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Some folks say forest managers need to focus on thinning in and around communities to protect homes from wildfire. This article reminds us that wildfire effects an be much more widespead than the burned area itself, and shows why active forest management aimed at reducing fire severity may be appropriate in the backcountry.

“Concerns rise about flooding, debris flows in Lake Christine Fire burn scar”

“Local emergency managers are particularly concerned about flood and flow risks from the Lake Christine Fire burn scar.”

…

“Wildfires result in a loss of vegetation and leave the ground charred and unable to absorb water,” said a statement from a consortium of emergency management agencies in the Roaring Fork Valley. “This creates conditions for flooding. Even areas that are not traditionally flood-prone are at risk of flooding for up to several years after a wildfire.”

…

“The soils that experienced the greatest burn severity are shedding the water rather than absorbing it, Thompson said. Water was flowing off hillsides in sheets and eroding the road between the main parking lot and the Mill Creek Trailhead, he said.”

Here’s a Debris Flow Probability Map of the 12,500-acre Lake Christine Fire area and surrounding communities in Colorado.

From NPR News today:

1 Billion Acres At Risk For Catastrophic Wildfires, U.S. Forest Service Warns

The chief of the U.S. Forest Service is warning that a billion acres of land across America are at risk of catastrophic wildfires like last fall’s deadly Camp Fire that destroyed most of Paradise, Calif.

As we head into summer, with smoke already drifting into the Northwest from wildfires in Alberta, Canada, Vicki Christiansen said wildfires are now a year-round phenomenon. She pointed to the hazardous conditions in forests that result from a history of suppression of wildfires, rampant home development in high-risk places and the changing climate.

“When you look nationwide there’s not any place that we’re really at a fire season. Fire season is not an appropriate term anymore,” Christiansen said in an interview with NPR at the agency’s headquarters in Washington.

A lawsuit has just been filed challenging a U.S Forest Service policy that grants states authority to allow black bear baiting in national forests, despite knowing that such practices have resulted in the deaths of threatened grizzly bears.

As a hunter myself, I find the practice of ‘baiting’ bears gross, unethical and totally inappropriate on any publics lands, but especially within habitat for threatened grizzly bears. Here’s the press release from the plaintiffs.

Grizzly deaths spur bear baiting challenge in Idaho, Wyoming

Today, wildlife advocates challenged in federal court a U.S. Forest Service policy granting states authority to allow black bear baiting in national forests, despite knowing that such practices have resulted in the deaths of threatened grizzly bears. Hunters have killed threatened grizzlies attracted to bait stations, typically stocked with human food intended to lure black bears. Currently, only Idaho and Wyoming allow bear baiting in national forests. The challenge comes as Congress considers a bill to enact expanded protections for threatened grizzlies.

“Bear baiting not only violates ‘fair chase’ hunting ethics, it has caused deaths of iconic grizzlies,” said Lindsay Larris of WildEarth Guardians. “Federal agencies are bound by the law to recover threatened grizzlies, and knowingly allowing bear baiting flagrantly violates that duty.”

Until 1992, the Forest Service required hunters and guides to obtain a special use permit to use bait to hunt black bears in national forests. Documents defining the terms of the policy change prohibits any grizzly killing (“take”) due to bear baiting. Should any grizzly bear deaths occur, “the [Forest Service] must reinitiate consultation with the [Fish and Wildlife] Service and provide the circumstances surrounding the take.” The decision’s biological opinion also stated there was only a “remote possibility that a grizzly bear may be taken as a result of black bear baiting.”

After the Forest Service allowed states alone to decide whether bait could be used, the grizzly bear population in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem increased. Since 1995, at least eight grizzly bears have been shot and killed at black bear bait stations in national forests in Idaho and Wyoming, and more have been killed at bait stations on other public and private lands.

Vague agency record keeping prohibits certainty about the extent of grizzly mortalities at black bear bait stations. However, in 2007, a grizzly was killed in the Bitterroot ecosystem on public land managed by the Forest Service, the first grizzly known to inhabit the area in over half a century.

