Litigation Summary – end of August, 2020

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Since it’s been over three weeks since I’ve seen a Forest Service summary, here’s some news that’s getting old.

FOREST SERVICE CASES

The Center for Biological Diversity filed a Notice of Intent to Sue the Forest Service and U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service to block the Lee Canyon ski resort expansion on the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest that would affect the federally endangered Mt. Charleston blue butterfly.  This would be the second lawsuit, following new consultation on the project after the first lawsuit (discussed here).

The government has appealed the district court’s adverse decision on this landscape-scale, condition-based “project” on the Tongass National Forest to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.  (Southeast Alaska Council v. Forest Service, discussed here most recently.)

On August 27, the Center for Biological Diversity sued the Forest Service over violations by grazing permit holders for the Sacramento and Aqua Chiquita allotments in the Lincoln National Forest.  The Forest Service has documented that the permit holders have improperly allowed their cows to enter protected streamside meadows, habitat for the federally endangered New Mexico meadow jumping mouse.  (A similar case is pending involving the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, summarized here.)

On August 28, the Bitterroot National Forest withdrew its decision on the Gold Butterfly vegetation management project, conceding that it used a different definition of old growth than was in its forest plan, and that it did not comply with road density requirements in the forest plan for elk. (Friends of the Bitterroot v. Anderson, summarized here.  This article includes a map.)

On August 25, the district court for the District of Idaho upheld the decision by the Caribou-Targhee National Forest regarding the Rowley Canyon Wildlife Enhancement Project, which authorizes the thinning of juniper trees and prescribed burning to “eliminate the threat of future catastrophic fire” (in the court’s words) within the Elkhorn Mountain Inventoried Roadless Area.  (Wildlands Defense v. Bolling, summarized previously here, including plaintiff’s perspective).

Note:  This was a case involving the categorical exclusion for “timber stand and/or wildlife habitat improvement activities” and alleged “extraordinary circumstances.”  I thought the court took a rather extreme position on the criteria for deference to the agency; I have never understood that ANY analysis would be sufficient to comply with NEPA (my emphases).

Plaintiffs take issue with the depth and scope of the Forest Service’s analyses, claiming that neither was adequate to support the Forest Service’s finding that the proposed project will not lead to any significant impacts or extraordinary circumstances. But that is not the same as saying the Forest Service failed to conduct any analysis whatsoever. Within the administrative record, there are extensive analyses of the Project’s effects upon all users, including animals and avian species who depend upon the habitat proposed to be treated. The Court must defer to the agency on matters within the agency’s expertise unless the agency completely failed to address a factor that was essential to making an informed decision.

After receiving a Notice of Intent to Sue over its effects on grizzly bears, the Lolo National Forest has delayed implementing its decision on the Soldier-Butler forest management project in order to reinitiate consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Service.  The project would involve building new roads in an area recently designated in the forest plan as a Demographic Connectivity Area for grizzly bears.

OTHER CASES

On June 26, 2020 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, on a 2-1 vote, held that the Administration illegally transferred Department of Defense funds for the purpose of building a border wall on the Mexican border.   (Sierra Club v. Trump.  A related lawsuit was discussed here.)

A coalition of environmental groups sued the Interior Department Aug. 24 urging a federal judge to halt implementation of the BLM’s plan to expand oil and gas opportunities in Northwest Alaska, challenging the EIS prepared by the BLM.

After litigation for delaying a decision (discussed here), the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service has listed the Humboldt marten of southern Oregon and northern California as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.  However, apparently using new provisions enacted by the Trump Administration, the listing includes “an array of broad and vague exemptions for forest management activities.”

Forest plans and legislation – Blackfoot-Clearwater wilderness proposal

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Blackfoot-Clearwater Stewardship Project map, Feb. 2018.

Wilderness designation has always been controversial in Montana.  No new wilderness areas have been established by Congress since I believe 1977, and unlike most states there has never been statewide wilderness legislation.  The Blackfoot-Clearwater proposal to designate 90,000 acres on the Lolo National Forest was locally developed and has been pending in Congress for several years.  Its development included addressing issues related to motorized and mechanized recreation that we have been discussing here, and designates areas for both.  This article provides some background, and includes a link to the written statement from the Forest Service regarding the proposed legislation.

