Increasing risk of wildfire in 2050 (not that I necessarily believe this, but) from First Street Foundation
Power Lines Start Fires
1. As we have seen in various wildfires, power lines can start fires. This particularly seems to happen under windy conditions, which makes for fires that are hard to control and in some cases, air resources can’t be used during these high wind events. Large transmission lines are not as susceptible, we would think. But how do people know when a major one is proposed in their neighborhood if it’s the “safe” kind or the “unsafe” kind?
Too Expensive to Protect, Need to Shut Off Instead
2. It’s a lot of work and money to maintain power lines, so much so that PG&E is thinking of changing their strategy to “just shut them down” instead, see this WSJ piece. Fires start, people sue, and ratepayers ultimately pay the bill, raising rates. Do we expect more bad fire weather conditions due to climate change? That would mean more times for electricity to be turned off. Who is likely to be able to afford back-up generators or batteries? If we’re cutting down on gas and there may be a shortage of battery minerals… This might be difficult as well.
Instead, the company will rely more heavily on new power-line settings in areas at high risk of fire. The lines shut off within a tenth of a second when branches or other objects touch them, reducing the risk of sparks.
Industry officials say customers may experience more power outages in coming years if the company’s scaled-back approach to tree trimming results in more branches hitting wires. The company said it would work to assess outage-prone circuits and address the issues with targeted tree clearing and other safeguards.
PG&E says the new approach will be both safer and less expensive as it works to permanently reduce wildfire risk by burying 10,000 miles of power lines in the coming years, an ambitious plan expected to cost at least $20 billion. The company is challenged in its ability to raise capital following a complex bankruptcy restructuring and has been working to cut costs in order to fund the work.
So people sued them, so they went bankrupt and have to do the best they can with the funding available. At least until the next cycle of wildlife/litigation/bankruptcy where one might expect them to have even less money.
The United States needs 47,300 gigawatt-miles of new power lines by 2035, which would expand the current grid by 57 percent, the Energy Department reported in February. A 2021 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine arrived at a similar figure. To hit that target, the United States needs to double the pace of power line construction.
and what could go wrong with the well-intentioned “federal pre-emption of state and local authorities” which “would only apply to major projects of national importance..”
According to CNBC:
Building transmission lines is more important for distributing renewable energy than it is for using fossil fuels because with coal, natural gas or nuclear baseload energy, the source of energy can be moved to where it is needed.
“With renewables, you can’t do that,” Robb said. “You’ve got to generate power where the sun is shining and where the wind is blowing.” Insufficient transmission lines have become a major “bottleneck” in deploying renewable resources, Robb told CNBC.
Does anyone think (no, I don’t think nuclear is a fossil fuel) maybe nuclear has some practical advantages- if we didn’t have to build new power lines (which we’re not probably going to actually build), plus wouldn’t it be safer and more secure than running new transmission lines across the country? Plus, I will predict that we’re actually not going to expand the grid by 57% by 2035; people, supply chains, funding and practicalities of all shapes and sizes, including pushback by those affected. There’s a vaguely colonialist undertone as well.. like negatives accruing to some states and cheaper energy to others.. as in this Reuters story:
A swathe of grid expansions are needed in Central U.S. to pursue national renewable energy goals and lower power prices in neighboring regions, the Department of Energy said in a draft transmission study.
This kind of “some win some lose” does not go unnoticed by affected communities.
In this Reuters story, apparently we have enough problems with the power lines we have, that need to be fixed.
As the weather gets wilder, the grid gets older. The U.S. Department of Energy found that 70% of U.S. transmission lines are more than 25 years old in its last network-infrastructure review in 2015. Lines typically have a 50 year lifespan. The average age of large power transformers, which handle 90% of U.S. electricity flow, is more than 40 years. Transformer malfunctions tend to escalate at about 40 years, according to research by reinsurance provider Swiss Re.
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Next post:
Some Impacts of Transmission Lines and Audubon’s Point of View
The proposed BLM Public Lands Rule regulation included two citations to papers. I decided to take a look at them and see what helpful info I could glean from them. They are both DOI (USGS) products.
These ongoing and anticipated losses in areas of high ecological integrity have been driven primarily by the incursions of invasive annual grasses across the three ecoregions (fig. 12). By 2020 (the final year examined), more areas were moderately or highly threatened by invasive annual grasses than in any year prior, including more than one-half of the Southern Great Basin region. A sudden increase relative to 2016 (the penultimate year examined) was particularly pronounced in the Great Plains region, although none of this region had been deemed high risk. The threat of conifer expansion into the no to low category showed an increase compared with that of 2001; however, expansion into this category held steady from 2016 to 2020, especially in the Intermountain West and Southern Great Basin regions. The team also documented infill of conifer stands, showing an increase in the areas classified as high or very high risk, especially in the Intermountain West region. The footprint of human modification remained relatively constant over time within regions, but the footprints varied considerably across regions—for example, more than 90 percent of the Southern Great Basin region remained at no to low risk by 2020 compared with only 60 percent of the Great Plains region remaining at this level.
