

The hard lessons will only expand, experts say, largely because of a combination of ongoing growth in wildland areas and climate concerns that provide optimal burn weather.

Kristen Moeller believes in personal responsibility when it comes to living in wildlands such as the area where she and her husband bought their dream house southeast of Conifer in 2003.

They lost it, and most of their possessions, in the Lower North Fork fire in March. And now, even as she navigates the tricky terrain of emotional and financial recovery, she watches with interest and empathy as the hard reality of wildfires sweeps into the urban corridor with the Waldo Canyon blaze.

“It came down the hill — we’re all at risk,” said Moeller, who has reached out to current wildfire victims through her blog Walking Through Fire. “Us mountain people choose to live there. We’re a different breed, and the fires typically stay up with us (in the mountains), but not now. It’s shaking people up.”

Here’s one about the overall problem:

Public policies regarding population growth and forest management are adding to the wildfire problem:

• It costs millions to protect homes in the red zone from wildfires, but homeowners don’t foot that bill exclusively. All taxpayers do. That creates a perverse incentive to build there despite risks.

• A continued population boom in the red zones is pushing homebuilders to higher elevations, where forest conditions increase the chances of more intense fires.

• Rocky Mountain forests have become overgrown and in many cases unhealthy. State and federal forest- management policies call for cutting down excess trees and doing prescribed burns. But the population boom puts pressure on these strategies — people often don’t want to see trees cut or landscapes burned near their homes. That leaves the forests full of highly flammable fuel, waiting for the next fire.

Preventive measures

Researchers at the Fort Collins Laboratory of the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station reviewed satellite images of three forests with heavy damage from pine beetles that had been mechanically thinned. They found around 150,000 “jack piles” — stacks of dry timber from forest-thinning efforts waiting to be burned.

“There’s little time to treat all those,” says Chuck Rhoades, research biogeochemist at the Fort Collins Laboratory. “A lot of them are probably not going to get burned.”

At least not until a wildfire reaches them.

“If those things burn hot, you’ve created a new fire hazard,” Rhoades says. “You may have just moved the problem around.”

In the wake of the Hayman fire, federal and state foresters increased the area of the forest treated with mechanical-thinning and prescribed-burning projects but say they have hardly scratched the surface of millions of acres of Rocky Mountain forests that need restoration. In the meantime, the increasing population in the woods requires greater protection from wildfires.

In 2006, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of Inspector General estimated that, between 1998 and 2005, forest managers let burn only 2 percent of wildfires that started naturally. The rest were fought, largely to protect homes in high-risk fire areas — areas the federal government calls Wildland Urban Interface, or WUI. But snuffing natural fires allows biomass buildup that can fuel more catastrophic fires.

The fact that the bill for protecting private homes is borne by taxpayers at large “removes the incentives for landowners moving into the WUI to take responsibility for their own protection and ensure homes are constructed and landscaped in ways that reduce wildfire risks,” the Office of Inspector General reported.

Note from Sharon: I thought the recession and recent fires had decreased prices in the red zone. When I drive around certain parts I see lots of homes for sale that have been for sale for years. I wonder where this information comes from about moving up into higher elevations?
Also, it is interesting that they interviewed a research biogeochemist about the probability of piles getting burned. I guess it’s the Rolodex question again.

More Coverage by Denver Post of Colorado Fires and One Policy Idea

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An aerial photograph taken Wednesday of the Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado Springs shows the destructive path of the fire. See additional aerial photographs at denverpost.com/mediacenter. (John Wark, johnwark.com)

In addition to photos that depict the Waldo Fire (not just dispersed homes way in the backwoods) (not dead lodgepole, live ponderosa), the Post had an interesting story about insurance here.

Insurers increasingly are requiring homeowners to mitigate risks, such as clearing brush away from homes, as a condition of insurance.

Historically, Colorado’s largest property insurance claims have come from hail and wind, not fires.

2009 and 2010 were especially heavy years for insurance claims. In 2009 — the most expensive claims year in Colorado history with three major hailstorms — property insurers paid out $1.69 in claims for every $1 they collected in premiums, according to the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America. The loss ratio in 2010 was $1.37 to $1.

In prior years, insurance companies collected more in premiums than they paid out in Colorado. And companies also have investment income from their reserves, even during years in which their payouts have been heavy.

But because of the big payout imbalances of 2009 and 2010, experts say homeowners should gird for future premium increases.

The amount of increases will vary from company to company and from the risk factors applicable to a particular home or region.

Insurance adjusters say it is too early to tell what the claims tally from current wildfires will be.

The biggest losses are expected to be from the High Park fire west of Fort Collins, where at least 257 homes are confirmed to have burned, and the Waldo Canyon fire west of Colorado Springs, where an unspecified hundreds of homes are believed to be lost.

Hail storms in early June produced auto and property claims of $321.1 million. That made the two-day storm the fourth-most expensive catastrophe in Colorado history.

There are some excellent photos here of the Waldo Canyon Fire.

Also here’s an editorial with some common-sense policy ideas for exploration:

A U.S. Forest Service analysis found that 40 percent of homes built in the U.S. between 1990 and 2000 were in the WUI. In Colorado, the figure in that time was 50 percent.

A CSU analysis expects a 300 percent increase in WUI acreage in the next couple decades — from 715,500 acres in 2007 to 2.16 million acres in 2030. At the same time, hundreds of millions of dollars have been cut from the federal firefighting budget.

That leaves tough questions for governments, homeowners, and even the private sector. Among them:

Who should bear the cost of firefighting efforts given dwindling federal money?

Can foresters — as well as homeowners — do more wildfire mitigation work, and how might it be paid for?

