Wildfires Burning in Heavily Clearcut, Logged and Roaded Parts of the Oregon Cascades

by

This post isn’t meant to serve as a be-all and end-all piece about all wildfires in general. Rather, it’s more specifically about the current Oregon wildfires burning in clearcut, heavily logged, and roaded areas of the Oregon Cascades. While these images and videos certainly don’t tell the entire story, they do tell part of the story—and a very important part of the story, I’d argue. I plan on adding to this post as time permits, so please keep that in mind.

As many of us know, different ecosystems burn differently. High severity fires are natural, normal and expected in some ecosystems, not so much in others. It’s important to remember that many of the largest and most destructive wildfires in recent years—in terms of human lives and structures lost—were not even “forest” fires at all, but rather more urban fires that raced through neighborhoods and communities surrounded by dry grass, brush, shrubs, and chaparral. Many of these fires also had little to do with federal public lands. However, all of these deadly fires have been pushed by heavy winds during a period of prolonged drought and record high temperatures.

The horrific Almeda fire, which started on September 8 during very high winds and blasted through Talent and Phoenix, Oregon, burning down 2,357 residential structures, had zero to do with forests and public lands, for example. Here’s what a Talent, Oregon evacuee, and scientist, Dr. Dominick DellaSala, wrote in the aftermath of that tragic wildfire.

The wildfires highlighted below all burned primarily within “stand-replacing fire regimes,” which means they are forests that typically—and naturally—experience infrequent, but severe fires. When fires in “stand-replacing fire regimes” take off and expand exponentially, they are always weather-driven—fierce winds, high temperatures and very low humidity. Let’s take a look at some of the landscapes that have burned in the Oregon Cascades since Labor Day weekend.


The image above is of the 170,000 acre Holiday Farm Fire, which started on the evening of September 7 during raging winds. I got the image from Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics & Ecology. The current fire perimeter is in red and as you can clearly see the fire has burned through an extremely heavily clearcut and logged part of the Oregon Cascades.

While the cause of this wildfire is currently under investigation, the Oregonian reported on September 17 that “residents told the Oregonian/OregonLive that the blaze was preceded by a power outage, a loud explosion and a shower of blue sparks from an electric line near milepost 47 on Oregon 126 – the exact location where state officials have pinpointed the start of the fire.”

According to Oregon Wild “A whopping 76% of the Holiday Farm Fire area was previously logged” (See: shades of red on the map below).

Speaking of the southwest part of the Holiday Farm Fire. Kevin Matthews flew over what is now the south edge of this fire on July 24, six weeks before the wildfire. Matthews is a former Lane County Commissioner candidate. Below is his video.

 


Moving further south, above is an image of the Archie Creek Fire burning northeast of Roseburg.


Above is an image of the Beachie Creek Fire directly north of Mill City. Fire officials confirmed that at least 13 of the fires that fed this blaze during the high wind event on Monday were caused directly by downed power lines. These fires spread very quickly fanned by what is essentially the Oregon Cascade’s equivalent of the So Cal’s Santa Ana winds or the Bay area’s Diablo winds, all of which have caused considerable damage and huge wildfire runs.

Directly above is the same general image of the Beachie Creek Fire area north of Mill City, but without the wildfire overlay so you can more clearly see how heavily logged and roaded this area is. The rest of the country may not realize it, but the Santiam River watershed and the McKenzie River watershed where the Holiday Farm Fire ripped through, as some of the most heavily logged landscapes in Oregon, which is one of the most heavily logged states in the country.

UPDATE 10/1/2020: A class action lawsuit filed against Pacific Power alleges the utility’s failure to shut down its power lines amid a historically dangerous storm caused wildfires that devastated the Santiam Canyon on Labor Day evening.

“Despite being warned of extremely critical fire conditions, Defendants left their powerlines energized,” the lawsuit says. “Defendants’ energized powerlines ignited massive, deadly and destructive fires that raced down the canyons, igniting and destroying homes, businesses and schools. These fires burned over hundreds of thousands of acres, destroyed thousands of structures, killed people and upended countless lives.” Read the full story here.

All of the wildfires highlighted above, including the Riverside Fire, burned within “stand-replacing fire regimes” within the west (i.e. “wet”) side of the Cascades. These are NOT “open, parklike stands of ponderosa pine” that may have historically burned more frequently and generally at low to moderate severity (and even at high severity when conditions were right (like maybe during a megadrought, record high temps and heavy winds…sound familiar?).

What does current science say about the forests within these “stand-replacing fire regimes” and potential “management options?” Here’s a 2018 “Innovative Viewpoint” by some of the top minds in the country on this topic:

The nature of the beast: examining climate adaptation options in forests with stand‐replacing fire regimes.