The statement relates to forest planning in a couple of ways.  First, the Forest Service uses the Lolo National Forest forest plan as the foundation for its position on the legislation.

We also have concerns about implementing section 202, which establishes the Spread Mountain Recreation Area for the apparent purpose of enhancing mountain biking opportunities. The Lolo’s current land and resource management plan identifies this area as recommended wilderness. This area is characterized generally by steep topography, sensitive soils, and contains sensitive fish and wildlife habitat. Trail 166 is the main access into this area. This trail is not maintained, not passable by riders on horseback, and becomes difficult to locate after the first mile. While we acknowledge the interest in expanding opportunities for mountain biking on the Lolo, we are concerned that the site designated for the Spread Mountain Recreation Area is not well-suited for this use, and that this designation could create conflicts with wildlife and other recreation uses.

Two of the three wilderness designations in Title III are consistent with the recommendations made in the existing Lolo National Forest land and resource management plan. The third designation (West Fork Clearwater) was not recommended in the management plan to be Wilderness, it was allocated to be managed to optimize recovery of the Grizzly Bear.

One might argue that the 1986 forest plan is outdated, and recent local efforts should be given greater consideration.  However, those efforts have not been through any formal public process, so I commend the Forest Service for using its forest plan.  I’m not sure whether NFMA’s consistency requirement applies to taking positions on legislation, but it is probably the right place to start.  The proposal is also interesting in its legislative designation of two “recreation areas,” taking these decisions out of the forest planning process.

The Lolo is scheduled to begin its forest plan revision process in 2023, and the Forest Service is also concerned about the interaction between the revision process and this legislation.  It sounds like mostly a budgetary concern:

Our primary concerns pertain to Title II. Section 203 which would require the Forest Service to prepare a National Environmental Policy Act analysis for any collaboratively developed proposal to improve motorized and non-motorized recreational trail opportunities within the Ranger District within three years of receipt of the proposal… If passed in its current form, this bill could require recreation use allocation planning for site-specific portions of the Seeley Lake Ranger District ahead of the broader plan revision process, which would forestall the Lolo’s ability to broadly inform land use allocations across the forest through the plan revision process… If enacted, the explicit timeframes currently contained in the bill could result in prioritizing the analysis of a collaboratively developed proposal to expand the trail system over other emergent work.

But they might also be suggesting that the site-specific recreation planning would benefit from waiting until the forest plan is revised.  (Or maybe they just don’t like deadlines.)

A better way to help Californians survive wildfires: Focus on homes, not trees

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Thanks to the LA Times Editorial Board for saying what many environmental groups have been saying for over two decades now. Let’s stop wasting time and money (and blaming wildfires on “environmental terrorists” or “environmental extremists”) and get to work in the Home Ignition Zone with a laser-like focus! 

A better way to help Californians survive wildfires: Focus on homes, not trees
By THE TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD
SEPTEMBER 22, 2020

Firestorms in the West have grown bigger and more destructive in recent years — and harder to escape. Massive and frenzied, they have overtaken people trying to outrun or outdrive them.

Gridlocked mountain roads prevented many Paradise residents from fleeing the Camp fire, which killed 85 people in 2018. This year, more than 30 people have died in the fires in California and Oregon, and again, in many cases, people were trying to escape fast-moving blazes.

There’s much work to be done on how we protect people amid a wildfire, including how and when we advise them to evacuate. But fire experts also are considering different ways to protect communities, and some of these ideas haven’t been given their full due as options for states that increasingly find themselves under siege.

One approach, seen in a bill proposed by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Steve Daines (R-Mont.), is to log more dead trees and dig more firebreaks, among other things. But it’s outmoded and environmentally problematic; environmental groups have attacked the bill for allowing the fast-tracking of logging permits, bypassing the normal review process, in areas far from any towns that could be threatened.

Beyond that, trying to prevent fires can lead to overgrown forests that set the stage for more catastrophic blazes. Rather than going down that road, or cutting trees and brush in order to make fires smaller and slower, the better, more scientifically based approach is to focus more on houses and less on trees.

Some of this is becoming common knowledge. Many Californians have heard the advice to install mesh screens on rooftop vents to prevent embers from getting into attic spaces, and to close off open eaves and the curves under clay tile, where embers can be trapped and smolder. The seminal work of Jack Cohen, a recently retired wildfire expert with the U.S. Forest Service, is finally being recognized: The conditions on and immediately around houses are more important to preserving lives than the conditions of the open brush or forest where the fire is centered.