From the summary:
Given the number of threats, the scale at which they operate, and the dispersed authority and responsibility to regulate and address threats, this effort may take an almost unprecedented degree of cooperation and collaboration, a bold vision, and ambitious goal setting. To date, substantial investments in collaborative efforts to remove conifers expanding into sagebrush plant communities by Oregon’s SageCon partnership, the Sage-Grouse Initiative, and the Utah Watershed Restoration Initiative have matched the rate of loss to conifer expansion within the Great Basin (Reinhardt and others, 2020).
The results in this study indicate that a similar focus could allocate limited conservation resources to where and when they have the highest probability of achieving desired uplift, which the design can inform.
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From this paper, a person could develop a regulation that would
Encourage collaborative work with other agencies and local collaboratives to reduce impacts. States and Tribes are important partners, involved in the development of any regulation (not at the comment period).
2. Since invasives are a big problem, drawing a line around an area and keeping people out is unlikely to move towards ecological integrity. Same with those pesky conifers.
It’s hard for me to see that mapping “intactness” which doesn’t take into account the threat of invasives, determining what is “land health” for other activities, or conservation leasing will help with any of these problems. On the other hand, if you want to keep people out and let whatever happen, that’s fine too, but it’s not promoting biodiversity, natural range of variation nor probably carbon.
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A Joshua Tree is seen as the York fire burns in the distance in the Mojave National Preserve on July 30, 2023. (David Swanson/ AFP via Getty Images)
We’ve seen a bit of this with the current fire in the Mojave National Preserve, burning up Joshua Trees.
Interesting story on a fire in the Mojave National Preserve and the Joshua Trees from the LAist.
More than 77,000 acres of desert landscape have burned over the past few days in the York Fire, the largest on record for the Mojave National Preserve, as high temperatures and strong winds drove flames across the border into Nevada on Sunday.
Flames up to 20 feet tall have been spotted as the fire has torn through mixed desert scrub, yucca, pinyon juniper, and invasive plants like red brome, all of which saw a lot of growth during the recent wet winter.
“I was just driving through that area a week or two before the York Fire and thought ‘This place is going to burn.’ There’s just fuel everywhere,” said Debra Hughson, deputy superintendent of the preserve.
Fires like this have long been rare in Mojave desert ecosystems, with some estimates putting the fire return interval at every couple hundred years. Now, they’re becoming a feature of the landscape, increasing in frequency and jeopardizing the recovery of native species, including Joshua trees. Just a few years ago, the nearby Dome Fire burned more than 40,000 acres and destroyed more than 1 million of the famous trees.
“Fires this big are really a game changer in the desert,” said Todd Esque, research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
The role invasive species are playing
Invasive species including red brome, cheatgrass and Sahara mustard are helping drive the new fire regime. The weeds thrive in the desert environment, filling in the space between Joshua trees, carrying the fire from one tree to the next. And after fire clears things out, the invasive species quickly move back in.
“They burn every 10 years, which happens in some places where there’s Joshua trees now, because of weeds…now it’s just a straw-colored two dimensional landscape of rolling hills,” Esque said.
A pullback on grazing in this area of the Mojave has led to an increase in the growth of native vegetation as well, with grasses like big galleta also carrying fire.
Joshua trees aren’t really all that adapted to withstand fire. They can re-sprout from their roots after burning, but that’s not always the case if the fire’s too intense.
Even if they do pop back up, their growth rate of roughly three centimeters per year is quite slow, meaning the landscapes we’ve long grown fond of are likely not coming back, at least in our lifetimes. They could take more than a century to repopulate — assuming they do at all. That’s because hotter temperatures and longer droughts, punctuated by frequent fires in the era of climate change, make regrowth more difficult.
The fire is also burning through critical habitat for the desert tortoise, which is listed as a threatened species.
The Southwest Fire Science Consortium will never get a Nobel (not “cool” enough to the Powers That Be) but they have won my award for Everything Science Should Be.. responsive to peoples’ concerns, integrated with practitioners, and gosh-danged helpful.
We had a serious discussion last week on managed wildfire (or Muwoof, or Mafee?). Well it turns out that NAU, SWFSC and Forest Stewards did a science synthesis paper on this topic, what they call a science synthesis. I am not enough of a fire person to understand all of it, so hopefully someone will read and chime in.