ABSTRACT: Building resilience to natural disturbances is a key to managing forests for adaptation to climate change. To date, most climate adaptation guidance has focused on recommendations for frequent‐fire forests, leaving few published guidelines for forests that naturally experience infrequent, stand‐replacing wildfires. Because most such forests are inherently resilient to stand‐replacing disturbances, and burn severity mosaics are largely indifferent to manipulations of stand structure (i.e., weather‐driven, rather than fuel‐driven fire regimes), we posit that pre‐fire climate adaptation options are generally fewer in these regimes relative to others. Outside of areas of high human value, stand‐scale fuel treatments commonly emphasized for other forest types would undermine many of the functions, ecosystem services, and other values for which these forests are known. For stand‐replacing disturbance regimes, we propose that (1) managed wildfire use (e.g., allowing natural fires to burn under moderate conditions) can be a useful strategy as in other forest types, but likely confers fewer benefits to long‐term forest resilience and climate adaptation, while carrying greater socio‐ecological risks; (2) reasoned fire exclusion (i.e., the suppression component of a managed wildfire program) can be an appropriate strategy to maintain certain ecosystem conditions and services in the face of change, being more ecologically justifiable in long‐interval fire regimes and producing fewer of the negative consequences than in frequent‐fire regimes; (3) low‐risk pre‐disturbance adaptation options are few, but the most promising approaches emphasize fundamental conservation biology principles to create a safe operating space for the system to respond to change (e.g., maintaining heterogeneity across scales and minimizing stressors); and (4) post‐disturbance conditions are the primary opportunity to implement adaptation strategies (such as protecting live tree legacies and testing new regeneration methods), providing crucial learning opportunities. This approach will provide greater context and understanding of these systems for ecologists and resource managers, stimulate future development of adaptation strategies, and illustrate why public expectations for climate adaptation in these forests will differ from those for frequent‐fire forests.

For those who aren’t familiar, “forests with stand‐replacing fire regimes” include many forests in the West Cascades region of Oregon and Washington, much of the Coast Range of Oregon and Washington, much of forested landscape within the Northern and Central Rockies, as well as the Southern Sierras, especially forests found at upper elevations in these regions.

Next, let’s move way out of the forests and into the Home Ignition Zone (HIZ). According to the National Fire Protection Association, “The concept of the Home Ignition Zone was developed by USDA Forest Service fire scientist Dr. Jack Cohen in the late 1990s, following some breakthrough experimental research into how homes ignite due to the effects of radiant heat.” The HIZ is divided into three zones. 1) Immediate zone: The home and the area 0-5’ from the furthest attached exterior point of the home; defined as a non-combustible area; 2) Intermediate zone: 5-30’ from the furthest exterior point of the home; and 3) Extended zone: 30-100 feet, out to 200 feet.

For over two decades, the forest protection community and forest activists have been imploring people to follow Dr. Jack Cohen’s research and heed his advice on how to protect homes and communities from wildfires. I’ve spoken with Dr. Cohen numerous times about his research, as he was based here in Missoula. We’ve invited him to speak at numerous public presentations and panels. I’ve worked with him and recorded his power-point presentation for community access TV channels and we’ve mailed about 100 of his of videos to libraries across the American West for free check-out. In 2003, I produced a newspaper primer featuring Dr. Cohen’s research and recommendations and paid to have them inserted in over 500,000 papers in rural communities across the West. Countless other forest protection groups and activists also educated the public about effective Home Ignition Zone defense measures over the past 20 years. 

Meanwhile, for over two decades, pro-timber industry politicians have largely exclusively called for more public lands logging with less environmental oversight, less scientific analysis, fewer protections for wildfire, and no real focus on immediately around homes. Coincidently, most all of these same pro-timber industry politicians are also pro-oil and gas and pro-coal politicians. I can think of few examples of these pro-timber industry politicians, or timber mill owners and logging industry lobbyist for that matter, sharing the research of recommendations of Dr. Jack Cohen with members of the public.

However, I can think of lots of examples of these same pro-timber industry politicians blaming wildfires this year—and in every recent year I can remember since the mid-1990s—on “environmental terrorist groups,” “environmental radicals,” “fringe groups,” and “environmental extremists.”

Of course, this is not to say that there are not some good people in the “timber industry” that get it. One such person is my friend Mark Vander Meer of Bad Goat Forest Products in Missoula, someone I literally can’t say enough good things about. Not only is Mark a logger, but he’s a certified soils scientists who also runs a successful watershed consulting business. We’ve partnered with Mark and his team a number of times over the years to do bona-fide forest restoration and watershed work. For a couple of years, I raised funds to hire Mark’s crew and we all teamed up with the West End Volunteer Fire Department to create defensible space on private land around the DeBorgia, MT community through education, action, and fellowship. We followed Dr. Cohen’s Home Ignition Zone principles and focused our work around the homes of folks who were elderly or couldn’t do, or pay for, the work themselves. Here are some scenes from that work in 2006 and again in 2007.  Mark is the guy in the photos who might be able to moonlight as Santa Claus at your local department store this winter.