“Uncontrolled, extreme wildfires are inevitable,” Cohen said.

What’s not inevitable is for houses to have wood decks and siding that give embers a chance to smolder, instead of patios and stucco exteriors. Exterior sprinklers help, too. Feinstein’s bill addresses this, with some help for fire-safe home renovations, but more as an afterthought. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) has introduced a bill that targets community protection far more robustly.

Unlike what many people think, ground without plants can be a problem too: dead plant matter under gravel can catch fire, and wood-chip ground cover is even more dangerous. Well-planted green gardens are the best landscape for retarding fires, Cohen said, but that doesn’t have to mean heavy doses of water. Many drought-tolerant native plants are fire resistant and provide habitat for native wildlife — birds, bees and butterflies — as well.

The Escondido-based Chaparral Institute also is trying to get communities to look at smarter ways to save lives during catastrophic fires. Many communities located near vast open spaces such as national forests are rural in nature, with few routes out of town. During evacuations, cars choke the road, with the fire closing in from behind.

That’s why people shouldn’t have to leave town to be protected, the institute says. Other organizations are starting to take a similar view, especially after firefighters and law enforcement in Paradise saved the lives of 150 people by having them shelter in the parking lot of a strip mall. The fire raged around them, but they were safe. The Fire Safety Council of Mendocino County gives similar advice to residents there when evacuating might be risky.

Open, flat spaces within the community, preferably grassy, well-watered ones, could become effective areas for sheltering that might be a mile or two from people’s homes, providing a more realistic solution than expecting entire communities to drive 25 to 50 miles away, or even more. These spaces might include large playgrounds or sports fields at schools. Or cities could embrace the traditional idea of a large village green in the town center that serves as a communal gathering space for much of the year, and an emergency evacuation point during firestorms. Golf courses can perform the same function, and when placed between houses and backcountry, act as a buffer.

Forest management still has a role to play. And the state still needs to prevent residential areas from expanding any further into high-risk fire areas. But communities amid the brush exist throughout the state and must be made safer by following science. Protection from catastrophic wildfire is best done from the inside out rather than the other way around.

How the Almeda fire in Oregon became one of the most destructive

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Via the New York Times: The Almeda fire left a path of destruction as it tore through the Rogue Valley in southern Oregon. About 24 hours after it started, an estimated 2,350 homes had been left in ashes. We used satellite images, videos and social media posts to track what happened.

For more information on the urban Almeda fire, and other recent Oregon wildfires, as well as information and resources on how to protect homes and communities from wildfire by focusing on the Home Ignition Zone, see this previous blog post.

NRCS Voluntary Public Access Programs

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The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has received $1.9 million dollars for continued funding of the Voluntary Public Access and Habitat Incentive Program and Turkey Hunting Access Program. Funds were authorized under the 2018 Farm Bill and are administered and provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

I thought this NRCS program in Wisconsin was interesting. It seems to be an effort to make the (wildlife dependent) recreation pie bigger. I can’t tell how many states have this program.

Enrollment Open for Landowners To Provide Public Access To Private Lands In Wisconsin
NRCS and DNR Partnership Promotes Voluntary Public Access and Habitat Incentive Program

Madison, Wis., September 21, 2020 – The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has received $1.9 million dollars for continued funding of the Voluntary Public Access and Habitat Incentive Program (VPA-HIP) and Turkey Hunting Access Program (THAP). Funds were authorized under the 2018 Farm Bill and are administered and provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).

For those interested in making their land available for public access, the VPA-HIP program provides opportunities to increase public access for quality hunting, fishing and wildlife observation on private lands.

“NRCS is excited to continue this great partnership with the DNR to provide additional outdoor opportunities on private lands,” said Greg Kidd, USDA NRCS assistant state conservationist for easements.

Together in 2020, the Voluntary Public Access and Turkey Hunting Access programs provided over 38,000 acres of public access on private lands in Wisconsin. The renewed partnership between NRCS and the DNR will increase and enhance the wildlife-dependent recreation footprint of both access programs.