It’s not too often that I get a “laugh out loud” moment in the stuff I read, but the discussion about what term to use.. struck me as pretty funny. Yes, if you want to study something, a definition might be helpful. 🙂
Unfortunately, until the wildfire community settles on a shared lexicon, it will be difficult to track, measure, and understand managed wildfires. Various wildfire incident databases refer to the strategy using different names throughout time, making comparison difficult (Young et al. 2020). Even communication between land managers can become clouded because of differing terminology (Davis et al. 2022).
The “History of Wildland Fire Response and Nomenclature” is pretty interesting and begins on page 2.
Cerro Pelado Fire Was Started by a Burn Pile- Why Did it Take So Long to Figure This Out?
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham sharply criticized the federal agency in a response Monday afternoon.
“I am — again — outraged over the U.S. Forest Service’s negligence that caused this destruction,” she said in a statement. “We will continue to to hold the federal government accountable for each of the disastrous fires they caused in our state last summer.”
U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., released a statement saying: “It is frustrating and deeply concerning to learn now that the Cerro Pelado Fire was also caused by an escaped prescribed fire.
“The warming climate is making our forests more vulnerable to catastrophic wildfires. That’s a reality that our Forest Service can and must urgently respond to when deciding when and how to do prescribed burns. We cannot catch up to this reality if it takes nearly a year to even make the findings on the Cerro Pelado Fire public,” Heinrich said.
“As the Forest Service does the necessary work of updating its modeling and use of prescribed fires, it must also prioritize rebuilding the public’s trust,” Heinrich added. “This will require more transparency and much more concerted and authentic engagement with New Mexicans than the Forest Service has shown up to this point.”
State Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department Cabinet Secretary Sarah Cottrell Propst said in a statement that agency’s failure to promptly disclose the fire’s cause, further harmed “New Mexicans who have been unable to file insurance claims pending disclosures of the fire’s origins.”
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Despite being covered by wet snow, this holdover fire remained dormant for considerable time with no visible sign of smoke or heat,” said Martin, in the statement released Monday.
I had a thought.. with all the high technology and defense contractors being funded, e.g. Invidia and Lockheed Martin teaming up to use AI and “real-time sensor data”, seems like a low-hanging fruit would be to put sensors in pile burns left over the winter or maybe fly heat-sensing drones over them, or some other sophisticated, repurposed from the military technology?
FEMA has so far paid out less than 1% of what Congress allocated for victims of NM wildfire. From Source NM.
Good story. If you want a reaction, try The Hotshot Wakeup wondering why FEMA can’t get its act together.
and yet (also from the Hotshot Wakeup) the DOL is capable of doing its job.
*************** DOL (Department of Labor) Investigation of Federal Contractor Violation of Wage Laws
We oldsters won’t be surprised that some federal contractors weren’t paying people correctly. From DOL press release:
As a result of its investigation, the division recovered $152,003 in overtime wages and fringe benefits, as well as an additional $12,577 in liquidated damages for the affected workers. Back wages recovered ranged from $101 to $14,783 per worker. In addition, the company paid $16,981 in civil money penalties assessed by the department for the employer’s violations.
Hotshot Wakeup podcast this week explored both the above stories in detail, and suggested that $17K is not much of a penalty for trying to sleaze out on $152 K for employees.
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Hotshot Wakeup also pointed out, in the same podcast, some of the close ties between the fire aviation industry and defense efforts of the less upfront kind. My sources tell me that NSC is involved in all wildfire topics (going back to the FOIA from earlier this week). So there are ties that aren’t obvious to those of us outside the industry. Which circles back to the issue of “what tech can watch pile burns?”
“The situation has grown so dire that the San Bernardino National Forest in Southern California saw 42 resignations in 48 hours in May, officials said.”
I guess we’ll see Congress extend the extra pay, but the firefighters want other issues addressed, too.
In the past, TSW had a category called “the People’s Database” that talked about how the way the FS produces information could be more helpful to the kinds of questions the public is asking. If you’re interested, you can click on the category way down among the widgets on the right hand side. It’s probably easiest to do this on a computer rather than a phone.
A colleague of mine when we worked in the now-defunct RPA Program, Terry Tipple, used to give me on-the-job training in his field, public administration. He always said “policy is like a merry-go-round, you keep going around and at some point stars will align such that you can grab the brass ring.” It’s in the spirit of potential brass-ring-grabbing that I repost the below piece from 2013.
Anyone who is writing a comment letter for the Forest Service ANPR (that I used to call the MOG ANPR, but I’ve been told more recently that it is really about improving procedures and practices) can add ideas like this.. .
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Volunteering for SAF gives me many opportunities for insight and opportunities to compare private and public forests, and regions of the country.
