Humans and the Environment

Rim Fire Op-Ed by Dr. Thomas Bonnicksen

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

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

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

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

www.facebook.com/LarryHarrellFotoware

Happy Labor Day! Work and the Environment

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loggers in maine

We are entering a more philosophical period on this blog; Virtual Book Club on Botkin’s “The Moon and the Nautilus Shell” starts September 9. Mike Wood will ask us to reflect on our underlying values for public lands when we get back from the weekend next Tuesday.

I ran across this serendipitously while I was looking for something on the internet. It’s a chapter from Bill Cronon’s book, “Uncommon Ground,” published in 1996 (!). Remember Botkin’s book Discordant Harmonies was published in 1992. Maybe we all will keep circling around until we get the philosophy right. Well worth reading, and also relevant to the O&C Lands discussion. It is by a fellow named Richard White (I think it’s this guy) and relates to the way we think about work. And while some of us thought that the “timber wars” were over, and as Chief Thomas said here (in 2000):

The transition to the environmental era has not been easy and is still underway. On one side, the hard-core environmental movement cannot come to grips with the consequences of victory. They are still wandering about the battlefield bayoneting the wounded. Having won great victories, it is essential that they move to support the changes in agency missions they have helped engender.

On the other edge of the spectrum of interest in the National Forests are those who engage in a ritualized “ghost dance” aimed at resurrection of the “good old days” of the 1980s. Having suffered great defeats, it is essential that they move to ensure that some justifiable – and needed – level of resource extraction continues.

It has been observed that, in our democracy, decisions are made by the majority of the minority that is deeply concerned about a particular issue. These are the people, on both sides of the debates, who are the minority that truly cares about the future of the public lands.

The vast majority of those not so committed to their causes weary of the noise and smoke of a battle that is over and demand a truce and the stability (which will be temporal) that comes with that truce. So, I suggest, it may be time to fall back on that ancient wisdom to be applied when we weary of battle — “Come, let us reason together.”

It seems that some of the same philosophical questions of ten or twenty years ago, with the din of owl-shootings in our ears, continue to present themselves.

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Air Tanker Video

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I’m away from home now but, I just had to post this VERY interesting video of a military plane making a retardant drop on the Rim Fire. I think the radio conversation is with the lead plane. What an exciting job!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_eGiGG1B-Q

There are also several other videos of this plane on You Tube.

On a side note, I was still able to see the column over 100 miles away, from the city of Pleasanton, on Interstate 680. The smoke at my house this morning was so thick there was only 1/4 mile visibility, and the fire is about 40 miles away. The old burn perimeters haven’t even slowed down the fire, re-burning in at least 4 older burns. It’s looking REAL bad, with just 2% containment of a 105,000 acre fire.

Rim Fire

American Fire, Tahoe National Forest

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I pilfered this awesome photo off of Facebook. Yet another sobering reason why wildfires aren’t good for humans. Meanwhile, there are an unknown amount of new lightning fires this morning, after a night of intense dry lightning. Also, the same conditions will exist for two more days, with a red flag warning still in effect. Here at home, the morning light is orange, due to other wildfires currently burning. This situation feels really similar to to the 2007 fire season, when many fires burned for more than six weeks. We need forests which survive drought, bark beetles and wildfires.

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The Balance Of Nature or Not- Shooting Owls Version

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Some folks posted this last night under comments but I thought it deserved its own post.

Henson said the Northwest Forest Plan, which cut logging by 90 percent on national forests in the 1990s, has done a good job of providing habitat for the spotted owl. But the owls’ numbers have continued to slide.

Henson said unless barred owls are brought under control, the spotted owl in coming decades might disappear from Washington’s northern Cascade Range and Oregon’s Coast Range, where the barred owl incursion has been greatest.

It has taken the federal government a long time to get to this point. The California Academy of Sciences killed some barred owls in spotted owl territory on the Klamath National Forest in Northern California in 2005, and the owner of some redwood timberlands in Northern California regularly kills barred owls to protect spotted owls.

The idea of killing one type of owl to protect another underscores a fragile balance of nature that biologists have struggled with for years.

