Although some giant sequoia trees have stood for thousands of years and are adapted to withstand frequent low and mixed severity fires, preliminary estimates suggest that the 2020 Castle Fire killed between 31 to 42% of large sequoias within the Castle Fire footprint, or 10 to 14% of all large sequoias across the tree’s natural range in the Sierra Nevada. This translates to an estimated loss of 7,500 to 10,600 large sequoias. These estimates may change as we acquire new data.
Why Did This Happen?
A combination of one hundred years of fire suppression along with climate change driven hotter droughts has resulted in a denser forest with unprecedented levels of fuel loading. These conditions have changed how wildfire burns in the southern Sierra Nevada, resulting in large areas of high severity fire effects and mass fire events that generate their own weather. The Castle Fire of 2020 was one of these megafires.
What Steps Can Be Taken to Protect the Sequoia Groves?
In order to reduce fuels and restore wildfire resilience, we will need all available tools in the toolbox. Prescribed burning remains one of the most important management tools to reduce fuels in sequoia groves, favor regeneration, and increase resilience of these groves to climate change and wildfires. However, smaller burn windows and massive fuel accumulation means that prescribed fire is not able to keep up with the treatment needed and some areas cannot be safely treated with fire. Restorative thinning is an additional too that can be used to help protect the sequoia groves.
Removal of barred owls slows decline of iconic spotted owls in Pacific Northwest, study finds
July 19, 2021
CORVALLIS, Ore. – A 17-year study in Oregon, Washington and California found that removal of invasive barred owls arrested the population decline of the northern spotted owl, a native species threatened by invading barred owls and the loss of old-forest habitats.
The conservation and management of northern spotted owls became one of the largest and most visible wildlife conservation issues in United States history after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the spotted owl as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1990 because of rapid declines in the owl’s old-forest habitats. Four years later, the Northwest Forest Plan was adopted and reduced the rate of logging of old-growth forests on federal lands.
Despite more than 30 years of protection, spotted owl populations have continued to decline, with steepest declines observed in the past 10 years. Long-term monitoring of spotted owl populations across the species’ range identified rapid increases in the population of invasive barred owls as a primary reason for those declines, the researchers said.
The study published this week in PNAS by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, Oregon State University, and several other entities is the first to look at the wide-scale impact of barred owls on populations of spotted owls in the Pacific Northwest.
The study focused on two sites in northern California, two in Oregon and one in Washington and found that spotted owl populations stabilized in all study areas where the researchers lethally removed barred owls (0.2% decline per year on average) but continued to decline sharply in areas without removals (12.1% decline per year on average.)
The findings in the new paper inform future management decisions about the spotted owl population.
“This study is a promising example of successful removal and suppression of an invasive and increasingly abundant competitor, with a positive demographic response from a threatened native species,” said David Wiens, the lead author of the paper who is a wildlife biologist with the USGS Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center in Corvallis and a courtesy faculty member with Oregon State’s Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences.
As a species native to eastern North America, barred owls began expanding their populations westward in the early 1900s. The newly extended range now completely overlaps that of the northern spotted owl.
While barred owls look similar to spotted owls, they are larger, have a stronger ecological impact and outcompete spotted owls for habitat and food. This competition exacerbated spotted owl population declines, which were historically triggered by loss of old-forest habitat.
Mounting concerns about the threat of barred owls prompted a barred owl removal pilot project from 2009 to 2013 in California that concluded removal of barred owls, coupled with conservation of old forest, could slow or reverse population declines of spotted owls.
The research outlined in the PNAS paper expanded the pilot project to cover a much wider geographic range and a longer time period. The new research showed that barred owl removal had a strong, positive effect on survival and population trends of spotted owls that was consistent across all five study areas.
The conservation and restoration of old forests, which has been a chief focus of recovery strategies for the northern spotted owl, is a major source of controversy in the Pacific Northwest. The barred owl invasion has exacerbated this issue, placing an even higher premium on remaining old conifer forests.
“While suppression of barred owls can be difficult, costly, and ethically challenging, improvements in vital rates and population trends of spotted owls, and perhaps other threatened wildlife, can be expected when densities of barred owls are reduced from current levels,” the researchers write in the paper. “Alien predators are considered to be more harmful to prey populations than native predators, and the dynamic interactions between invasive and native predators can lead to profound changes in ecosystems, often with considerable conservation and economic impacts.”
Ecologists in a vast region of wetlands and forest in remote Oregon have spent the past decade thinning young trees and using planned fires to try to restore the thick stands of ponderosa to a less fire-prone state.