“Grizzlies are making their way to the vast, wild country of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, and they’ll get there if we let them,” said Dana Johnson of Wilderness Watch. “Unfortunately, the many bait stations scattered along that path are death-magnets for dispersing bears. It’s past time for the Forest Service to do something about it.”

Also since giving states the power to allow bear baiting in national forests, scientists have established a significant body of research showing baiting causes harmful and irreversible grizzly bear conditioning to human food and disrupts grizzlies’ behavioral dynamics.

“The confirmed grizzly killings at bait stations are more than enough to trigger the Forest Service to reevaluate its policy delegating these decisions to states,” said Pete Frost, attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center. “Safe passage for grizzlies to the Selway Bitterroot ecosystem is critical to their recovery, and the Forest Service is required to reassess whether to allow states to control bear baiting in our national forests.”

Given bear baiting’s harmful effects on threatened grizzly bears, the groups involved in the case want the Forest Service to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service to re-evaluate whether bear baiting decisions should be up to states, and whether baiting is too harmful to threatened grizzly bears.

File this one under “the more you know.” It can also be cross filed under “we told you so.” Also, there’s plenty of scientific evidence and research out there that would refute much of what Idaho State Forester David Groeschl says below.

From the Associated Press:

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere from forest fires in the U.S. West is being greatly overestimated, possibly leading to poor land management decisions, researchers at the University of Idaho said.

Researchers in the study published last week in the journal Global Change Biology say many estimates are 59% to 83% higher than what is found based on field observations.

Healthy forests are carbon sinks, with trees absorbing carbon and reducing the amount in the atmosphere contributing to global warming. Forest fires can release that carbon.

“Part of the reason we’re talking about this is that there’s a narrative that has circumvented science,” said Jeff Stenzel, the lead author and a doctoral student at the university. “What that can lead to is management decisions that can exacerbate rather than mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.”

The study used field data from a 2002 wildfire in southern Oregon and a 2013 wildfire in central California that, the authors of the paper said, included one of the largest pre- and post-fire data sets available.

Typically, the study found, about 5% of the biomass burned in a forest fire as opposed to other estimates of 30% and public perceptions of 100%.

Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke in late 2018 cited carbon released from forest fires as a result of poor forest practices on federal land and a need to increase various management practices.

Forest fires usually leave behind standing dead trees, the study said, that could be mistakenly counted as releasing carbon in other estimates. The carbon remains in those trees and is slowly released over decades. Even then, the study found, much of that carbon is recaptured in new growth following the forest fire.

Overall, the study found, forest fires in the U.S. West in the last 15 years have emitted about 250 million tons of carbon, about half of many estimates.

Idaho State Forester David Groeschl said carbon emissions are a consideration when it comes to making decisions about forests on the 2.4 million acres (987,000 hectares) the state manages, but so are other factors.

In deciding where to log, Groeschl said, the state considers weather and climate, insect and disease, fire frequency and severity, milling technology, and local, regional and global economics.

When a forest is logged, the resulting wood products retain that carbon, he noted. When a fire moves through state-owned forests, he said, salvage logging removes standing dead trees and trees likely to die and so captures that carbon in wood products rather than allowing it to be slowly released over several decades.

He also said that forest restoration efforts following logging or a fire speed up the return of a forest that otherwise could take decades.

“We get carbon sequestration going as quickly as possible,” he said.

Wildfires have become more frequent and more severe in the last 20 to 30 years, Groeschl said, which is also a factor when it comes to logging state lands.

“The longer we grow it, the greater the risk of loss and carbon emission happening,” he said.

Matthew posted this press release written by San Juan Citizen’s Alliance and Great Old Broads for Wilderness

Here’s the Forest Service side as reported in the Durango Herald. Some excerpts:

The ultimate decision, however, was left up to Brian Ferebee, the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain regional forester. On May 7, Ferebee approved the request, but noted he was “concerned about the impacts to wilderness character” that chain saw work would have in the two wilderness areas.

As a result, Ferebee placed certain restrictions on the project, such as limiting work to no more than six weeks between June 1 and Aug. 17 and requiring a Forest Service staffer to supervise work.

“The magnitude of obstructed trails across these two wilderness areas, and the potential resource damage that will occur if we do not open these trails to wilderness visitors, warrants the rare and limited exception to allow chain saw use,” Ferebee wrote.