Recently, SAF signed on to an effort to get funding for FIA- forest inventory and analysis- which collects information about forests across the US. A couple of times I served on two “Blue Ribbon Panel” of users of the information who (excerpted from this):
The American Forest and Paper Association has organized two Blue Ribbon Panels (1991 and 1997) to review the national FIA program and provide recommendations to the Forest Service on needed changes to the content and capabilities of the program. The most recent panel recommended that the Forest Service should 1) elevate the priority of FIA in the Forest Service program, 2) convert the FIA program from a periodic inventory to an annual inventory, 3) fulfill the congressional mandate of reporting on all lands regardless of ownership, 4) concentrate on the core ecological and timber data, and 5) develop a strategic plan to implement the full FIA program.
FIA also has regular meetings with user groups to help guide their activities and generate support.
It seems to me that we are missing a group (a Peoples’ Coalition) that can reach across different interest groups and ask for information that we might agree that we all need about National Forests. We don’t have an AF&PA to speak for us and get things started, so perhaps we have to organize ourselves.
We could ask the Chief to convene a panel of citizens representing different groups to ask 1) what information is important to be collected in a standard format across forests and regions? and 2) how best do we make that accessible to the public? For example, PALS has searches that internal folks can do but not external.. should it remain that way?
Stakeholders outside of the FS could then lobby strongly for this information the same way that groups (very successfully) lobby for FIA.
Some topics we’ve mentioned here are budgets and outputs, costs of environmental document developments, number of acres treated, etc., as in the “vegetation management” thread here and here. it seems to me that we could take advantage of having an Administration which promotes transparency to set such a framework of an advisory committee.
At first, I was thinking volunteers could find and enter the data, but then I thought “if the public wants this information, why doesn’t the agency just provide it?”. I’m sure that the agency could save some bucks by stopping collecting information on a variety of things that someone used to be interested in, and focus on things the public is currently interested in. The public could actually help the Forest Service prioritize information across silos, something that is problematic internally.
But we can’t ask poor Region 1 to do more work on their own.. when these are national forests, and data should be captured and made available consistently across regions. Besides, they appear to already be doing more work than some other regions, based on the GAO reports and Derek’s observations.
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Collecting information based on what the public perceives as a need (the vacuum approach) and involving the public in how the information is developed has many advantages in terms of building trust in the information. Sometimes it seems as if some science folks and NGOs use the blower approach for information- they put out what they already have or what they think is useful which may or may not be. And perhaps don’t ground truth the data with the public.. which doesn’t increase trust. If anything needs more trust, it would be prescribed burning and WFU, IMHO.
This is the beginning of a new approach- DIY analysis and data interpretation. I will present my data and findings, and you get to reanalyze them and come up with your own conclusions.
Here’s what data I asked for from the FS- I asked for WFU (Wildland Fire Use) acres by year. The nice folks at the National Press Office sent me this handy table, which includes prescribed fire, mechanical treatments, and other. Here’s a sample:
Here’s what “other” is..”Treatment Category that describes work involving the use of chemicals, grazing, or biological methods to achieve Fire Management Plans objectives.”
So I made an Xcel spreadsheet of the WFU acres, and added the NIFC total acres for that year.
Then I subtracted the WFU from the NIFC total for each year, to get what I call “unwanted wildfire acres.” Here’s the Xcel spreadsheet. It’s altogether possible I did something wrong, so perhaps you all can check it.
Here’s what I plotted.
If the data are accurate and my spreadsheet used the correct data, then the fitted line for unwanted fire acres (UWF) is almost straight from 2003 to 2022. Which means that there has been little or no increase in unwanted acres burned through time. Which is quite against what you read in the press, so check my figures!
If my data is true, here is my narrative. Despite everything we’ve read about increased fire weather and so on, our fire suppression folks have done an amazing job at keeping the unwanted acres burned basically the same for the last 20 years. They deserve a great big thank you from all of us.. oh and the correct policy solution is to… Pass The Tim Hart Act!!!!
I’m sure there are other interesting things that could be found in both the FS accomplishment table and the WFU/UWF (I think UWF should be pronounced “oof”.. just kidding). And what happened in 2016 where the WFU was almost as large as the UWF acres?
This is posted with the permission of the author, Sarah Hyden. Here is a link to the original. I thought she raised some interesting questions worthy of discussion.
Black Fire, May 16, 2022 — Photo: US Forest Service
Forest Service wildfire management policy run amok
From suppressing fires, to confining fires, to expanding fires, to igniting fires
One of the most important roles of the US Forest Service is to contain wildfires. Firefighters can often help to prevent wildfires from becoming disastrous to the human environment — they can help to protect communities, along with homeowners’ own efforts to fireproof their properties. However, Forest Service wildfire management policy can also cause the destruction of communities, and result in excessive and overly-frequent burning of some of our most valuable natural resources such as old growth, sensitive species and their habitats, and watersheds.