This week, the nation’s biggest burning wildfire provided them with an unexpected, real-world experiment. As the massive inferno half the size of Rhode Island roared into the Sycan Marsh Preserve, firefighters said the flames jumped less from treetop to treetop and instead returned to the ground, where they were easier to fight, moved more slowly and did less damage to the overall forest.
The initial assessment suggests that the many years of forest treatments worked, said Pete Caligiuri, Oregon forest program director for The Nature Conservancy, which runs the research at the preserve.
“Generally speaking, what firefighters were reporting on the ground is that when the fire came into those areas that had been thinned … it had significantly less impact.”
The reports were bittersweet for researchers, who still saw nearly 20 square miles of the preserve burn, but the findings add to a growing body of research about how to make wildfires less explosive by thinning undergrowth and allowing forests to burn periodically — as they naturally would do — instead of snuffing out every flame.
…
Historically, wildfires in Oregon and elsewhere in the U.S. West burned an area as big or bigger than the current blaze more frequently but much less explosively. Periodic, naturally occurring fire cleared out the undergrowth and smaller trees that cause today’s fires to burn so dangerously.
Those fires have not been allowed to burn for the past 120 years, said James Johnston, a researcher with Oregon State University’s College of Forestry who studies historical wildfires.
The area on the northeastern flank of the Bootleg Fire is in the ancestral homeland of the Klamath Tribes, which have used intentional, managed fire to keep the fuel load low and prevent such explosive blazes. Scientists at the Sycan Marsh research station now work with the tribe and draw on that knowledge.
This refutes some of Chad Hanson’s claims in his new book, Smokescreen, which we discussed here:
“Thinned forests often burn more intensely in wildland fires,” [Hanson] writes, “because thinning reduces the windbreak effect of denser forests, allowing winds to sweep through more rapidly, while also reducing the shade of the forest canopy and creating hotter and drier conditions.”
There may be some situations where fuels, weather, and topography can allow this to happen, but “a growing body of research” shows that reducing fuels and thinning works. I’m glad the NPR article mentioned the role of the tribe’s knowledge and practices.
“We are seeing severe fire behavior that resists control efforts. Further, the seasonal forecast for the entire Western United States remains extremes for the next several months. We expect demand for resources to outpace resource availability, and our workforce remains fatigued and in need of recovery following last year’s record-setting fire season, active hurricane season, and strenous efforts to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
…
“I understand this direction requires us to make difficult trade-offs with our other high-priority mission work. This is especially challenging at present, when we are working diligently to accomplish performance goals and restoration outcomes. As the mission support workforce shifts priorities to fire, this also means trade-offs in non-fire contracts, hires, grants, payments, among others.”
Yesterday afternoon, I noticed on Twitter that the National Weather Service in Medford, Oregon identified pyrocumulus clouds coming from the Bootleg Fire.
So, I decided to have a closer look at what the landscape where those pyrocumulus clouds were coming from looked like. Here’s what I found.
It appears that much of the area burning hot was very heavily logged/roaded/managed. Also, this is clearly a dry-east side forest, not the lush Oregon forest many people outside of the region may assume when they hear that a big “forest fire” is burning in Oregon.
Next, I started hearing from numerous sources that the heavily logged/roaded and ‘managed’ area where the Bootleg Fire ripped and roared through yesterday—putting up those pyrocumulus clouds—is allegedly part of a huge biomass energy, “forest offset” (ie “carbon offset) logging project.
As the #BootlegFire burns out of control in Oregon — with critical implications for public safety, air quality, and forest health — we can report that another large forest offset project appears to be on fire.
And this:
The project impacted by the #BootlegFire, ACR273, is a 400,000 acre forest project that was recently harvested for timber and has earned more than 950,000 offset credits from California’s climate regulator as it regrows. https://acr2.apx.com/mymodule/reg/prjView.asp?id1=273
I also have noticed a number of tweets from Gary Graham Hughes of Biofuels Watch, which included information such as this:
Extreme fire behavior is a result of the logging. You are missing the #climate ironies of an offset project going up in smoke plus the tens of millions of dollars of public money for Red Rock Biofuels unicorn bioenergy project that has never yet produced even one gallon of fuel.
And this:
The fire is exploding through heavily logged lands belonging to Green Diamond Resource Company, holdings that are registered as an offset project for California cap-and-trade as well as been committed to provide feedstock for the unicorn #RedRockBiofuels project in #Lakeview.
I also couldn’t help but notice this tweet from the John Muir Project:
— John Muir Project (@JohnMuirProject) July 15, 2021
Or this map produced by Bryant Baker (MS) of Los Padres Forest Watch of the management history of the Bootleg Fire area.