Between 2000 and 2006, wildlife officials captured and removed more than 40 golden eagles from the Channel Islands off Southern California to protect the island fox. They also hired a company to kill 5,000 feral pigs on Santa Cruz in a controversial program to restore the island’s ecosystem.

In Oregon, officials have used lethal injections to kill selected California sea lions that feast on protected salmon in the Columbia River. And in Yosemite National Park, saving bighorn sheep has meant hunting protected mountain lions.

The northern spotted owl is an icon of bitter disputes between the timber industry and environmentalists over the use of Northwest forests. Because of its dwindling numbers, the little bird was listed as a threatened species in 1990, which resulted in logging cutbacks and lawsuits.

Barred owls are bigger, more aggressive and less picky about food. They started working their way across the Great Plains in the early 1900s, and by 1959 were in British Columbia. Barred owls now cover the spotted owl’s range, in some places outnumbering them as much as 5-to-1.

Oh.. the “fragile balance of nature”.. it turns out it’s really the nonexistent balance of nature, as per Botkin. It’s OK to say “we like animal x more than y, so we are going to kill y to get more x.” Just don’t say it’s anything about what Nature wants. P.S. evolution and hybridization are also “natural” processes, albeit perhaps not “ecological” processes? I can’t keep up with what’s in and out of “ecology.”

The Moon and the Nautilus Shell: Read This Book!

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If anyone had been observing me as I was reading this book, they would have been highly amused. For one thing, it was the first book I’ve ever read on my IPad. Which wouldn’t have been so difficult except Botkin had many sentences I wanted to highlight. Which wouldn’t have been so difficult except highlighting involved 1) tapping the sentence 2) watching the IPad scroll to the next page, 3) tapping again 4) watching the IPad scroll to the previous page, 5) tapping again and watching a screen come up with pots of paint but didn’t seem to highlight, 6) tapping and tapping more earnestly when nothing happened, and so on. Occasionally, I would be surprised by some observation (along the lines of “The Emperor Has No Clothes and Here’s Why”) and I would mutter “OMG!” But the stories were so compelling I couldn’t stop reading to go look up “how to highlight.”

If you asked me why I like this book, I would say “all of us in the forest world are struggling to understand each other. We honestly try, but there’s something deeper that we just can’t get at.” For me, it’s like someone smarter and more articulate describes our world. The net result being that I can see it more clearly. Botkin has begun to explore the terrain of “something deeper”. He’s got a thesis; that a balanced and preferable past lies in our psyche (the Garden of Eden). But that doesn’t completely explain his observation (this was an OMG for me):
“If you ask ecologists whether nature is always constant, they will always say “No, of course not.” But if you ask them to write down a policy for biological conservation or any other kind of environmental management, they will almost always write down a steady-state solution.”

It’s so..obvious… once he pointed it out. Enter “ecosystem integrity” and NRV from the Planning Rule Directives. But why do scientists exhibit this dualistic behavior? Of course, rewriting all those statutes, regulations, and directives would be a lot of work; not for scientists, though. But, in my view, acknowledging the facts might dethrone some scientists from the comfortable position they have, telling the world what to do and how to be. Right now they get to do this without the mess of elections, and the hassle of going to seminary. Human nature is such that if you’re at the top of the heap, even if the foundation is cracked, you don’t want to move to a more secure foundation.

Botkin says that a common question he gets asked is “if you say one kind of change is okay, doesn’t that mean every kind of change is okay, like killing off endangered species (or whatever interests the questioner).” But even that questioner in his audience mixes “observed change” with “bad”.

I will tell one story about taking this to extremes. I once reviewed a paper about a shelterwood and changes in gene frequencies in the seedlings compared to the parents. The conclusion was, since the gene frequencies changed between the parents and the offspring, that shelterwoods were having a negative effect on the genetics. Well, the new gene frequencies could be better for this climate. They could have been a random fluctuation.. perhaps the wind was blowing from a different direction during pollination seasons. The terminal inability to distinguish what is from what should be, empirical from normative, is really scary. Insofar as philosophies can be scary. Because humans do things in the environment, and if every change is labeled bad, then humans are bad. But we know that our intrinsic goodness or badness is the realm of the philosopher, the psychologist and ultimately, the theologian. How did we get from scientific curiosity .. the conversation with nature, where scientists ask and nature answers, to an alchemy of despair? A more in-your-face version of this book might have been titled: The Alchemy of Despair: How Science Became Theology and What We Can Do to Get Science Back.