Make sure to also read this excellent, thoughtful, and science-based perspective on the Oregon wildfires from Ben Deumling of Zena Forest Products. Thanks so much for Susan Jane Brown for sharing this piece in the comments section here. It really deserves more attention, so please check it out and share it with people you know. Here’s some of what Ben had to say:

“The question I hear over and over is did bad forest management cause the Labor Day fires? In a word: no. The data shows that a combination of strong east winds and extremely low humidity are what caused these fires. Plain and simple. 30-40 mph winds from the east blew for over 24 hours, bringing record low humidity in the single digits to the region….Short of scraping the land bare, there is no type of forest management that could have stopped these fires. Having a discussion about the type of forest management that we as Oregonians want on both our public and private forestlands is important. Good forest management can indeed help to slow less severe fires and reduce the loss from a fire when it does burn. But those conversations are moot in this particular context.”

Again, the information presented here certainly doesn’t tell the entire story, but it does tell a part of the story. Just a reminder that I will be adding to this post as time permits.

BLOGGERS BONUS: Below is a pre-fire image of the landscape where part of the 280,000 acre North Complex Fire in California has burned this year. Yes, I know this isn’t in the Oregon Cascades. By acres, it’s the 6th largest fire in state history. Maybe Trump is right and America does have a “forest management problem.” [Note: These are clearcuts…miles and miles and miles of clearcuts]

 

Good news for wildlife on two national forests

by

Here are two different kinds of success stories about restoring wildlife species that have been missing from national forests.

 

 

Grizzly bears – Lolo National Forest.

Current efforts on the Lolo National Forest demonstrate one way that forest plans can improve conditions for at-risk species; in this case the plan is contributing to conservation of the federally threatened grizzly bear. Grizzly bears have been sighted in recent years in this part of the Forest, but none are females or considered to be residents.

In 2011, the forest plan was amended to include what is commonly referred to as the Access Amendment (similar amendments also applied to the Kootenai and Idaho Panhandle national forests, prior to the revision of their forest plans).  The amendment established “standards” for motorized road and trail density in grizzly bear management units (BMUs, there is one on the Lolo).  In many cases, the current conditions did not meet these standards, so in the terminology of the 2012 Planning Rule, these would be desired conditions or objectives to be achieved.  In addition, their achievement was assumed in the biological opinion on the effects of the forest plan on grizzly bears prepared by the Fish and Wildlife Service, and failure to achieve them would likely trigger the need to reinitiate consultation on the forest plan (which had happened on the Flathead National Forest).  So there is a little added incentive, but here is what they are doing now.

The Forest has completed the “BMU 22 Compliance Environmental Assessment.”  In it they have proposed to formally close some roads that are effectively closed already and 21 trail miles currently open to motorized use.  In response to public comments, they are also considering an alternative that would close fewer trails, and instead close some roads currently open to motorized use.  In addition to other closures included with some prior vegetation management projects both alternatives “would bring the Forest into compliance with the Forest Plan motorized access management standards for the Cabinet-Yaak grizzly bear recovery zone.”

Brown-headed nuthatch – Mark Twain National Forest

The nuthatch is not at-risk range-wide, but they have not been found in Missouri for at least a century.  The species requires shortleaf pine and oak woodland forests, which have been greatly reduced from historic levels.  The loss of these forests has prompted an ecosystem restoration effort across Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma (notably using the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program).  Restoration of such forests is a desired outcome of the Mark Twain forest plan.  Curiously, there is no mention of the brown-headed nuthatch in the 2005 forest plan, although it does address other species using the same habitat:

Objective 1.4a Improve open woodland conditions on at least 10,500 acres to provide habitat for summer tanager, northern bobwhite, Bachman’s sparrow, and eastern red bat.

The EIS states that the nuthatch is a Management Indicator Species for forest plan monitoring, but that doesn’t seem to be in the plan itself.  Of course, a species that is absent from a national forest would not make a good MIS.  In any case, it looks like there was no interest by the Mark Twain in reestablishing a species that was not present on the forest under that rules applicable to forest planning in 2005.

However, Forest Service, state and university researchers came to the rescue of the species, determining that sufficient woodlands now exist in Missouri to support a population of Brown-headed Nuthatches, that populations in Arkansas were robust enough to supply birds to Missouri, but that nuthatches are not likely to make the return on their own because of the distance and habitat fragmentation.  The Mark Twain National Forest site was chosen for the release of 100 birds because it is the largest area of open pine woodlands in the state.