—-

In a previous interview, Jason Robertson, the Forest Service’s lead on the project, said chain saws have been used in wilderness areas in the past, but usually in circumstances after a major storm knocked down vast amounts of trees.

——

At the heart of the conservation groups’ complaint is the risk that allowing motorized use for trail work could chip away at the Wilderness Act and could be applied to other areas of the U.S. where bark beetles have ravaged forests.

The Forest Service’s Roberts said allowing chain saws into the Weminuche and South San Juan wilderness areas would not set a precedent for other Forest Service districts.

But Robertson’s statement appears to be contradicted by his supervisor’s own words in his letter approving the project. Ferebee said he wants a detailed report of how many trees were cut, total miles of trails cleared and summary of the project.

“Your reports will help determine if any future chain saw allowances are justified and needed to administer wilderness in the Rocky Mountain Region,” Ferebee wrote.

Note: Brian Ferebee is my former boss, so perhaps I am biased. But why would this one be setting a precedent any more than any other approvals of chain saws in Wilderness? There is a difference between collecting data for analysis and future decision making and “setting a precedent” in my mind. I don’t understand exactly what the reporter is thinking.

The FS had done a Minimum Requirements Analysis. Here’s a link to that process, and the FAQ’s, which are very helpful, are here.

In hunting for more information, I ran across a GAO report on this topic from 1970 (50 years ago!). Sometimes the internet is a wondrous thing. Here’s the link.

In GAO’s view, the construction and presence of trails, bridges, and other facilities in wilderness and similar areas, as well as the presence of litter left in the areas by the users, are basically inconslstent with the ideal wilderness concept. GAO believes that, once decisions have been made to construct such facilities and to dispose of accumulated litter, the factors of economy and convenience as well as others should be considered in determining whether the use of motorized equlpment is reasonable and desirable in the circumstances.

It’s a good time to think about this, when at least one Presidential candidate (sigh.. does the silly season have to start so early?) wants to make National Park visits free.  Another idea (not proposed by any candidates that I know of) would be to charge non-residents more, as they are not paying taxes for the parks (and to discourage plane travel and other carbon-using aspects of international tourism?).

Here’s a link to the report, authored by Tate Watkins of PERC. I think the basic point is that funds that are dependent on users are invariant to partisan bickering and suchlike, so are more dependable and also as visitation goes up, the relevant funding would go up directly.

For the Parks:

More recently, after nearly three decades of relatively flat visitation that began in the late 1980s, visits to the park system have surged since 2013, increasing by 16 percent in just five years. The uptick is likely due to various factors, including the park service’s centennial celebration in 2016 as well as the rise of outdoor recreation generally. In 2016 and 2017, systemwide visitation reached all-time highs of nearly 331 million visits, before falling to 318 million visits in 2018. Even with the overall decline last year, 28 individual sites set new visitation records.^[14]

Not specifically mentioned in the report is increased international tourism to US Parks, discussed here . It’s a little confusing because sometimes they are talking about totals, and sometimes about percentages of international travelers who visit Parks and Monuments.

And about the Forest Service:

Forest Service

The Forest Service manages more than 190 million acres of land for multiple uses such as timber management, livestock grazing, wildlife and fish habitat, and recreation.^[22] National forests provide ample outdoor recreation opportunities, from hiking, biking, and horseback riding to hunting, dirt biking, and camping. The Forest Service manages approximately 30,000 developed recreation sites nationwide.^[23] The agency faces a deferred maintenance backlog of its own of nearly $5.5 billion, including $279 million in unfunded trail repairs.^[24]

According to visitor surveys conducted by the agency, visitation to national forests has remained relatively steady over the past decade. In 2016, there were an estimated 148 million recreation visits to national forests.^[25]

That (has remained relatively steady) does not match my observations. Maybe some places are going down in use, other places are increasing and the average is the same? Maybe NVUM is not accurate? What are you all’s observations?

If timber companies and a state agency can agree on making access to 867,000 acres of private timberland free to the public, maybe there’s a template for doing the same for federal lands.