Conservation scientists strongly support “managed wildfire for resource benefit,” which means allowing naturally ignited wildfires to burn when safe to do so. When this is done, fire lines are built to protect communities and other values that could be impacted by the wildfire. This helps to return the natural role of fire in our forests, because fires of all intensities have a role in forest ecology and can promote biodiversity. However, there is also a limit on how much fire is beneficial to forests – too much fire can occur too fast when fires are intentionally ignited.
An increasing trend in Forest Service wildfire management tactics has been to combine intentional burning (prescribed burning) with emergency fire suppression. During at least three fires in New Mexico in just a little over a year, the Forest Service has utilized aerial and ground firing operations to expand wildfires, and to implement intentional burns on landscapes that would not have burned otherwise. These are the Black Fire in the Gila and Aldo Leopold Wildernesses, the Pass Fire in the Gila National Forest and Gila Wilderness, and the Comanche Fire in the Carson National Forest.
During the more than 325,000 acre Black Fire which ignited on May 13, 2022, it appears from ArcGIS aerial fire hot spot maps, that a very large area of the Aldo Leopold Wilderness was ignited by the USFS up to 10 miles to the south of the main fire with aerial firing operations – meaning dropping incendiary devices from helicopters or drones. See map below. This was clearly not any kind of large-scale back burn intended to contain the main fire, due to its distance from the main fire and its position relative to the wind direction.
This intentionally-ignited fire was herded to the north over several days until it joined the main fire. Then, on the Forest Service’s official fire perimeter map, both fires were suddenly joined together as one fire. There was no distinction made between the original fire which was not caused by USFS actions, and the sections of the fire to the south, amounting to a separate fire, that were directly ignited by the Forest Service. The agency had also expanded the main fire in other directions.
The intentional fire was only stopped by monsoon rains and by the intervention of a Sierra County Commissioner. Shouldn’t there have been a public analysis process before burning most of the Aldo Leopold Wilderness?
The ignitions by the Forest Service, along with the main fire, created a boxing-in formation — fire burning in almost every direction, so that which was in the midst of the formation was surrounded by fire. During wildfires, and also during traditional prescribed burns, wildlife has the opportunity to escape because the fire is generally approaching from just one direction. In a boxing-in fire formation, wildlife can become trapped and either injured or incinerated. There are no opportunities before such on-the-spot firing operations to seriously consider habitats of sensitive and endangered species, or to protect old growth forest and other values.
During the Pass Fire, which was ignited by a lightning strike on May 18, 2023, a substantial section of pinon and juniper in the Beaver Points area was intentionally burned through aerial firing operations, and many other areas were burned in ground firing operations. The ground firing operations were described by the Forest Service as burn out operations, in order to contain the fire and to protect structures. However, those burn out operations seemed very excessive, and some observers considered them to also be intentional burning.
This fire was managed as a “confine and contain” operation – an operation intended to allow a wildfire to burn within a determined fire perimeter for the purpose of reducing the intensity of future fires and to ecologically benefit the landscape. At the beginning of the fire, the Forest Service published on the Gila National Forest Facebook page a map of an approximately 75,000 acre planned fire perimeter. The current fire perimeter almost exactly matches the originally published planned perimeter. See overlay of both maps here.
The Comanche Fire, which began on June 8, 2023, was essentially a prescribed burn, except that the USFS utilized a 20 acre lightning strike ignition as the “match” that lit the fire. They stated in a fire update on June 21 that they have completed, not contained, 1% of the operation at 99 acres, making it clear that they were burning intentionally. The designated “focus area”, which appears to be a planned containment perimeter, was about 10,000 acres, broken into burn units. The intent was to expand a small lightning strike fire to at least 100 times its original size, utilizing both aerial and ground firing operations. The current size of this fire is 1,974 acres.
Such operations are now a substantial part of the work of firefighters across the West. Firefighters are essentially being used as intentional burn crews to implement fuels treatments, carried out with emergency fire suppression funding and no National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysis. Some Forest Service personnel believe that we conservationists, by “holding their feet to the fire” to analyze intentional burn operations according to NEPA, are slowing down implementation of burn treatments. So, by expanding wildfires, or even starting new ones in the vicinity of wildfires, the Forest Service is able to greatly expand the implementation of burn treatments, and thereby meet agency quotas.
Any statistics or research about the extent of wildfire in recent years, in relation to climate change or presumed increases in wildfire activity, may be distorted by a substantial portion of total reported wildfire acreage being actually ignited by the Forest Service. This occurs while managing wildfires under full suppression, and in confine and control operations.
The Forest Service has put the concept of managed wildfire for resource benefit on steroids, often using wildfires as opportunities to ignite yet more fire, and to broadly burn landscapes. This is not managing wildfire, but essentially creating fires. They are now using our firefighters as agents to carry out this dangerous and possibly illegal policy that sometimes causes severe unintended consequences to forests and communities. That some burns are ultimately ecologically beneficial does not make it acceptable to carry out fuels treatments without a NEPA process.