When I read the book on my IPad, it was an easy read; by showing only 2-3 paragraphs at a time, it seemed to increase the folksiness and storytelling feel of the book. Maybe the sepia background helped also. And make no mistake, Botkin is a great storyteller. And he is gentle in making his points; nonetheless, his points are very clear.

People on this blog will probably enjoy the interplay between his observations of nature and current scientific concepts. If you’ve ever wondered why the minimum population size is thought to be 30, and yet the black-footed ferret (or Best Ferret Forever) has recovered from a population of 18- this book’s for you.

Because there is so much content in this book, I’m going to suggest we have a Virtual Book Club. To give you all time to order it and read it, Book Club will start around August 12th. Then we’ll start a series of posts where we can each tell our stories, relevant to Botkin’s points or stories, and go on to hopefully have a discussion of other points of view. I encourage others to post about parts of the book that do or don’t resonate with them, and we can discuss that. Please send these posts to terraveritasatgmaildotcom.

I think what Botkin writes about is extremely important, both for environmental and forest policy, but also for people’s psychological well-being- humans are ultimately beloved children of Gaia, or sinners who have sinned against Gaia and deserve to be punished. Those of you involved in formal spiritual traditions.. does this sound familiar? And a dichotomy older, than, say Methusaleh?

Here’s a link to the book.

Everyone, rural or urban, has stake in forests

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Burn on Silas Little Experimental Forest
Burn on Silas Little Experimental Forest

Bob Williams’ comment below reminded me of this piece from April, by him and Dan Botkin. I thought I had posted it before, but couldn’t find it when I searched.

Here is the link and below is an excerpt:

Forest fires in the drought-stricken West and Southwest received a lot of attention last year, and scenes of several large, destructive fires were widely shown on television. Could this happen elsewhere in the United States?

In early March, columns of smoke rose from the Pine Barrens, visible from the New York and Philadelphia metropolitan areas. One might think these fires are dangerous and should be suppressed, but they were intentionally lit by the Forest Fire Service of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, with more to be lit this spring.

Given the inherent dangers of fire to homes, and remembering Smokey the Bear telling us, “Only you can prevent forest fires,” lighting fires near big cities might seem like the last thing a government agency should be doing.

However, light forest fires are a necessity for the Pine Barrens, needed to sustain the natural forests and their biological diversity, and to prevent the kind of devastating, intense wildfires that can damage towns and cities.

In fact, most forests of America evolved with fires. They were originally started by random, periodic lightning strikes, but perpetuated for thousands of years by Native Americans prior to European settlement. Only in the last few centuries have people changed how fire is used in forests. The fire suppression of the recent past has created a growing fuel load and conditions that are ripe for a really large fire that will result in significant loss of life and property.

Suppression has led to high-intensity, hard-to-control wildfires that are devastating to forest ecosystems and more likely to burn through houses, towns, and cities. Modern prescribed burns in the Pine Barrens by the state Forest Fire Service reduce the fuel load. They demonstrate the way forests should be and need to be managed across our nation.

That rising smoke near the big Eastern metropolitan areas signals both a burgeoning acceptance that some change in the environment is natural, and a spreading recognition that to sustain our resources and to live successfully and symbiotically with our environment, we must accept and even promote these natural changes.

For centuries, people have lived, worked, and played in the Pinelands, all of which is part of the fabric that makes this forest so environmentally, ecologically, and economically unique. Iron has been mined out of the sandy soils. Berries, pine cones, and sphagnum moss have been harvested from the forests. The Barrens have been farmed, fished, and charcoaled for centuries. They supplied lumber for one of America’s earliest industries, ship building. New York City and Philadelphia were originally built with wood from the Pine Barrens.

After much analysis and debate, in 2005, the Pinelands Commission’s Forestry Advisory Committee stated, “Forestry, if practiced in accordance with sound management practices, can provide wood and wood products and ensure the protection of water quality and critical habitat for wildlife, as well as a way of life and culture that will otherwise soon vanish.” Surprising as it may seem, the Pine Barrens are, as they have been since the late 1600s, a place of active and valuable commercial forestry.