I’m sure in the coming days and weeks we’ll end up learning more. It goes without saying that this part of the country just experienced some of the highest temperatures on record (and it was 121 degrees in…Canada). And this part of the world is also currently under exceptional drought or extreme drought.
If all of this sounds sort of familiar it’s because it should be. The same situation just played out in Oregon ten months ago during the deadly and destructive Labor Day fires. Speaking of those fires, and also the role that downed power lines have played in some of the most deadly and destructive wildfires in recent years, Oregon Public Broadcasting just published this story, “Residents of Gates, Oregon, aim their ire at Pacific Power nearly a year after their town burned: Despite high wind warnings, Pacific Power chose not to shut off electricity.”
According to Inciweb, the cause of the Bootleg Fire is currently “unknown.” Inciweb also reports, “Fire remains very active with significant acreage increases due to hot, dry, and breezy conditions, and plume-dominated fire behavior. Poor humidity recovery at night is contributing to active fire spread through the night time period. Robust spread rates are being generated by drought-affected fuels. Expecting similar conditions for the next several days.”
Stay safe everyone. And pray for rain…and climate action and more climate resilient communities and infrastructure. It’s going to be a long century.
UPDATE (July 20, 2021): According to InciWeb, on July 19th, the Bootleg Fire merged into the Log Fire to its northeast and now is being managed as one fire. Total acres burned to date are 388,359 acres. The cause is still “unknown.”
This is the aerial view of the northern part of the Bootleg Fire, again showing how heavily logged and roaded this specific part of the fire area is.
Also, here’s an updated map produced by Bryant Baker (MS) of Los Padres Forest Watch showing the management history of the Bootleg Fire area.
UPDATE (July 21, 2021): These new maps from Oregon Wild illustrate the extent of logging and grazing across the Bootleg Fire footprint.
I’m curious about why some folks are against commercial timber harvesting. Some environmental groups — the Sierra Club, for example — oppose commercial timber harvesting in general, especially on federal lands. Some groups/folks support fuels reduction and thinning, as long as it doesn’t involve commercial timber sales. Of course, some of this is the legacy of past “industrial timber harvest” practices – large clearcuts with no stream buffers, etc – the “salvage rider,” and so on. On the other hand, other groups/folks may accept commercial harvests if the rotation age is long, and this includes entities that seek income though selling forest carbon. The Nature Conservancy harvests timber, usually in selective harvests, and uses the income to pay for managing its lands.
Is “commercial timber harvesting!” merely a rallying cry, a marketing ploy? A deeply held political or philosophical position? Do most people and groups support it, to some degree? What’s your take?
NPR News has a Q&A with Scott Stephens, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in wildfires and forest management, entitled “What’s Needed To Manage Wildfires.” Stephens’ Fire Science Laboratory has a large collection of forest restoration and fuels management research.
Excerpt:
KURTZLEBEN: With climate change essentially ensuring that conditions will continue to get more suitable for big fires, do you have any hope in the state and federal governments’ ability to manage future fire seasons?
STEPHENS: This is a great question. And I actually have a lot of hope. You know, I really do believe that we could do some work now in the next 10 to 20 years, which is actually probably the most important period now, to do our restoration thinning, do the work that actually says we’re going to go into a forest and we’re going to actually identify what we want to leave for restoration and we’re going to take the excess of that. We’re going to do the prescribed burning to get the fire back into these systems. And then again, managed wildfire. I know that it’s such a big issue for this state. Look at what’s going on. So many people losing homes, smoking out communities, huge cities for months at a time, huge impacts to water quality. Lake Oroville just had a huge fire in the middle fork of the Feather River, the largest tributary to Lake Oroville, which is the largest lake in the state water project.
These are enormous issues. On top of that, giant sequoia areas in southern Sierra Nevada last year – severe fires killed, we think, 10% of the giant sequoia old growth trees in the state. So it’s not as if we’re wondering what’s going to happen. It’s happening right now. So that just tells me that we have to get on the system to get this work in earnest. My estimate is we need to do 10 times more restoration thinning and prescribed burning to start to change the rudder of the ship.
Belinda Joyner lives in Northampton County. The county’s population is predominantly Black.
“We’ve been disrespected all our lives,” said resident Belinda Joyner, 68, who has been fighting environmental racism in her community for decades, “and we’re still being disrespected.”
Check out the huge story feature from CNN on how the wood pellet industry is harming communities, destroying local economies and gobbling up forests all in the name of climate change even though it is hurting the climate not helping.
The investigative drilling proposed along Homestake Creek in Eagle County, Colorado could dewater and destroy valuable wetlands. Photo by Marjorie Westermann.