Forest Service Chief Randy Moore’s “Wildfire letter of intent 2023” provided direction to agency staff regarding wildfire suppression, stating “We will also continue to use every tool available to reduce current and future wildfire impacts and create and maintain landscape resilience, including using natural ignitions at the right time and place in collaboration with tribes, communities, and partners.” While there is not necessarily a legal basis at this point even for this direction, Forest Service firing operations that expand wildfires cannot be considered to be using natural ignitions. Drones or helicopters dropping incendiary devices are clearly not natural ignitions. And firing operations miles from a wildfire cannot reasonably be considered back burns that are necessary to contain a wildfire.
We have no national wildfire policy that either allows, or places any limits on such operations, and emergency fire suppression funding is not allocated for implementing fuels treatments. The Forest Service has given themselves virtually a carte blanche to conduct intentional burns over a wide area nearby wildfires — all without NEPA analysis or any public involvement in the planning process.
A genuinely cohesive national wildfire policy is essential, analyzed through a comprehensive and open NEPA process. It is necessary to make sure fires are managed safely, and that values like old growth trees, wildlife and their habitat, water quality, and soils are protected. Public health in relation to the smoke generated during intentional burns must also be considered.
The purpose of NEPA is so agencies will “look before they leap,” and therefore avoid causing environmental disasters. We have had more than enough disasters occur, culminating with last year’s Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire. If we allow the Forest Service to largely jettison NEPA and to freely implement fuels treatments under the guise of emergency fire suppression, we are giving up our primary means of protecting our forests and our communities, and it will affect other important conservation priorities. NEPA law acknowledges and supports our right to have a say on what occurs in our forests, and requires comprehensive analysis of the impacts of proposed actions.
The Forest Advocate is investigating USFS firing operations and will report more later. In the Forest Service Southwestern Region, a substantive FOIA request can take years to be fulfilled, so some records are difficult to obtain. The Sierra County Commission made an information request to the Forest Service to provide records of aerial ignitions during the Black Fire, but were told by the Southwestern Region that they have to put in a FOIA request through the standard process.
We need our elected representatives to urge the Forest Service to disclose the extent of all ignitions intended to expand wildfires or ignite new fires, especially during the Black Fire – and to move forward with a revised, comprehensive and clear national wildfire policy, accomplished in a transparent way, in accordance with environmental law.
ArcGis #firemappers hot spot map, south of main Black Fire (main fire in pink) May 28,2022
This StoryMap is pretty cool. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/381fcd4a36584aa28f9d836247d9a939
Background on this topic.The below post may be highly controversial. I’m posting it because it’s a voice I haven’t heard in some of the media, which equates more burned acres simply to climate change and hence more future wildfire acres, in a fairly apocalyptic framing. There are two problems with this in my view 1. it’s complex, so simplifying to one cause is actually not true and 2. it ignores all the levers we have to deal with wildfires before our energy is decarbonized, even ones we’re spending megabucks with defense contractors on like new technologies.
This kind of reporting also ignores the people who actually work with wildfire and their views, which I’m sure are diverse, like any other group. I see this as part of an ongoing trend to amplify the voices of coastal media and academics (people who work with words) and downplay the voices of people who work directly with things. The downside of this amplification and deamplification, as I see it, is that by not hearing those voices, we (the people) think we can’t do the things we can do (to improve wildfire suppression, like the Tim Hart Act); and can do the things we can’t do (e.g., finishing forest plans in three years; putting it in a reg did not make it so). And weirdly (feature or bug?) some disagreements, rather than discussed and understood, are simply dismissed by ad Partiem (I made that up and TSW Latin scholars can help) arguments (e.g. “Republicans are against WFU”).
So Murry can be right, wrong, or anywhere in between. I don’t know, this isn’t my area. But I think his voice needs to be heard and I’m not sure I’ve heard it elsewhere.
Guest post by Murry Taylor
I put this up on the Smokejumpers Facebook page yesterday. It’s in response to an article in a Seattle newspapter about the North Cascade Smokejumper Base in Winthrop, Washington. It’s gotten some attention with various groups pushing for more effective intial attack on wildfires in the west. Here’s what I wrote:
Murry Taylor here. I had 33 seasons fighting fire, 26 as a smokejumper. And now I’ve had 22 seasons on a Cal Fire lookout, so I’ve seen a lot of what I’m talking about. I’m also the author of Jumping Fire: A Smokejumpers Memoir of Fighting Wildfire. While I fully agree that poor forest management (as in accumulated fuels) has led to many of these big fires in the west, I want to point out something else here. One of the big reasons so much public land in the west has burned is the under-utilization of smokejumpers the past couple decades.