Today, in the 21st century, not much is heard about commercial forestry and its role in our lives and our forests in the public or the media. Although the history and products of the Pine Barrens demonstrate that we are a forest-dependent species, our growing urban culture has moved further and further away from a basic understanding of the land and the forests. However, if you breathe air and drink water, you need forests.

We are all part of forest ecosystems, not intruders – even those of us who live in metropolitan areas.

This raises a couple of thoughts:

1. For some SAF work, I have been doing phone calls with folks across the country asking them about fire; seems like the southerners (and folks in New Jersey) are more accepting of prescribed burning. Is it cultural? Less likely to escape because not so dry? Better procedures for control? Better relations with state air quality folks? I bet someone has studied at least some aspects of this question.

2. While looking for a photo, I found this piece which said

In addition, scientists expect that continued wildfire suppression, and the use of only very low-temperature, cold-season controlled fires, will over time change the composition of Pine Barrens forests by favoring oaks in their competition with pines for dominance of the forest. This potential fundamental alteration of the ecosystem will be gradual and will only be visible over a period of several decades or more.

So it sounds like the dominant species will change if only prescribed fires occur, because the fire effects are different. Will that be a change that’s good? or bad? or simply is?

3. Here’s a link to the Silas Little Experimental Forest.

The Misplaced War Against Western Wildfires

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Here’s an op-ed by Stephen Pyne in today’s Denver Post. It’s beautifully written.

What to do about it depends on how we characterize the problem. The paradox of fire stems from its role as the great shape-shifter of natural processes. The reason is simple: Fire is not a creature or a substance or a geophysical event like a hurricane or an earthquake. It is a biochemical reaction. It synthesizes its surroundings. It takes its character from its context.

Fire integrates everything around it — sun, wind, rain, plants, terrain, roofing, fields, and everything people do, and don’t do. In this way, it indexes the state of an ecosystem. It is also our signature act as a species, the one thing we do that no other creature does. While we did not invent fire (it has been integral to Earth for more than 400 million years), we exercise a monopoly over its controlled use.

All of this makes fire universal, difficult to grasp, and tricky to wrestle into manageable shape. There is no solution to fire, because there are many kinds of fires, and they change with their context. Some fire problems do have technical fixes. We can build machines that reduce combustion to its essence and contain it.

We cannot survive without fire; we just need it in the right ways. It is certainly a problem when it burns freely through cities. But it is also a problem when it is removed from wildlands that have adapted to it, because its absence can be as ecologically significant as its presence. The point is, urban fire is not a model for wildland fire.

Our prevailing templates for describing fire are similarly misdirected. They portray the burn as a disaster and the fight against it as a war story. The battlefield allusion leads observers to reason that there must be more sophisticated technologies than shovels and rakes with which to suppress the flames. We must meet force with greater force. Such metaphors matter, because they mis-define the problem.

Here are a couple of my thoughts:

1. I don’t think the “war” is the prevailing template (let alone “our” prevailing template). I think the last 30 years or so “we’ve” (the fire/ecology/natural resource community) been fairly successful at promoting the concept that fire can have good effects and fire can have bad effects. So who is “we” in this case (the unspecific use of “we” is one of my pet peeves, as regular readers know)?.

2. I agree with Pyne’s point that “urban fire is not a model for wildland fire.” But I think we need to look more closely at his statement:

But it is also a problem when it is removed from wildlands that have adapted to it, because its absence can be as ecologically significant as its presence.

The adaptation of “ecosystems” has always been an interesting concept. For one thing, it depends on “ecosystems” being a real thing instead of a human construct. There have been two schools of thought about this.. one that mixes of plants and animals develop and change through time.. the other that there is something called an “ecosystem”, with a greater or lesser subtext of “balance” or focus on what is currently there (or there in the past) rather than the fact that individual components are always changing.