“We’re excited to collaborate once again with our USDA partners to expand the hunting, fishing, birdwatching and all the other outdoor recreation activities that VPA and THAP offer in Wisconsin,” said Keith Warnke, administrator for the DNR’s Division of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

Financial incentives in the form of annual leases are available for private landowners who open their property to public hunting, fishing, trapping and wildlife observation. Eligible land types include grassland, wetland, forestland and in some cases, agriculture land. Land enrolled in conservation programs such as the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), State Acres for Wildlife Enhancement (SAFE), Managed Forest Law in closed status and Wetland Reserve Easements (WRP/WRE) are eligible for enrollment.

Annual lease payment rates are based on the land type (agricultural land is $3 per acre, grassland wetland is $10 to $20 per acre and forest land is $15 per acre) and are made in the form of an upfront lump sum payment at the beginning of the contract. Priority will be given to parcels greater than 40 acres in size with at least 25% usable cover and near properties currently open to public hunting and/or fishing.

Landowners who enroll in VPA-HIP will also receive technical assistance for habitat enhancement practices. Landowners who complete recommended practices will be eligible for habitat-based financial incentive payments, in addition to the lease payments. Regional Public Access Liaisons stationed in Baldwin, Janesville, Hartford and Wisconsin Rapids along with Wisconsin’s Farm Bill Biologists will coordinate a habitat plan for interested landowners.

Under state statutes, landowners are generally immune from liability for injuries received by individuals recreating on their lands. The department agrees to provide compensation for damages to property or crops that occur as a result of opening the land to public access.

Dr. James Burchfield: Solution to wildfire crisis is not more logging

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The following guest opinion from Dr. James Burchfield appeared in a number of Montana newspapers over the past few days. Dr. Burchfield had a 20 year career with the U.S. Forest Service, including working as a field forester. Later, he served as the Director of the Bolle Center for People and Forests at the University of Montana and after that Dr. Burchfield was the widely respected Dean of the W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation, also at the University of Montana. – mk

Solution to wildfire crisis is not more logging
By James Burchfield

It’s time to put to rest the myth that the solution to the West’s wildfire crisis is more logging. Even well-managed forest stands will burn. The primary driver of our expanded, more intense wildfire seasons is climate change. One cannot be simultaneously in favor of healthy, resilient forests while denying climate change.

Higher summer temperatures, less winter snowpack, more frequent droughts, and uncharacteristic, windy storm events are the ingredients of unstoppable wildfires. These characteristics result from human-generated greenhouse gas emissions. Unless we collectively address the root of the problem, other attempts to protect our forests will fail.

This does not mean that forest management has no role to play, for an ongoing treatment of vegetation in the Home Ignition Zone within 100 feet of buildings offers significant protection to residential structures and strategically targeted efforts to reduce fuels so that firefighters can safely contain the course of a fire can work. Yet attempting to “fire-proof” forests is a fool’s errand, since forests have evolved in the presence of fire and sustainable ecological processes depend on fire. We misunderstood fire’s role for much of the 20th century, and through a combination of excessive harvesting of large, fire-resistant trees and heroic attempts to suppress all fires we inadvertently left forests in an unusually vulnerable state to fires.

Thankfully, forest management has become more sensitive to natural processes, and modern treatments have moved away from the heavy hand of clear cuts and tried to recreate the complex mosaics of natural vegetation patterns. But the curve ball of climate change coupled with the expansion of human settlement in dry forest environments has made forest management more challenging than ever. What we don’t need are drastic approaches demanding more logging while foregoing environmental review and analysis.

Science continues to inform us of nuanced impacts of forest interventions. For example, recent research has shown that many forest fuel treatments that focus on thinning do not improve forests’ ability to absorb carbon because they remove so many trees that overall photosynthesis diminishes. However, forest treatments in some forest types that are developed to retain and recruit large trees — sometimes through combinations of harvest and prescribed burning — can over the long term lead to carbon-absorbing, more fire-resilient forests. We can develop these projects through careful, site-specific design, but they are not a panacea.

Unfortunately, all the forest management in the world won’t stop forests from burning at higher levels unless we turn down the heat. We can also help our cause by being responsible landowners and controlling the growth of new human developments in fire prone ecosystems. Yet the real solution depends on shortening the fire season, reducing summer temperatures, and keeping the water cycle intact. This implies a real commitment to climate action, and the recently signed Montana Climate Change Action Plan is a valuable first step. Let’s not be lured into counterproductive schemes that result from our dismay from this difficult fire season. We all need to put our shoulder to the wheel to reduce our carbon footprint and tackle climate change. Our forests depend on it.