Given the hodgepodge of local ordinances, would Colorado be better served by statewide fire-readiness standards for homes constructed in the WUI?

Should property insurers mandate — and monitor — defensible space as a condition of issuing policies?

We acknowledge that even well-managed forests can erupt in flames. And yes, there are instances where even the most fire-ready homes have been engulfed and left as ashes.

But until we take steps to come up with solutions to reduce wildfire risks in the wildland-urban interface, the property losses will only mount.

You might want to take a look at the comments, which run the gamut from more to less compassionate.. here’s one at the “more” end of the spectrum..

I am always amazed as to what people will use fires to achieve their own agendas, most notably this one…

Note from Sharon: That 40% of all homes in the US seems a bit high to me, does anyone know where that figure comes from (or what WUI definition they used?).

Finally, how about exploring some policy ideas.. within 10 years, states that don’t have statewide fire-readiness requirements for homeowners in the WUI won’t get state FS funding? Perhaps a bipartisan commission (or panel of experts) examines successes and failures of ordinances and CWPPs and comes up with recommendations? Or has this already been done?

Project could have lessened fire damage (?) Ruidoso News

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Whether a project would have helped.
Here is a link to the article.
Below are some excerpts.

But Stewart, a participant in the thinning project from its inception in 2008, said Tuesday the group’s appeal relied on hazy technical details that nobody had a specific answer to. The reason the reversal was upheld was that there was not enough historic data for the area to establish natural conditions and allow the team to speak from a position of expertise, he said.

“It’s a lot about interpretation,” he said. “There’s not a set template for describing the effects of old growth as there is for goshawks and other endangered species. (The project) got turned back, more or less saying we did not analyze the effects enough to make a professional recommendation for treatment.”

Regulations and rulings clearly define what is required to maintain habitat for endangered species, but decisions on old growth typically relied on site-specific data, though the plan did have goals to encourage old growth, loosely defined as multi-age tree stands, to expand, he said.

Issues with erosion brought up by the environmental groups also were based on a lack of historical data, he said.

“We were in the process of beefing those (reports) up, gathering data on the soil and for the old growth to show a more in-depth analysis,” he said. “We expected to do treatments this year. To have it appealed put it on hold, and we were expecting a new decision by the end of this fiscal year, in September.”

With the new information, Stewart said the project was “at the door, waiting to go,” requiring no changes from the original draft. “We were getting more justification for what we had already proposed.”

Without an appeal, thinning treatments would have begun possibly as soon as spring of this year, continuing through the summer, he said. Timber contracts would have been issued during autumn, though few areas would be worth the expense of logging, he added.

It sounds like another project that is not about “logging” in the sense of the dictionary definition.

Lininger said that the thinning project would have harmed Bonito Lake by causing sediment to fall into the lake from the slopes where temporary roads were to have been cut.
Bird added that with the shift in typical conditions in the Southwest to a dryer, drought-ridden landscape, he questioned whether thinning would be effective, or feasible in the backcountry.
“The bottom line is that you can fire-proof a community, but you can’t fire-proof a forest,” he said.
According to the Wild Earth Guardian’s website, the group seeks to “transcend this paradigm of fear-driven fire policy,” and protect communities with “common-sense safety measures and financial incentives from state and federal governments.”
“Our forests were born of fire and, just as rainforests need rain, forests need fire’s rejuvenating properties to perpetuate and thrive,” the website states.

Specific directives to maintain old growth and the “largest, healthy green trees” per acre were included in the thinning plan, though the minimum number of trees could dip if there was an excess of mistletoe infesting the trees. Base levels of mistletoe would be maintained, according to the report.

A diverse landscape of mixed meadows and both light and heavy tree stands to “reduce crown fire potential,” “protect and enhance the watershed” and increase biodiversity and habitat was prescribed for the area, according to the report.
The groups also pushed for a 16-inch cap on tree removal, which was taken “under consideration” by Robert Trujillo, supervisor for the Lincoln National Forest.

“It’s hard to put a dollar cost on (appeals), because it’s people’s time,” Stewart said. “I think the cost is, more or less, what else could (Forest Service workers) be working on aside from this appeal?”
He added that thinning projects already were hampered by cost-cutting concerns. Hand crews cost upwards to $1,200 per acre, mechanical thinning ran at about $300 per acre and controlled burns typically cost $90 per acre, but could only be applied in areas without a significant concentration of ladder fuels, he said.

“(Thinning) has to take a more holistic approach, and I have to do this across the entire forest,” he said. “The Bonito (project), to me, was almost heartbreaking. We knew it was going to be important, we knew it was a municipal watershed for Alamogordo and we knew that if there was a fire, it was going to be devastating. And we got it, unfortunately.

Note from Sharon: I looked for a copy of the EIS or EA for this project on this site but couldn’t find it. I did look at the list of projects for the forest and noticed a bunch of CE’s and not many vegetation management projects. That adds to our database of “what projects do people use CE’s for, and is it good public policy to require notice comment and appeal for all CEs?”

Also, having spent most of my career working in western pine forests, it’s hard for me to believe that any FS project or a cumulative impact of FS projects could result in a dearth of mistletoe. Just sayin’

Waldo Canyon Fire

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Bob Berwyn had this piece on the Waldo Canyon fire near Colorado Springs..reminded me of our discussion of air tankers.

Winds are forecast to be out of the southwest, with red flag extreme fire weather conditions prevailing across the area once again. Harvey (Incident Commander Rich Harvey) said heavy air tankers could be especially effective in aerial attacks against the fire in this area. He said a third Air Force C-130, modified to work as a tanker, will be worked into the rotation to step up the attack.