Under the 2012 Planning Rule, the Forest Service would probably argue that this species is not “known to occur” in the plan area, so the requirement to provide ecological conditions for it (as a species of conservation concern) would not apply.  However, the separate requirement for ecological integrity requires “species composition and diversity” to occur within the natural range of variation.  That should make the Forest Service more proactive in reestablishing species that historically occurred there.  (The forest plan also omits the listed red-cockaded woodpecker, which also uses these habitats, is also absent, but must be conserved and recovered.)

(For a look at how the natural range of variation might work under the 2012 Planning Rule see Table A-2, “Desired conditions for natural community types.”)

Oregon’s historic wildfires, unusual but not unprecedented: Oregonian Story

by
I couldn’t find an aerial photo of the Tillamook Burn. Maybe one is out there somewhere?

I thought this Oregonlive news piece by Ted Sickinger was interesting, as I had never heard much before about western Oregon fire history. The story is very long and very interesting, with many parts we could discuss. Excerpt below. I recommend reading the entire piece.

East wind events:

The strong and persistent windstorm that started Monday and stoked the big fires is unusual, but academics say similar conditions were a prime factor in many of the most infamous, fast-running west-side conflagrations since Europeans settled in Oregon.

Those include the 1902 Yacolt Burn, which torched 500,000 acres in Southwest Washington and parts of Oregon and killed at least 65 people. Easterly gales were a main ingredient in the Tillamook Burn of 1933, which initially burned 40,000 acres west of Gales Creek over 10 days, then devoured an additional 200,000 acres in 20 hours when stoked by hot east winds. East winds were also implicated in the Bandon fire of 1936, which burned 143,000 acres, consumed the town of 1,800 and killed at least 10 people.

In 1957, Owen Cramer, a meteorologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Pacific Northwest Research Station, authored a paper describing the close relationship between occurrences of severe easterly winds and large forest fires in northwest Oregon and southwest Washington.

“The history of forest conflagrations in the Northwest is, for the most part, a history of the simultaneous occurrence of small fires and severe east winds,” he wrote, going on to describe the exact weather pattern that took place on Labor Day. “Under these conditions fires run wild and fire-control men must be prepared for the worst.”

Daniel Donato, a natural resource scientist at Washington Department of Natural Resources, is currently studying the relationship between east wind events and large fires. He says there’s ample precedent and it’s fair to say it’s characteristic of the landscape west of the Cascades.

He likens it to the recent awakening around the likelihood of a Cascadia subduction zone earthquake. “We get lulled into this sense that it doesn’t happen here. It’s a California problem. But it does happen here, with low frequency,” he said.

Dan Gavin is a geographer at the University of Oregon who studies the history and pattern of fires in wet forest types west of the Cascade Range. He says the best evidence of pre-European, west-side megafires comes from core samples of remaining old-growth trees in protected areas and tree-ring studies in stumps from 1980s clearcuts. Coupled with sediment studies, they show that big fires have been a constant presence on the landscape for at least 11,000 years, leaving uniformly aged stands of Douglas-fir across Western Oregon and Washington at intervals of 100 to 250 years.

In the hierarchy of factors that dictate how fast and far a fire will burn – fuels, topography and weather – wind speed and direction are key drivers. And since those fires have no obvious ignition source, he says, they were likely either “lightning holdovers” or fires set by indigenous tribes along hunting routes that smoldered for days to weeks before a hot and persistent east wind kicked up, bellowing the fires and preventing the typical nighttime increase in relative humidity that comes with normal westerly marine flows.

Joint Fact-Finding: Let’s Locate Forest Service “Fuels Projects in the Backcountry”

by
Do different parts of the country define “backcountry” or “far away from communities” differently?

Ten years or more ago, when I was Planning Director, our Regional Forester decided to have a meeting with some professors/scientists from CU Boulder. One of the professors at the meeting said “doing fuel treatments in the backcountry doesn’t work to protect communities”. I tried to ask the question “what specific projects are you talking about?”. I didn’t know of any, but I certainly didn’t know of all the projects in the Region.

I felt that if we got down to the details, we might agree. But I’d want to look at the fuels specialist’s report, and the purpose and need of the project. There is a strategy for resolving factual disputes called “joint fact finding” and I thought that it would have been powerful to do that with our team of (awesome) regional specialists and the CU folks. Alas, it was not to be.

And here we are over 10 years later, and people are still saying the same thing. So we are still apparently talking past each other. But it’s not too late to try again..

1. “Backcountry” is an abstraction, as is “close to” communities. When I think backcountry, I think Wilderness or Roadless. Which takes us back to the 2001 Rule for most states, and no roadbuilding. If it’s a logging project, as most people I think would define it, you need to take the trees out (yes, there are roads in Roadless, so-called substantially altered acres, so it’s possible, but I think most Roadless Geeks would say that those acres are a minority of roadless). You can still have tree-felling without mechanical removal, but is that “logging”?