Before retiring, James Burchfield worked as a field forester for the Forest Service and served as Dean of the W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation at the University of Montana.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love a Good Argument: Essay by Patty Limerick

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As many of you do, I’ve spent a great deal of time on The Smokey Wire in the last ten years. I’ve found it difficult to explain why I should feel such an admittedly peculiar calling. Frederick Buechner once said “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” People are willing to accept that it gives me deep gladness, but I’ve had trouble articulating what utility TSW brings, or might bring, to the world.

Fortunately, the highly articulate Patty Limerick has written an essay that explains her wild dream, which is also my wild dream, in the sentence I bolded below.

I did learn to love a good argument and to embrace that opportunity without an ounce of dread; that part is certainly true. But this change in attitude has left me with more time and energy to devote to worrying: about drought and fires in the American West; hurricanes on the Gulf Coast; the grim rates of unemployment and the failure of small businesses; the many obstacles lying in the path of the creation and deployment of a Covid-19 vaccination; and the terrible polarization of the United States.

In an odd twist, it is exactly that accelerated commitment to worrying that gave rise to the wild dream that drives this essay, namely:

If I could persuade some percentage of my fellow citizens to share my enthusiasm for good arguments, the polarization would drop in intensity, and we might be able to get somewhere in dealing with all those other worrisome problems.

OK, let’s put that wild dream aside for the moment, and return to reality.

This nation’s capacity to engage in good arguments has reached the vanishing point. In the all-too-near future, the nation’s sorriest ritual—that miserable performance called “a presidential debate”—will provide unmistakable evidence to support that assessment. As millions of Americans have arrived at the conclusion that arguing is inevitably sterile and pointless, we are left with only shouting matches, blame fests, fruitless data disputes, or embittered silence. This is the bedrock problem that deepens and enhances every other dilemma we face.

Over the last years, pundits of various stripes have gone into over-production of a certain form of pep talk. In an endless loop, these people keep telling us that, to do our part to redeem our polarized society, we must take every opportunity to listen to those with whom we disagree.

Once you have listened, what can you do?

You can write a commentary of your own, telling other people they should listen, particularly to you.

The commentators telling us to devote ourselves to listening have come to resemble a sad group of recipe-writers, who have convinced themselves that the act of writing a recipe begins and ends with instructions to go out and acquire some ingredients. After the command, “acquire groceries,” these aspiring kitchen gurus skip the part of telling us what to do with the ingredients we have assembled.

To depart from analogy and opt for directness: today’s exhortations to listen go nowhere and still take a long time to reach that destination.

Here’s a better alternative.

By all means, listen. But once you have listened, and once you have reached an understanding of the ideas that other people hold and why they hold them, then invite those folks to join you in a good argument.

We should listen so that we will have all the ingredients we will need to win arguments in the only sense that matters: emerging from the exchange smarter and better oriented to life.

One way to get the right take on winning and losing arguments is to repurpose and redeem that platitude, “We will have to agree to disagree.” Understood as a passive submission to the recognition that two people are not of one mind, this unfortunate platitude has lumbered through life with the wrong meaning.

Set free from this sad message of defeat, and inevitability, those words get a new lease on life. “We will have to agree to disagree, and so we are off on adventure! We will put everything we have into taking part in a good argument, and the friendship between us will not only endure, it will gain in strength.”

I think the whole essay is worth reading. She has a concern about academia as a place for argument, which I share, based on my own experiences. If any of you currently in academia have programs to encourage and improve arguments, please post in the comments below.

You may also be interested in the Center of the American West discussions at “Lunch with Limerick,” as well as others of her “Not My First Rodeo” blog posts.

REPOST: USFS research confirms most CA fires occur in areas of WUI with sparse vegetation, but more people

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Photo by LA Times

[NOTE: I wrote the following post on this blog on October 23, 2019 highlighting new research by a U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service scientist and University of Wisconsin-Madison partners. I’m reposting it 11 months later because it seems relevant to many of the recent discussions on the blog.]

This morning I got an email from U.S. Forest Service Research News, which including a link to this new research from the USFS and partners concerning wildfires in California.