I agree that this article is a pretty comprehensive look at current smokejumping, the work, the demands, the deep satisfaction. Glad I got to read it, but I wish it had included the fact that since 2020, the jumpers only averaged 4.5 fire jumps a season. That’s a terrible under-utilization of such a critical resource. In the past we easily jumped twice that many, and some years four times as many. I’ve seen it many times while on the lookout, Duzel Rock. Fires have not been staffed for a day or two and then gone big and cost tens if not hundreds of millions while the jumpers sat unused. There seems to be a lack of understanding among fire managers in the Forest Service about the capability of these jumpers. Dispatchers have said they didn’t put jumpers on a fire because the “trees were too tall,” or the “winds were too strong.” Clearly they didn’t understand that the jumpers carry 150 let-down ropes, and have a spotter in the plane throwing streamers, and know EXACTLY what the wind is over the fire. The good news is that things seem to be changing for the better. Allowing jumpers to get back to 10 plus fire jumps per season would save big money and lots of acres. For those who think we need to get more fire back on the land, all I can say is, Don’t worry, there’s going to be plenty of that given the way fires burn now. The policy of putting ALL these early season fires out while small would be a big help. That way, when August–the toughest part of fire season– comes the handcrews wouldn’t be scattered all over hell, exhausted, and the skies wouldn’t be filled with smoke so that Air Ops are critically limited. As I mentioned above, things seem to be changing, using jumpers more here and there on various forests in the west. Hopefully that will continue.
To go on here, I talk with jumpers and hotshots all the time and they tell me that “Yes, sometimes the fuels and new fire weather are a factor in making fires harder to catch.” But MOSTLY, they say, there’s always something that can be done to catch these fires if they are hit while small. As I wrote in Smokejumper magazine last summer, the Rouge River-Siskiyou N.F. in Southern Oregon has taken a more aggressive approach to putting fires out small. In the last three seasons they’ve had 192 fires and ONLY burned 50 acres. This was achieved by prepositioning jumpers during lightning storms, better utilization of rappellers, and contract fire resources. You can read the full article on Wildfire Today by finding it in the archives here. It seems other forests are looking at that now and changes are in the wind. My latest novel, Too Steep and Too Rough tells the story of what I’ve seen as the big problem with weak initial attack here locally in the past two decades. Over and over, while on my lookout, Duzel Rock, I here that certain fires weren’t attacked early because the country was “too steep and too rough.”
Here’s an interesting story from the WaPo (thanks to Nick Smith!).
Although this can be accomplished with prescribed burns, the risk of controlled fires getting out of hand has foresters embracing another solution: selectively sawing trees, then stripping the limbs from their trunks and collecting the debris.
The challenge now is what to do with all those piles of sticks, which create fire hazards of their own. Some environmental scientists believe they have an answer: mushrooms. Fungus has an uncommon knack for transformation. Give it garbage, plastic, even corpses, and it will convert them all into something else — for instance, nutrient-rich soil.
An alternative to fire
Down where the Rocky Mountains meet the plains, in pockets of forest west of Denver, mycologists like Zach Hedstrom are harnessing this unique trait to transform fire fuel into a valuable asset for local agriculture.
For Hedstrom, the idea sprung from an experiment on a local organic vegetable farm. He and the farm owner had introduced a native oyster mushroom to wood chips from a tree that fell in a windstorm.
When slash piles are set alight, they burn longer and hotter than most wildfires over a concentrated area. This leaves behind blistered soil where native vegetation struggles for decades to take root. As an alternative, foresters have tried chipping trees on-site and broadcasting the mulch across the forest floor, where it degrades at a snail’s pace in the arid climate. Boulder County also carts some of its slash to biomass heating systems at two public buildings.
“We’re removing a ton of wood out of forests for fire mitigation,” Hedstrom said. “This is not a super sustainable way of managing it.”
He hopes to show that fungi can do it better.
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Mushroom spread
For mycelium to be a truly viable solution to wildfires, however, it would have to work at the scale of the Western landscape. Hedstrom is experimenting with brewing mycelium into a liquid that can be sprayed across hundreds of acres. “It’s a novel biotech solution that has great promise, but is in the early stages,” he said.
Ravage doubts it could be so easy. “Half the battle is how you target the slash,” he said. Success stories like Balcones are rare. Ravage has spent a decade cultivating wild saprophytes and perfecting methods of applying them in Colorado’s forests.
He begins by mulching slash to give his fungi a head start. Then he seeds the mulch with with spawn, or spores that have already begun growing on blocks of the same material, and wets them down. Fungi require damp conditions and will survive in the mulch if it is piled deeply enough. Given the changing character of Western forests, however, aridity poses a serious hurdle.