Also, as Steve points out in a recent comment, how far is “too far”, given how fast fires can go? It seems to me to understand whether a project is “too far” you would have to understand a) what the project is trying to do and b) local fire behavior, slopes, vegetation and so on (as per the Stewardship and Fireshed Assessment process, for example).

2. There are other things that fuel treatments can help protect besides communities. Watersheds around reservoirs is one obvious example in Colorado. I’m not sure why this wouldn’t be true in other places. That’s why the purpose and need would be important to look at.

2. I’m sure TSW readers can help me here. I thought that there was (maybe HFRA?) an effort to encourage the FS to focus on WUI for fuel treatments. My memory could be bad on this, but I think I remember those acres being harder and more expensive to accomplish, so at one time metrics favored getting more cheaper acres wherever it was convenient, until the change.

So here are my questions:

1) Can we figure out where the Forest Service is doing fuel treatment in “the backcountry” and why? I’m sure we disagree on the definition of backcountry, and what the WUI is and so on, but those are all abstractions and looking at projects would bring it down to earth.

If some believe it is due to the influence of the timber industry, we could expect “backcountry fuel treatments” to occur in the big timber areas (where trees have positive value), and not so much elsewhere. We also can look at the purpose and need and the fuels specialist reports for those projects.

2) Were “backcountry fuel treatments” something that the FS used to do more of, and then changed policies for whatever reason? If we looked at “far from communities” projects with a purpose and need of fuel treatment, would we see more in the past and fewer today?

I’m thinking that if people have been saying this for at least ten years, we should be able to engage more deeply here at TSW on where it happens, how often it happens, and why it happens.

A Talent evacuee asks officials to be responsible: Guest post from Dr. Dominick DellaSala

by
The Cheryl Lane Apartments were among many homes and businesses leveled along Hwy 99 in Phoenix on Tuesday. Photo by Jamie Lusch / Mail Tribune.

The following piece was written by Dr. Dominick DellaSala, chief scientist at Wild-Heritage, a project of the Earth Island Institute, and award-winning author of over 200 peer reviewed studies and books. It was published yesterday in the Medford Mail Tribune. To view more photos from the Almeda fire in the Talent and Phoenix, Oregon area taken by the Mail Tribune’s Jamie Lusch, click here. – mk

As I write this, my hometown of Talent is a disaster area, and I am in tears over the destruction of my neighborhood. Lives have been forever changed by this tragedy that could have been avoided with better planning.

Our elected officials have neglected to take action on community safety, focusing mostly on backcountry logging projects, and this destruction took place on their watch.

We simply were not prepared.

Consider, it took hours to reach safety in miles-long traffic jams. Ashland has a single lane leaving town heading north to Interstate 5, jammed with escaping traffic. As grateful as I am for our brave emergency responders, they were understandably overwhelmed and grossly underfunded.

We have been falsely promised that if only forest managers can thin, smoke levels would drop and wildfires would be less intense.

The Almeda fire had nothing to do with forests. Hundreds of urban structures burned in a domino effect ignited by embers cast for miles ahead of flames by unusually strong winds, extreme temperatures and excessive drought as homes became fuels.

Wildfire activity follows drought cycles and global-regional temperature spikes that dictate local fire weather. The Pacific Coast has been in excessive drought since March, aided by unprecedented summer temperatures, historically low humidity levels, and strong winds that scientists have been warning us about at least since the tragic Paradise-Camp fire disaster.

Consider that in 2017, 1,300 wildfires in the interior of British Columbia spread rapidly during extreme summer heat. Aided by strong winds, smoke billowed into the southeasterly flow of the jet stream, eventually settling in the valley. This year, fires from as far away as treeless Siberia again poured smoke into our region as, for the first time in recorded history, Siberia experienced triple-digit temperatures. Wildfires in California recently broke out during an unprecedented heat wave with temperatures soaring past 120 degrees, spinning off rare pyro-tornadoes and sending smoke into nearby states. Escaped campfires, accidental sparks and “gender-reveal” parties contributed.

Meanwhile, the climate of Oregon becomes increasingly like that of Redding, greatly upping the ante that such extreme conditions will become the new “abnormal,” as is the case for much of the dry West.

Instead of prayers and thoughts from elected officials, we need real action that rebuilds communities with safety first and foremost. We desperately need an infusion of disaster aid, relocation assistance, and proper planning to make sure this never happens again. This means planning for home hardening and defensible space along with sufficient shelters for every single community. Local planners need to have escape routes ready to go on a moment’s notice with a central warning system accessible to all residents in real time.