Readers of The Smokey Wire may recall that Sharon posted about this project last November. You can check out that post and discussion/debate here. Below is the latest development.
DENVER—To safeguard irreplaceable wetlands and imperiled species in the headwaters of the Colorado River, a coalition of conservation groups today warned the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that they will file a lawsuit in federal court if the agencies do not complete a comprehensive analysis of the effects of the planned and permitted geotechnical investigation on the greenback cutthroat trout and Canada lynx.
The Forest Service issued a special use permit for the Whitney Creek Geotechnical project on March 22, 2021. The feasibility assessment is the first step by the Cities of Colorado Springs and Aurora to build another large dam and reservoir in the Homestake Valley in the White River National Forest for diversion out of the Colorado River Basin to the Front Range.
“Nature’s bank account is severely overdrawn due to climate change and unsustainable use,” said Jen Pelz, the Wild Rivers Program Director at WildEarth Guardians. “The solution is not to build a bigger bank, but to conserve water, protect land and wildlife, and start living within the river’s means.”
The letter sent by WildEarth Guardians, Colorado Headwaters, Holy Cross Wilderness Defense Fund, Save the Colorado, the Colorado Chapter of the Sierra Club, and Wilderness Workshop details how the agencies failed to consider the effects of the investigative drilling, as well as the forthcoming dam and reservoir project, on listed species in violation of the Endangered Species Act. Listed species identified that exist in or downstream of the project include the threatened Canada lynx, Greenback cutthroat trout, and Ute Ladies’-tresses orchid, and the endangered bonytail chub, Colorado pikeminnow, humpback chub, and razorback sucker.
“After reviewing the record it’s clear that the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service failed to comply with the Endangered Species Act. The real impacts to listed species, including lynx and cutthroat trout, haven’t been adequately considered or disclosed,” said Peter Hart, Staff Attorney at Wilderness Workshop. “Today’s letter puts the agencies on notice of the violations we’ve identified; they now have 60 days to respond. If the issues we’ve raised remain unresolved, we could pursue a legal challenge in federal court.”
In addition to the harm to imperiled species detailed in the notice letter, the investigative drilling proposed along Homestake Creek in Eagle County, Colorado could drain and destroy valuable wetlands. Further, the exploration will lay the foundation for a destructive reservoir that would inundate hundreds of acres in the Holy Cross Wilderness Area while stealing more water from the Colorado River to the thirsty front range for use by the Cities of Colorado Springs and Aurora.
The groups urge the Forest Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the effects of the geotechnical investigation and related activities on threatened and endangered species as required by the Endangered Species Act before any investigatory drilling or other activities are undertaken in the Homestake Valley. If the agencies fail to do so, the groups will file a lawsuit in federal court after the 60-day notice period is complete.
“Colorado has not seen a transmountain diversion in 45 years. With climate change and the Colorado River losing 1% of flows each year, the Aurora and Colorado Springs’ Homestake project will never be built,” said Jerry Mallett, President of Colorado Headwaters
“Not one drop, not one,” said Gary Wockner of Save The Colorado. “Buckle up, because we will fight to stop this proposed new Colorado River dam and diversion project for as long and as hard as it takes.” Gary Wockner, Executive Director, Save The Colorado
“It is unfortunate that the U.S. Forest Service has chosen to facilitate the construction of a dam near a wilderness area in order to transfer yet more water from the West Slope to cities in the Front Range. The proposed dam and reservoir would drown wetlands and riparian habitat, which are naturally rare in the arid west comprising just 2 percent of the landscape,” explained Ramesh Bhatt, Chair, Conservation Committee of the Colorado Sierra Club. “Despite their rarity, wetland ecosystems are needed by greater than 80 percent of our native wildlife during some phase of their life cycle. Building this dam would be another devastating blow to Colorado’s biodiversity, which is already in crisis. This action by the Forest Service is not only contrary to its mandate to protect natural areas but is also illegal because the Service chose to cut corners to make its decision.”
“The proposed Whitney Creek project starting with destructive drilling of the irreplaceable Homestake Creek wetlands is an environmental atrocity and must be abandoned. The permit for drilling must be revoked. It is premised on several fallacies: that it will not damage the wetlands, that it will determine that there is no geologic reason not to build the proposed Whitney Creek Reservoir, and that the reservoir will be built. None of these things are true,” said Warren M. Hern, Chairman, of Holy Cross Wilderness Defense Fund. “The permit assumes that Congress will approve a loss of 500 acres from the Holy Cross Wilderness, which we will oppose, which the public will oppose, and which will not be approved by the Congress. Aside from irrevocable destruction of the Homestake Creek wetlands at and downstream from the proposed reservoir, the proposed reservoir is placed over a major geological fault, the Rio Grande Rift, which is a tectonic divergent plate boundary. Placing a reservoir at this site is pure madness and terminal stupidity. It would endanger the lives of those living downstream. We will oppose it by every legal means available.”