While the research may be surprising to some, it’s not at all surprising to many of us who have said the same thing going back a few decades now. We’ve had perhaps over a hundred debates about this on the blog over the years. Heck, Dr. Jack Cohen’s research documented much of this going back into the 1980s, if not even earlier. Richard Halsey and his California Chaparral Institute have been also talking about these issues for at least 20 years. And those of us who’ve been branded as “environmental terrorist groups” – and blamed for California wildfires by the likes of former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke – have been also trying to get the public and policy makers to understand the dynamics at play for decades as well.

Remember, it’s been very common for politicians from through the country (but especially the West) to use wildfires in California as the reason why we need to dramatically increase logging on our public lands by systematically weakening bedrock environmental laws. While that may make for good politics when people turn on their TV’s and see flames, it doesn’t make for good policy that will protect communities, firefighters and save lives and money.

Most California Fires Occur in Area of Wildland-urban Interface with Less Fuel and More People

Madison, WI, September 24, 2019 – In California, the state with more building destruction by wildfire than all of the other states combined, new research by a U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service scientist and University of Wisconsin-Madison partners found something surprising. Over nearly three decades, half of all buildings destroyed by wildfire in California were located in an area that is described as having less of the grasses, bushes and trees that are thought to fuel fire in the wildland-urban interface, or WUI.

The study by H. Anu Kramer with Forest Service scientist Miranda Mockrin and colleagues, “High wildfire damage in interface communities in California,” notes that a portion of the WUI defined as “interface” and characterized by having more homes but relatively little wildland vegetation experienced half of the building losses due to wildfire but composed only 2 percent of the total area burned by the wildfires assessed in the study. The study was recently published in the International Journal of Wildland Fire and is available at: https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/58348

California’s expansion of housing within and adjacent to wildland vegetation is not unique; the most recent assessment shows that the WUI now includes about one-third of homes in the United States. As wildfire management has become more complex, costly and dangerous, defining what constitutes WUI and defining more specific types of WUI has become more important as local communities strive to apply resources and policy-decisions where they will be most effective in saving lives and property.

The Federal definition of WUI describes two specific areas: “interface” WUI includes developed areas that have sparse or no wildland vegetation, but are within close proximity of a large patch of wildland. “Intermix” WUI, on the other hand, is defined as the area where houses and wildland vegetation directly intermingle. Both are separate from “rural” areas, which may be characterized by agricultural land and low-density housing and development (less than 1 house per 40 acres).

“Our findings show that WUI areas do experience the vast majority of all losses, with 82 percent of all buildings destroyed due to wildfire located in the WUI,” Mockrin said. “We were surprised to find 50 percent of all buildings lost to fire being destroyed in the interface portion of the WUI, however. Many risk reduction plans focus on natural vegetation fueling fire, but in the interface WUI where so much of the destruction is occurring, we have to consider finer-grained fuels such as wood piles, propane tanks, and cars.”

Study findings suggest that wildfires are still rare in urban areas. The Tubbs fire that struck Santa Rosa, Calif., in 2017 was similar to other California wildfires in that the majority of buildings lost in the fire were located in the WUI; however, the Tubbs Fire was unique in having 25 percent of all destruction occurring in urban areas. In comparison, 4 percent of destruction occurred within urban areas in other California fires. Other recent and highly destructive fires, including the 2018 Carr, Camp and Woolsey fires, included no urban area within their perimeters, exemplifying the rarity of the Tubbs’ building destruction in urban areas.

“Although the Tubbs fire was not the norm, it seems like every fall there is a new record-setting fire in California, with three of the five most destructive fires in state history having burned in the last 5 years and the deadliest California fire (the Camp fire) burning last year,” Kramer said. “These fires are fueled by the homes themselves, landscaping, and other man-made fuels that are seldom included in the fire models that are used to predict these fires. Our work highlights the importance of studying and mitigating the fuels in these interface WUI areas in California where most of the destruction is occurring.”

In addition to solidifying definitions of interface and intermix WUI so communities can address their different attributes in wildland fire planning, researchers suggest that fire behavior models should be revisited.

The study was co-authored by Volker Radeloff of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Patricia Alexandre of the University of Lisbon.

Climate Science Voyage of Discovery: Climate Attribution For Wildfires and the Science-Journalism Translation

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We’ve heard wildfires are “caused by” “exacerbated by” “primarily” “significantly” by climate change in various stories and op-eds. So let’s trace these back to the studies.