Retraining timber managers in law enforcement to monitor recreation use in extreme fire weather would prevent future unwanted fire ignitions. Nationwide, some 80% of all fires are human-caused, about half of them in our region by people. Road and campground closures are a must in red-flag warnings, no matter how unpopular.

Logging will do nothing to help us out of this mess. Based on the most comprehensive study ever conducted of 1,500 forest fires across the West, forests with the most logging burned in the severest fires [PDF links here and here]. This was also shown for a large fire near Roseburg in 2013 that raced through densely packed tree plantations under extreme fire weather (high temperatures and wind gusts). So, instead of logging forests, they should be managed to contribute to climate safety.

Climate-safe forest management means protecting older forests on public lands from logging to absorb and store atmospheric carbon while allowing logged-over areas decades to recover. For instance, the landmark Northwest Forest Plan reversed the dangerous trend of global warming pollution from excessive logging in the 1980s to public forests now acting as vast repositories of carbon. Logging, mostly on private lands, emits up to 10 times more carbon than even the largest wildfires.

By most accounts, scientists give us but a decade to greatly cut global warming pollution before all hell breaks loose. The way we manage forests and urban areas right now will affect generations to come as carbon has a long hang-time in the atmosphere — decades to a century.

As an evacuee, it’s only natural for me to feel angry about the abject neglect for public safety that could have been avoided with proper planning by elected officials in a region that is feeling unprecedented pain. It is irresponsible for our state and local elected officials to continue ignoring the obvious connection to climate chaos going forward.

Dominick A. DellaSala, Ph.D., is now chief scientist at Wild-Heritage, a project of the Earth Island Institute, and award-winning author of over 200 peer reviewed studies and books.

What Communities in Fire-Prone Areas Need To Do: What Planners Are Doing, Sources of Help, and Relevant Research

by

We’ve had some discussions about “what communities in fire-prone areas need to do.” Throughout the West (not to speak of the rest of the country, which also has fires) there are a variety of efforts ongoing to help communities plan for fires.

I’ll point out two things here. First, one of my early post-retirement volunteer gigs was being a member of the El Paso County Planning Commission. So I understand that because planners think something, it doesn’t necessarily get done. Elected officials and voters make the calls ultimately.

Second, there is a substantial body of literature on the topic of “what communities are doing” and “people’s behavior around wildfire mitigation.” I don’t know of a place where it has recently been rounded up but please put links to studies you know of in the comments below. To have an in-depth conversation around the topic of what communities need to do, we have to know what they are doing (of course, there are thousands, so it’s hard to generalize) and what the research tells us about the problems.

Of course, there are CWPPs via the Community Wildfire Protection Planning process. Please add links to other wildfire planning efforts.

Then there is also CPAW or Community Planning Assistance for Wildfire, a joint effort by Headwaters Economics and the Forest Service. The map of communities they’ve helped is above.

Working with communities across the country, Community Planning Assistance for Wildfire (CPAW) provides communities with land use planning solutions to better manage their wildland-urban interface (WUI). Established in 2015 by Headwaters Economics and Wildfire Planning International, CPAW is funded by the U.S. Forest Service and private foundations. The CPAW team includes planners, foresters, economists, researchers, and wildfire hazard modelers. All services and recommendations come at no cost to the community.

We work with and learn from communities at all scales and sizes across the U.S. Since our founding in 2015, more than 70 communities have received CPAW’s customized recommendations, trainings, and research. Explore some CPAW communities by clicking the map below, or go right to the list of community profiles.

The other thing I wanted to point out is that the American Planning Association, the professional society for county and urban planners, also has a variety of helpful information about what planners are doing. It’s interesting that their book Planning For Wildfire was published in 2005. Clearly they have been thinking about this for awhile.

Just like foresters, accountants, ecologists, wildlife bios and so on, planners have their professional society meetings where they learn and exchange best practices. In Colorado, planners have had many sessions on this topic.

I’m sure other states have chapters with wildland fire planning topics as well.

Practice of Science Friday: Reflections on “Science and Scienciness” from 2010 and the 2020 Fire Season

by
This is from the JFSP Fact Sheet. https://www.firescience.gov/documents/Fact_Sheets/FuelTreatment_Fact_Sheet.pdf

In the interests of “how I would change what I wrote in the past given the 2020 fire season”, I remembered a series of posts from 2010 (many readers were not with us then) called Science Situations That Shout Watch Out. Here’s a link to 1-3, there is also 4, when scientists speak for nature 5 Sleight of Science, 6 and 7 Warm Lake Fire Excerpts. Looking back, they are almost identical to some of the discussions we’re having today re fuel treatments. For new readers, we also did a series on “Why We Disagree About Fuel Treatments” that you can search for in the search box.