Species evolve.. that’s what you learn in courses, through the traditional forms of genetic adaptation. What is an “ecosystem” and how does it “evolve”? Through what mechanism? Now backing off from the reification to the reality, if cones open only in fire or hot weather, it does seem that the species might do better with fire (or hot weather), or certain species regenerate better with fire, that is a reality. Without intervention, you won’t get those plants back without fire.

So I think it’s important to look at each impact or lack thereof separately. Say, sedimentation..how much do you get? What organisms is it good for? Which is it bad for, etc.?

So this reminded me of this story in the Atlantic, “SW Forests May Never Recover From Megafires.”

Much of the Los Alamos burn resembles today a lunar landscapes — vast slopes of denuded gray soil where little vegetation has come back. Hillsides, once covered with ponderosa pine and squat, drought tolerant pinon and juniper trees, now grow only clumps of cheatgrass, an invasive species, and occasional bush-like shrub oaks. Biologist Craig Allen of the U.S. Geological Survey, who has has spent years studying the Southwest forest ecosystem, says that areas like these won’t be forested again in our lifetime, and possibly they never will be. The reason that Allen and others are pessimistic is that climate change is hitting the Southwest harder and faster than most other areas in the U.S. The region has warmed on average between 2 and 5 degrees during the past century, and this trend is expected to accelerate in the years ahead.

Add to this the danger from what scientists call a possible “mega-drought.” The Southwest has always been prone to extended dry periods, like the one which archeologists believe drove the Anasazi people of Chaco Canyon in the Four Corner’s area to the wetter Rio Grande Valley in the late 13th century. But a study published last year in the journal Nature Climate says that, by 2050, the region will be even drier than in previous mega-droughts. Moreover, hot summer temperatures in the southwest will literally suck the water our of leaves and needles killing trees in unprecedented numbers. “The majority of forests in the Southwest probably cannot survive in the temperatures that are projected,” one of the study’s co-authors, Park Williams, a bio-climatologist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory told Environment 360.

As a person who spent the early part of her career helping figure out how to reforest dry areas, I think it’s worthy of experimentation to try planting some species in these areas. I think we have gone way past “natural” and now simply have to consider what we want and what we can afford.

The Return of Let-Burn

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Sadly, we get the same results as we’ve gotten in the past. When you “preserve” wildfires for weeks, the winds eventually come up and fires can (and will) escape. Now, all sorts of scarce resources will be tied up for an unknown amount of time, impacting other current and future wildfires, during an intense heatwave. How many Forest Service recreation opportunities will be closed up, due to wildfire concerns? How long will these wildfires continue to impact humans living close by? How many tens of millions of dollars will be wasted on these “resource benefits” touted by fans of “free range” wildfire? How many fuels reduction projects will have to be delayed, because fire suppression has “stolen” their funds? These questions need answers but, no one wants to answer them. “Unforeseen weather conditions” is an unacceptable answer for losing containment. Mountains and winds always go together!

From the Evergreen Magazine’s Facebook page:

The South Fork Fire: A firefighters perspective…
This was sent to us by a firefighter friend of ours. Lack of management in the forest is costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, taking lives and homes, decimating the land, wasting timber, and natural resources as well as dumping large amounts of CO2 and carcinogens into the atmosphere.

“The following message was forwarded by one of my Smokejumper Bro’s. For many years he was a lead plane pilot and has seen a lot from the air.

The temperature at 7500 ft in Los Alamos today reached 94 deg F. The winds were light however we can no longer see Santa Fe and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains because of the smoke from the Jarosa fire. Unfortunately this will drive the fire further into the Pecos Wilderness and no suppression will take place until ti crosses the wilderness boundary.

The Silver Fire is now listed at 85,000 acres with 10% containment according to the news reports.”