The Society of Environmental Journalism sent me a link to these Science Facts put out by our friends at AAAS. Scientists reading this.. please register with Sciline here.

Top Line
Human-caused climate change is a significant contributor to the increasing size and intensity of, and damage from, western U.S. wildfires.

The Essentials
In the western United States human-caused climate change caused more than half the increase in forest fuel aridity (how dry and flammable vegetation is) since the 1970s and has approximately doubled the cumulative area burned in forest fires since 1984.

Now many of us might ask, how could you know that “across the western US?” Could there have been more vegetation due to lack of fire suppression, that led to less water for each plant and hence dryness of vegetation? Haven’t suppression tactics changed over that period? If logging is bad for fires, as some claim, then there’s been much logging since 1984, how does that factor in? How could these estimates possibly be considered “facts?”

But first let’s take an aside to point out two concepts that may get lost in stories.

1. Not everything about climate is AGW or anthropogenic climate change. As we’ve seen via Matthew’s graphs of PDO, there is much climate variability that occurs naturally. E.g., in my own part of the country about 100 years ago there was a serious drought that led to the Dust Bowl. So just because I’m experiencing heat, it’s not necessarily AGW.

2. And not all climate change is about carbon, nor even all greenhouse gases (GHGs). Land use changes such as albedo, irrigation, urban heat islands and so on can also affect climate, in complex and interactive ways we don’t yet understand. So we can’t go directly to “reducing carbon (alone) will solve the problem.”

To find the contribution of AGW, we have to look at attribution studies. These studies run climate models and try to find the fingerprint of AGW by what sounds like comparing the model results to real world observations of some kind. I recommend taking the time to read this one. Sure I don’t get all the details of CMIPs and so on, but we can all understand what data goes in, what comes out, and we can read the caveats, and the conclusions. We can also examine the almost magical transitions between the paper (careful), the interviews (not quite as careful) and the headlines e.g. “caused by.”

Here’s a typical exchange of scientists:

Swain with UCLA and other scientists earlier this year published a study that said climate change has doubled the number of extreme-risk days for California wildfires.

It said temperatures statewide rose 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since 1980, while precipitation dropped 30%. That doubled the number of autumn days that offer extreme conditions for the ignition of wildfires (Climatewire, April 3).

The heat is expected to get worse with time. Climate models estimate that average state temperatures will climb 3 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050 unless the world makes sharp cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, said Michael Wehner, a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Even with emissions cuts, average temperatures would rise 2 degrees by midcentury, he said.

Jon Keeley, a senior scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey Western Ecological Research Center, argued that the study from Swain and others failed to show that hotter temperatures are driving wildfires.

“Show us data that shows that level of temperature increase is actually associated with increased fire activity,” Keeley said. “They don’t show that.”

Keeley added, “We ought to be much more concerned with ignition sources than a 1- to 2-degree change in temperature.”

A big contributor to large California fires is that the state has focused on extinguishing blazes for about a century rather than allowing for controlled burns, he said. That has caused dead vegetation to accumulate.

Trump has accused California of failing to “sweep” its forests, which he has linked to fires in the state.

Keeley said that “we don’t sweep forests here in the U.S., but what we do is prescription burning. … It’s potentially the same thing. It’s modifying the fuels prior to a fire.”

Swain, the UCLA climate scientist, said global warming is affecting how big fires get and how fast they move.

“What happens when they start burning, what is the character of those fires, and is it changing?” Swain asked. “The answer is yes.”

If we look at the statements in the study, though..we get a “fingerprint for meteorological preconditions.” Not exactly “fires caused by climate change.”

Collectively, this analysis offers strong evidence for a human fingerprint on the observed increase in meteorological preconditions necessary for extreme wildfires in California.

In the present study, we do not quantify the relative role of increased urban and suburban incursion into the high-risk wildland-urban interface, nor the contribution of historical land/vegetation management practices to increasing wildfire risk or possible future climate-fire feedbacks

And sounding rather like Keeley..or any of the rest of us..