I suspect aridity was probably a serious hurdle without the character of Western forests changing one iota.
Not sure I’d want to write the EIS for this; although it would be interesting to see who would be on what side.
Wouldn’t it be great if folks imagined doing an EIS before they embarked on certain research ideas (e.g. solar geoengineering?)?
Does anyone else remember when some environmental folks had concerns about collecting tree seeds and “”disrupting gene complexes” if the FS did not use seed from the same site (1980’s, Pacific Northwest). And now, folks talk about moving them farther based on computer models and that is considered a great idea by many. I wonder if it’s actually the practice itself, who’s doing the practice (and their motives), or why they’re doing the practice, that leads to these apparent differences in being pro or anti various forms of humanipulation.
One thing the reporter did not note is that carbon is released by fungi working on wood, albeit more slowly than burning in piles. And of course, there’s no smoke and waiting for appropriate weather conditions. Actually using the material for something (buildings, heat, electricity, ?), and capturing the carbon is something many folks are working on, thanks to USDA and other grants. Which might be worth another story.
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Anyway, the complexity of decomposition is interesting, check out this paper..and then this one about insects and fungi.
Furthermore, we apply the experimentally derived decomposition function to a global map of deadwood carbon synthesized from empirical and remote-sensing data, obtaining an estimate of 10.9 ± 3.2 petagram of carbon per year released from deadwood globally, with 93 per cent originating from tropical forests.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Smokey Bear said it best: “Only you can prevent wildfires.”
Following in the footsteps of their famous mascot, U.S. Forest Service managers in the drought-stricken Southwest are urging people to swap their fireworks this Fourth of July for glow sticks, noisemakers and cans of red, white and blue Silly String. Not so fast, say some environmentalists. While it’s worth encouraging folks not to use fireworks amid escalating wildfire danger, they say it’s kind of silly that federal land managers would suggest using aerosol cans of sticky party string out in nature.
The advice began to pop up in recent weeks, with regional forest officials and the New Mexico State Forestry Division pumping out public service announcements offering alternatives aimed at curbing human-sparked blazes.They used a template that echoed similar advice from the National Fire Protection Association and even American Red Cross chapters in other states.
“These are alternatives for children and young people to do in lieu of fireworks in their neighborhood or on their property. That way we’d like to keep things contained to your property and your neighborhood,” said George Ducker, a spokesman for the State Forestry Division. “We’re certainly not advocating folks go out into the forest and, you know, shoot off Silly String.”
But if they do, the Forest Service has one request: Leave no trace.
However people choose to celebrate, the rules and regulations need to be followed if they are on national forest land no matter if it’s July Fourth or any other day, said John Winn, a spokesman for the federal agency.
“That includes but is not limited to the restricted use of fireworks, properly disposing of garbage in garbage bins, maintaining quiet hours and cleaning up after camping or day-use activities,” he said.
Cleaning up spray streamers fits in that category, he added.
While the spray can party favors have been around since the 1970s, manufacturers keep their recipes under wraps. In general, the string is made of a polymer resin, a substance that makes the resin foam up, a solvent, some coloring and the propellant that forces the chemicals out of the can.
Authorities in Los Angeles decided to ban aerosol party streamers in 2004 on Hollywood Boulevard every Halloween because partygoers were using the empty cans as projectiles and many were left littering the streets and clogging gutters.
Towns in Massachusetts and Alabama also have adopted ordinances restricting the use of the string, pointing to problems during special events. In one New York town, firefighters who participated in a parade complained that the string was damaging the paint on their trucks.
Rebecca Sobel with the group WildEarth Guardians said party string is just one of the hundreds of seemingly benign products that pervade daily life.
“We have to be more vigilant about the chemicals in ‘everyday’ things,” she said. “Maybe the Forest Service should have known better, but it’s also hard to know what chemicals some products contain.”
She pointed to recent headlines about ‘forever chemicals’ found in firefighting foam and other common products, saying consumers have a responsibility to be aware of threats but they can’t do that if regulatory agencies aren’t being transparent or reading labels themselves.Some consumer product sites say party string is not biodegradable. While many cans are labeled as non-toxic, the string can damage vinyl surfaces or the clear coat on vehicles.
The labels also suggest that if ingested, medical attention might be in order. That goes for humans and pets, as some of the ingredients can contain gastrointestinal irritants.
“All of this makes it inappropriate for use at our national forest recreation sites,” says Madeleine Carey, WildEarth Guardians’ Southwest conservation manager. “Many seemingly fun party products like Silly String are extremely harmful to our forests and wildlife. Mylar balloons, noisemakers and glitter are also on the list.”
I’m not sure if you pack out noisemakers why they would be on the list?
The bottom line for state and federal forest managers is to prevent human-caused wildfires, Ducker said.