Subject: Feds, Fires, Frustration — CO (Lengthy)

“With the understanding that I’ve been wrong before, that I don’t have access to a lot of information and that I might be wrong again, here’s my opinion:
1. Background
The forest is in bad shape due to drought and the beetle infestation. There’s a LOT of standing dead timber and associated brush. In short, it’s a disaster waiting for the proper time to happen and it needs to be carefully watched by people with serious understanding of the potential problems. The right people weren’t in position and the supervision never took place.
2. What happened
A frontal system brought thunderstorms through the area about 5/6 June with a little rain and a lot of lightning. At least 3 fires started from lightning strikes in this area. The Forest Service (hereinafter ‘Feds’) knew these fires were active and, thinking that they could burn out the dead timber and not have to worry about it later, let them grow for 10-12 days without intervention — until they blew up, completely out of control. Then they began trying to play catch-up…in small and ineffective advances.
3. Why?
Apparently, the Feds, hand in hand with the Greenies — who seem to believe that Walt Disney was a wildlife biologist and get their expertise about the outdoors by watching reruns of Bambi — are/have been firmly of the opinion that no one should harvest any of this standing dead wood…because that wouldn’t be ‘natural’. (The beetle-killed timber actually is useful for paneling, furniture and a number of other purposes but the Greenies are terrified that anyone going in to get it will make those terrible trails and roads into the forest that ruin its ‘wildness’.) So, a time-bomb was allowed to develop. And it finally detonated.
4. Result
75,000+ acres of wilderness are reduced to burned wasteland (and a lot more will go up in flames in the coming days), the communities of South Fork, Masonic Park, Creede and others have been put at extreme risk and the entire National Forest in this region may have to be closed to public use for the rest of this year… or at least until the snow flies and kills the hot spots. (South Fork would have been lost had not a MUCH higher power — Thank You, God! — apparently stepped in and redirected the winds. The fire was headed directly toward town when the winds changed abruptly and drove the fires past it. Other locales may or may not be as fortunate.
So…
IMO this debacle could have been avoided if the Feds had spent more time recognizing reality instead of fantasizing about ‘Nature’s intentions’.
A lone guy in a Super Cub could probably have overflown these fires early in their development, poured half a thermos of coffee out the pilot’s window and flown home with the problem solved.
Instead, the bureaucrats sat on their thumbs and let everything get out of control.
(A friend of mine has a saying: “Kill the monsters while they’re small.” The Feds don’t seem to subscribe to that thinking. )
Right now, the Feds are in full CYA mode, claiming that this fire is very ‘complex’, that it was impossible to forecast this sort of development and that the weather was a factor that was unforeseeable.
Well, it wasn’t nearly so complex before they allowed it to grow beyond control. If they’d actually gotten out of the office and walked through the woods from time to time, they would have seen the huge amounts of dead wood and brush that’s fueling it. And, if they knew how to read weather charts — or had asked someone from the weather service (another federal agency) to read the charts for them — they wouldn’t have been so surprised by that little shocker.
I understand that hindsight is always 20/20 but the locals were already asking why the Feds were sitting on this a week or more before it blew up. Seems to me that our expert forestry folks might have at least listened a little bit.
So, a lot of people are out of their homes. Some may lose them. The local law enforcement and fire organizations (who have been doing truly heroic work) are spread thin and overtaxed. And a lot of businesses are in dire financial straits just at the start of the summer season. And it can all be laid at the feet of the Feds, most of whom will probably be promoted for their ‘selfless’ efforts in fighting this disaster…that they created.

I guess that incompetence flows from the leadership. Lord knows we’re dealing with really entrenched (politicians) at every level of Federal gubmint.”

New Study Shows the Value of Active Forest Management

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Yes, we have already seen what happens with a hands-off, “whatever happens” strategy.

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I haven’t read the article all the way through but, this appears to solidify the importance of managing our forests, and the fire dangers within. The are four entire pages of citations, plenty of pictures and some very convincing common sense recommendations that use site-specific science. The picture above is from a roadside treatment along the local Highway 4 corridor. This treatment extends for many miles along the highway, making this “ignition zone” much more fire resistant than it was. Also evident in this picture is the lack of old growth beyond the “Roadside Zone”, a remnant of logging practices in the last millennium.

http://www.calforests.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/The-Efficacy-of-Hazardous-Fuel-Treatments.pdf

Let us hope that the warnings are heeded and solutions are implemented with site-specific science. However, I would VERY much like to see a current view of that picture of fire intensities near Alpine, Arizona. I’m sure it would show increased amounts of bug trees outside of the firelines. Certainly, wildfire effects persist for MANY years, even outside of the firelines. I have seen it happen multiple times, in multiple places.