In the long-term, reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions is the most direct path to reducing this risk, though the near-term impacts of these reductions may be limited given the many sources of inertia in the climate system [78]. Fortunately, a broad portfolio of options already exists, including the use of prescribed burning to reduce fuel loads and improve ecosystem health [79], upgrades to emergency communications and response systems, community-level development of protective fire breaks and defensible space, and the adoption of new zoning rules and building codes to promote fire-resilient construction

I recommend reading the conclusions for yourself.

Fuel Treatments, HRV, Wildfire Resilience and Community Protection

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Screenshot From Timber Crater 6 Fire a Fuels Success Story

No wonder people are confused about “treatments should focus near communities.” I think the discussion of the Crystal Clear project was helpful. I’m beginning to think “in some forests, people do treatments for a variety of reasons (forest health, resilience, HRV) that includes designing places for firefighters to do backfires and use other tactics to reduce negative effects of wildfires.” This is called “landscape resilience” in the Cohesive Strategy.

I’m a fan of FACNET The Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network (#EnvironmentWithoutEnemies) and they have a quote on their website.

We realized that there isn’t a line where fire adapted communities stop and fire resilient landscapes begin.
FOREST SCHAFER, CALIFORNIA TAHOE CONSERVANCY

Here’s an interview with the Dean of the OSU School of Forestry about Oregon fires, by the Portland Tribune. Thanks to RVCC, I found this link in their monthly newsletter. Below is an excerpt, but there are interesting ideas about what he thinks the State or Oregon should do.

Eastside forests are a little more straight forward. … The west side is more tricky — I don’t think we can thin or burn our way out of these types of fires. We need better community planning. More upfront, preventative, mitigation efforts are needed. More of an investment upfront for pre-planning on a landscape basis cross-boundary. We have a planning process that has worked in the south-central part of the state. (Click here to see it.)

This is an interesting document: “This guide describes the process the Klamath-Lake Forest Health Partnership (KLFHP) has used to plan and implement cross-boundary restoration projects to achieve improved forest health conditions on large landscapes.”

Wildfires today are larger and more severe, starting earlier, ending later, and resulting in loss of homes, forests, and other resources. Past and current
management practices, including fire exclusion, have left forests in dry regions stressed from drought, overcrowding, and uncharacteristic insect and disease
outbreaks. Compounding the problem is the fact that humans cause 84 percent of all wildfires in the United States. These human-caused fires account for 44 percent
of the total area burned and result in a fire season that lasts three times longer over a greater area (Balch et al, 2017). The increase in size and severity of wildland fires is causing ecological, social, and economic damage. The departure from historic fire patterns is also having an impact on water, wildlife habitat, stream function, large and old tree structure, and soil integrity.

Wildfires are affecting communities across the West. The 2017 fire season again illustrated the risk of wildfire to communities large and small. Subdivisions
in urban areas have become a fuel component, burning from house to house similar to how crown fires burn from tree to tree. Economically, wildfires burn valuable
infrastructure and timber, make recreation and tourism unappealing, and can have direct impacts to municipal water supplies (Diaz, 2012).

In 2009, the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy (https://www.forestsandrangelands.gov/strategy/thestrategy.html) was developed as a strategic push to encourage collaborative work among all stakeholders across all landscapes to use best scientific principles and make meaningful progress towards three goals:
1) Resilient landscapes
2) Fire-adapted communities
3) Safe and effective wildfire response
This strategy establishes a national vision for wildland fire management, describes wildland fire challenges, identifies opportunities to reduce wildfire risks, and
establishes national priorities focused on achieving these national goals.”

Here’s a link to a video called Timber Crater 6 Fire- A Fuel Treatment Success Story that was on the Klamath-Lake Forest Health Partnership website. I think it does a good job of explaining the interaction between fuel treatments and suppression tactics.

So when people say “focus on the WUI for fuel treatment” perhaps they mean:

A. Focus on projects that are solely for fuel treatment to protect communities and not landscape resilience.
B. Funding – the hazardous fuel $ agencies have should be only/preferentially for x miles from (houses, roads, powerlines..?)
C. Priority -“do not do PB or WFU or mechanical treatments anywhere else until all the fuels treatment work around communities is done”
D. Just don’t- “don’t do PB, WFU or MT at all away from communities.”
E. PB and WFU are OK, because “fire is good for ecosystems” but not mechanical treatment (away from communities).
F. WFU is OK, but PB and MT not (away from communities).

Hopefully with these ideas laid out, we can look deeper into what people mean. Do you have any other possibilities to add?