Clemson’s Outdoor Recreation Center made with CLT https://www.structuremag.org/?p=17338
This Vox article by David Roberts is the best comprehensive view of CLT I’ve run across, well worth the read. As you know, I’m working on a project about “potential areas of agreement in fuels reduction/restoration efforts”.
It seems, at least from the responses to the Climate Smart Forestry and Ag request, that many ENGO’s put biomass at the bottom and want woody material to go to a higher value product. More on that later. So it seems like CLT has the ability to build bridges between the formerly maligned timber industry and environmental concerns, plus the issue seems to not be partisanized.
If you wonder what makes CLT, how small the material can be and so on, I recommend you read all of this article. There’s even a video of blast testing! And this from the Public Lands Commissioner in the State of Washington.
Forests in the West have become tinderboxes, in part thanks to climate change and in part thanks to years of poor management. They are filled with trees dead or weakened from pine beetle infestations. Decades of overzealous fire protection have left them choked with closely clustered, small-diameter trees. Lately, with all this kindling around, “there’s so much fuel, the intensity of the fire wipes out everything,” says Hilary Franz, commissioner of public lands in Washington state. The land is being permanently scarred.
The forests on public lands badly need thinning, but there’s never enough funding. This has given Franz an idea: use weak and small trees, for which there is no other market, for mass timber. (Logs with tops as small as 4.5 inches will work.)A sufficiently large market for mass timber would create funding for thinning those trees out. As a bonus, Franz wants to use mass timber to build low-cost affordable housing on publicly managed land.
Numerous environmental groups, led by the Sierra Club, signed an open letter to California state officials in 2018, urging caution about mass timber. Notably, they did not oppose it outright. They argued that, thanks to current forestry practices, its climate benefits have been exaggerated. “CLT cannot be climate-smart unless it comes from climate-smart forestry,” they said.
The letter provides a short list of principles that should guide climate-smart forestry, including: “Logging of the world’s remaining mature and primary forests, as well as unroaded/undeveloped and other intact forest landscapes, should cease.” And: “Tree plantations should not be established at the expense of natural forests.”
While it is not perfect, they concluded, “FSC certification of privately owned forestlands can support progress in the right direction.”
“There’s no question that [FSC] is the gold standard,” says Jones, “but it’s all better than not doing anything.”
Now you might find this puzzling, as the Sierra Club seems to be against the FS becoming certified to FSC. At least that’s what 15 year old rumors said. So I noted that the link to the letter from the Sierra Club site was broken and asked Roberts for a copy. The letter is now hosted by another site the Pacific Northwest Building Coalition, which seems to be an organization of concrete producers (competitors in the building sector).
The principles in the letter sound very much like how the Forest Service manages. Which is not surprising, given studies like this from the Pinchot Institute.
“Therefore, we should permanently protect those forests that are the most carbon-rich, including U.S. federal public forestlands” Except that they are not all (all FS lands) carbon rich, as we know; and doesn’t directly address the fuel treatment/restoration “the alternative is burning in piles” question, as articulated by this WSU Civil Engineering Professor, Don Bender.
And who signed the letter? A bunch of organizations that are the usual suspects in our line of work, as well as others.
Jason Grant, Sierra Club
Rolf Skar, Greenpeace USA
Debbie Hammel, Natural Resources Defense Council,
Jim Ace, Stand
Dominick DellaSala, Ph. D., Geos Institute
Chad Hanson, Ph. D. John Muir Project
Denis Hayes, Bullitt Foundation
Peter Goldman, Washington Forest Law Center
Adam Colette, Dogwood Alliance
Bill Barclay, Rainforest Action Network
Lisa Remlinger, Washington Environmental Council
Randi Spivak, Center for Biodiversity.. and many more
So it seems like support depends on landownership, and not anything to do with the ecosystem or the science. And of course, one of the difficulties with FSC is that it’s ultimately based on a forest management for forest products model, and not a fuels treatment/restoration model. That might require the development of a different certification system. But that might lead to equity concerns in which a broad national system might exert power-over the informed decisions of collaboratives on the ground.
But perhaps I’m misinterpreting the sentence in the letter. I have tried to clarify with folks from the Sierra Club, but have not received any clarifying replies, including the media desk. If anyone has a good contact there, please let me know.