Situation 3. When Scientists Frame the Issue. This is a situation that occurs more frequently than desirable, and is actually the source of unnecessary tension between scientists and managers. Here is the way this dysfunctional cycle operates. First, there is a pot of money, to be distributed through a competitive process with a panel of other scientists. A scientist writes a proposal with a certain framing (e.g., fire protection of people and their communities is the same as protecting houses). Since none of the communities involved are at the table, and the framing sounds plausible to the other scientists, the proposal is funded. Then the scientist does the work. When they hear about the research results, managers then ignore the results, or only partially use them, because the results aren’t relevant to their framing of the issue. The last step of the cycle is that the managers are accused of “not using the best available science.” I have seen this cycle play out many times.

The scientific evidence is clear that the only effective way to protect structures from fire is to reduce the ignitability of the structure itself (e.g., fireproof roofing, leaf gutter guards) and the immediate surroundings within about 100 feet from each home, e.g., through thinning of brush and small trees adjacent to the homes (www.firelab.org–see studies by U.S. Forest Service fire scientist Dr. Jack Cohen)

In this case, the difference in framing is as simple as it’s not about the structures- it’s about the fact that people don’t want fire running through their communities. It is about all kinds of community infrastructure, stop signs and power poles, landscaping, fences, gardens, trees and benches in parks, people and pets and livestock having safe exits from encroaching fires. It is about firefighter safety and about conditions for different suppression tactics. That’s why fire breaks of some kinds around communities (not just structures) will always be popular in the real world. Of course, people don’t actually fireproof their homes either in the real world. “How can we best keep wildfires from damaging communities and endangering people” would be a more complex, but more real framing of the question. Note that one scientific discipline can’t provide the answer to this framing- there are elements of fire science, community design, fire suppression practice, sociology, political science and economics.

I think my bolded statement stands the test of time. Check out this link from Newsweek where you can see the before and after of communities in Oregon from satellite photos.

Since fires happened in California, and can be blamed on anthropogenic climate change, (as of summer 2020) we no longer have to debate that Bad Things Can Happen with Wildfires. We’ve only added more- problems with air quality, bad chemicals being released, damage to power infrastructure (possibly located in “the backcountry”) and so on. Looking back, I think we would have had much more helpful scientific information if in fact stakeholders had framed the issue and determined relevance- then written up an RFP. And yes, I appreciate greatly the efforts of the Joint Fire Science Program (see link in the image above). I also wonder why folks think it’s better to have splintered by agency (USDA NIFA, FS, USGS, NSF) and investigator-driven research than a coordinated and focused approach, with stakeholder involvement in prioritization and design.

In fact, if any grad students are interested, it would be fascinating to look at funded wildfire studies across agencies, develop a landscape of the different topics (from physical fire models to social studies of landowners). I see a potential committee of stakeholders, scientists and research administrators developing recommendations to 1) stop duplication, 2) fund gaps and 3) have practitioners and stakeholders interrogate the utility of each study. And maybe for communities, we don’t need more research as much as sharing of best practices. But researchers might not arrive at that conclusion on their own. That’s why I think we need to rethink our institutions and decision-making processes.

Former Deputy Chief of U.S. Forest Service offers “2 cents worth” on current wildfires

by

The following comment was posted by Jim Furnish, former Deputy Chief of the U.S. Forest Service on this blog over here. I believe Jim’s “2 cents worth” deserves to have its own post for discussion.

According to Jim’s bio at the Oregon State University Press: “Jim Furnish is a consulting forester in the Washington D.C. area following a 34-year career with the USDA Forest Service. He served as the agency’s Deputy Chief and Siuslaw National Forest Supervisor in Corvallis, Oregon. Furnish was a principle Forest Service leader in creating the Roadless Area Conservation Rule (2001), as well as in reforming management of the Siuslaw National Forest from timber production to restoration principles. He has served on the board of directors of several environmental and faith-based non-profit organizations.” More details on Jim’s book, “Toward A Natural Forest: The Forest Service in Transition (A Memoir)” can be found here.

My 2c worth, after almost 40 years with USFS 1965-2002, and a couple more decades observing since… As any on-the-ground firefighter or fire boss will tell you, when a fire gets ripping with high wind, heat, and low humidity and reaches project size, suppression efforts are band aids, at best. And we are seeing it RIGHT NOW. Control will come with – and ONLY with – a change in the weather. It’s an ugly scene and an ugly truth. But the “wet West” of 1945-1980, coinciding with a huge uptick in logging, population, and residential development, kind of lulled us into a false mindset (of which I was also guilty). Now that drier conditions have become entrenched, exacerbated by climate change, we reap the whirlwind. I approve of veg mgmt to try to reduce fire risk and severity, but have seen my share of fires burn right through treated areas. I strongly endorse focusing on WUI first and investing in fire-wise treatments of forest homes and lots. But when too-close homes start to burn and the domino effect kicks in, best to stand back and take your medicine. Sorry to be such a downer, but all the talk of logging impacts on fire behavior (and there ARE impacts) is akin to arguing about how the clothing I wear affects my weight on the scale vs. weighing naked.