Also included: “The access/depredation fund also pays for continued public access to 2.3 million acres of Idaho Department of Lands state endowment lands for hunting, fish, trapping and other recreation, which includes about $300,000 annually to the Department of Lands and Fish and Game providing law-enforcement services on endowment lands.”

This kind of arrangement would free the USFS and BLM from collecting fees, such as for picnic areas, which I suspect costs more than it takes in.

Idaho Fish and Game press release:

We’ve all heard about the dramatic increase in U.S. wildfire acres burned:

Oops! Wrong graph. Here’s the correct one:

Many attribute this trend to increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases. Another factor is how we manage wildland fire, as discussed by two firefighters. Travis Dotson is an analyst at the Wildlands Fire Lessons Learned Center, while Mike Lewelling is Fire Management Officer at Rocky Mountain National Park.

TRAVIS: Overall, what would you say are the biggest positive changes you’ve seen in our culture during your entire career?

MIKE: I think we are more mindful about how we manage fires now. I saw a map side-by-side of all the fires from the early 80s into the 90s and it’s all these little pinpricks of fires. And then you go into the 2000s to now and the footprints are a lot bigger. There’s a lot that goes into that. But I think part of that is not always throwing everything at every fire. Mother Nature uses fire to clean house and it doesn’t matter what we do, she’s going to do it eventually. So whether we put ourselves in the way of that or let it happen is an important decision. I think that, overall, risk management—how we respond to fires—is a significant advance.

TRAVIS: For sure. I’ve seen research showing that the best investment we can make is big fire footprints. That is what ends up being both a money saver and exposure saver down the line as well as an ecological investment, obviously. For so long, large fire footprints were only being pushed from an ecological perspective and now we’re talking about the risk benefits of changing our default setting away from just crush it. There is often an immediate and future benefit on the risk front (less exposure now AND a larger footprint reducing future threat).

Here’s a press release from the San Juan Citizens Alliance, Wilderness Watch and Great Old Broads for Wilderness.

For Immediate Release: May 22, 2019

Denver, CO – A coalition of conservation organizations filed a lawsuit today against the United States Forest Service for their secretive approval of a policy to violate the Wilderness Act by allowing chainsaws to clear obstructed trails in the Weminuche and South San Juan Wildernesses this summer. The groups are asking the court to overturn the Forest Service’s approval and direct the agency to comply with the Wilderness Act by inviting public participation and weighing lawful alternatives to allowing motorized equipment in the wildernesses.

The concept of wilderness as codified in the Wilderness Act is to restrain the impulse to use our industrial might, to allow wilderness to be left untrammeled by humans and dominated by natural processes. “Wilderness exists for it’s own sake. It represents a piece of primitive America free of motors and technology that have allowed humans to dominate so much of the planet. It is not the role of the Forest Service to alter wilderness to appease impatient managers or visitors,” says George Nickas of Wilderness Watch.

While there are exceptions for the use of motorized equipment in dire emergencies, such as search and rescue, inconvenienced trail users clearly does not rise to that level. Heavy deadfall can be a challenge, but 80% of trails in the San Juan National Forest are not in designated Wilderness and can be cleared with motorized equipment.

In fact, the Wilderness Act explicitly bans administrative waivers for ease or convenience of trail maintenance using chainsaws or other motorized equipment. The Forest Service’s Minimum Requirements Decision Guide helpfully spells out exactly that point: “Forest Service policy does not allow managers to base a decision to approve a generally prohibited use solely on a rationale that the method or tool is quicker, cheaper and easier (FSM 2320.6).”

The Forest Service has been effectively clearing wilderness trails for decades. “I know from my 30 years of experience using a crosscut saw to buck trees, some of them 28 inches in diameter, out on wilderness trails that the work can be done safely and efficiently with crosscut saws and axes. In 2005, a crew of 10 people in the Weminuche Wilderness cleared over 3,000 trees with hand tools. This authorization is unnecessary and sets a dangerous precedent for all Wilderness in the U.S.,” says Anne Dal Vera, retired Wilderness Ranger.

“More discouraging than the lack of commitment to following the plain language of the law, is the demonstrated dismissal of the fundamental purpose of wilderness – to show restraint and humility in the wildest parts of the Rockies,” says Mark Pearson of the regional environmental advocacy group, San Juan Citizens Alliance.