Again: Past Logging Makes a Fire Worse, Guest Post from CA Chaparral Institute

by

This was posted as a comment by Richard Halsey of the California Chaparral Institute in previous posts, but it deserves to be on this blog as a guest post…so here it is. -mk

As with the Creek Fire, logging, habitat clearance, and the creation of forest plantations by private corporations and the US Forest Service in the Bear Fire area (in the northern Sierra Nevada) are making the fire worse and threatening lives as a result.

The Bear Fire area has been heavily logged over the past couple of decades – clearcuts, commercial thinning, “salvage” logging of snags, mostly on private lands but also quite a bit on National Forests too.

The consequence?

The Bear Fire dramatically expanded yesterday when it got to this massive area of heavy logging (see image below).

The Bear Fire is now over 200,000 acres (mostly from yesterday), and at least three people have been killed (see perimeter map below). This situation is very much like the Camp Fire in terms of the direct threat of recent logging to lives and homes, by contributing, along with the dominant force of extreme weather and climate change, to very rapid rate of fire spread, giving people little time to evacuate.

None of this is being seriously discussed in the leading media stories on the current fires.

The Main Take Aways

  1. Logging and forest plantation forestry is a contributor to increased fire spread and fire severity (Zald and Dunn 2018, Bradley et al. 2016 – see below).
  2. Weather and climate change are the dominant drivers of fire behavior.
  3. Promoting logging as “fuel reduction” under the guise of fire risk reduction flies in the face of the facts.

The Facts

“Areas intensively managed burned in the highest intensities. Areas protected in national parks and wilderness areas burned in lower intensities. Plantations burn hotter in a fire than native forests do. We know this from numerous studies based on peer-reviewed science.”*– Dominick DellaSala
From: Exploring Solutions to Reduce Risks of Catastrophic Wildfire and Improve Resilience of National Forests. Congressional testimony by Dr. Dominick DellaSala, Sept. 27, 2017.

* The research cited above analyzed 1,500 fires in 11 Western states over four decades – an overwhelming convergence of evidence. Some of those studies include the following:

1. Odion et al. 2004. Fire severity patterns and forest management in the Klamath National Forest, northwest California, USA. Cons. Biol. 18:927-936.

2. Zald, H., and C. Dunn. 2018. Severe fire weather and intensive forest management increase fire severity in a multi-ownership landscape. Ecol. Applic. 4:1068-1080.

3. Bradley, C.M., et al. 2016. Does increased forest protection correspond to higher fire severity in frequent-fire forests of the western United States? Ecosphere 7:1-13.

217 scientists sign letter opposing logging as a response to wildfires (we are signatories).

Rim Fire, logging and spotted owls

by

Here is some timely recent research on what happens to spotted owls after a fire, in particular the Rim Fire which comes up often on this blog (thank you, Larry).  That discussion has often dealt with the effects of post-fire salvage logging, such as the discussion here.  This research discusses the effect of the condition of the forest before the fire on its value to owls after the fire.

This is important because of the argument by some that fires are bigger threat to the owls than cutting down trees to reduce fire risk.  I’ve only looked at this overview and the linked abstract, but it seemed like enough to generate some discussion.  In particular, it contrasts the pre-fire management of Yosemite National Park and the adjacent Stanislaus National Forest.

From the abstract:

Spotted owls persisted and nested within the fire perimeter throughout the four post-fire years of our study at rates similar to what we observed in areas of Yosemite that were unaffected by the fire…  Prior to the fire, spotted owls selected for areas of high canopy cover relative to the rest of the landscape; after the fire, even though territory centers shifted substantially from pre-fire locations, pre-fire canopy cover remained a stronger predictor of spotted owl presence than post-fire canopy cover, or any other pre- or post-fire habitat variables we assessed.

So removing canopy cover, which seems to be one of the goals of fuel reduction, would not benefit the owls even if it reduces fire risk, and it would adversely affect them whether there is a fire or not.

From the lead author:

California Spotted Owls can tolerate forest fire, but Schofield cautions that not all fires are created equal. Yosemite’s forests have not been commercially logged since the early 1900s and fire suppression efforts since the 1970s have been kept to a minimum. This results in a forest structure and fire regime that is distinct from what is found outside of the park.

“In Yosemite there is a diversity of forest habitat” explains Schofield, “This means the Rim Fire burned with a diversity of severities creating a range of post-fire habitat for owls to choose from.” The study notes that in portions of the adjacent Stanislaus National Forest that were also burned by the Rim Fire, burn severity was more homogenous likely due to the contrasting logging and fire management regime on the National Forest.