If allowed to proceed, this decision will set a disturbing precedent for using chainsaws or other motorized equipment in wilderness for convenience and without public input. If the Forest Service believes the challenge of clearing within wilderness areas is a pressing public concern, the agency should initiate an open and transparent public process to invite perspectives of all wilderness users.

“We need wild, untouched places where we can retreat from civilization and remember what we deeply value,” says Shelley Silbert of the Great Old Broads for Wilderness, a national conservation organization. “Only 3% of land in the lower 48 states is protected as Wilderness. These special places allow us to take a step back and think about our human imprint. We stand ready to help the Forest Service in finding a better way.”

I thought that this story was very interesting and well written. It also talks about the views of Canadians, who just like us and the Mexicans, inhabit this wonderful (in the original sense) continent. There are many different scientists quoted from a variety of perspectives. Well worth reading in its entirety IMHO. One thing that seems to be missing is that the “systems” are so complex that we really have no idea what’s going to happen, even if we spend millions on complicated models and a variety of assumptions. Take home message: new creatures get introduced. The biota changes. Some of the changes may be bad. Some of the changes may be bad, and there’s not much we can do about them at this point.

But what struck me most about it was how the situation illustrates that it is impossible to disentangle the effects of climate change and other activities by Native and Later Americans (I doubt whether North Americans have ever been all Euro).  Especially the very mixing that is leading to unprecedented levels of worldwide biotic homogenization.  It seems to me like a great policy intervention would be to stop international travel and trade. But our friends in the invasive species world don’t try to do that.. they try to change practices to be more protective. It’s definitely a policy choice to decide to stop things (selling trees on National Forests, producing oil and gas, international travel and trade).  The latter would conceivably count double for decreasing carbon emissions as well as reducing threats of invasives.  An alternative is to dig down and investigate the practices at the ground level so that they are more environmentally sensitive.  We might ask “who in the marketplace of ideas chooses to stop rather than improve practices” and of course, in each unique instance, why did they make that choice? Do certain kinds of people prefer stopping to fixing (disciplines, politics, class)? Why are there groups we all know who are for “keeping oil and gas in the ground”, or “no commercial timber sales on national forests” but none for “no international trade nor travel (I suppose including immigration from other hemispheres?)”. If we think “the cat’s out of the bag” on that, why not on climate change? I’m just exploring some different ways of thinking about how different threats are treated. Anyway, I digress.

Native earthworms disappeared from most of northern North America 10,000 years ago, during the ice age. Now invasive earthworm species from southern Europe — survivors of that frozen epoch, and introduced to this continent by European settlers centuries ago — are making their way through northern forests, their spread hastened by roads, timber and petroleum activity, tire treads, boats, anglers and even gardeners.

In northern Minnesota, the boreal forest has slowly been invaded by earthworms. They have altered not just the depth of the leaf litter but also the types of plants the forest supports, said Adrian Wackett, who studied earthworms in the North American and European boreal forest for his master’s degree at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul.

Endemic species such as the pink and white lady’s slipper — Minnesota’s state flower — as well as ferns, orchids and the saplings of coniferous trees rely on the spongy layer of leaf litter.

As earthworms feast on that layer, they allow nonnative plants such as European buckthorn and grasses to thrive, which in turn push out endemic plants. This process, combined with the effects of warming over time, may slowly transform Minnesota’s boreal forest into prairie, Mr. Wackett said.

If you’re interested in the Minnesota angle, here’s a link about their collaboration with the Fennoscandians.

Their research shows that some of the same earthworm species transforming North American forests have also invaded far northern arctic regions of Norway, Sweden, and Finland (Fennoscandia). They identified numerous locations with active, ongoing earthworm invasions.

These areas were also glaciated, but settlers from southern and central Europe came to farm and brought non-native earthworms with them. Modern gardens, composts, and fishing sites have also helped spread the “unseen invaders.”

“We can identify invasion points pretty easily,” says Wackett. “We target old farm sites or modern cabin lawns, and in many cases observe a radius where the worms have spread out into surrounding birch forests.”