The Smokey Wire : National Forest News and Views

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.”

I ran across this NPR story about possibly moving USDA Agencies NIFA and ERS out of the Washington D.C. area. I think it’s altogether possible to critique initiatives without hyperbole e.g. “hostility toward science” but the more intense the expression, the more likely to be quoted, I guess.

Many Forest Service folks may not be familiar with NIFA and their forest research programs. This seems like a good time to highlight their work. See this link.

It’s interesting that this article fits the story into the idea box (I guess it’s maybe a “trope” ) of “the war on science.”  Since I am a former employee of NIFA (when it was known as CSREES) I’d like to give two arguments for why the move might be “good for science.” I’ll stick to NIFA and leave it to your own consideration whether my arguments might apply to ERS.

I don’t know how many of you have tried to hire people for positions in DC. It’s not always easy.  I’ve tried to hire scientists for the FS and for NIFA, and also NEPA folks in the Forest Service.

First, you can get better employees and they may well be happier in their location. If we use the idea recently discussed about fire folks, that “people should lead what they know”, then we would want folks from the land grants to work at NIFA.  Now consider the kinds of towns that have 1860, 1890, and 1994 land grant universities and other affiliated institutions (check out the map above). The cost of living is lower.  They are not crowded (or not relatively compared to DC). The public schools tend to be better.  I spent 14 lovely years in D.C., but most people from a land grant university town may well not want to move their families there.  Why did I get a job with NIFA? I wanted a promotion and had the qualifications. I was not the “best candidate” by any means, but I was already in DC , so found myself in a pretty shallow applicant pool.

But many in the research community said efficiency isn’t driving the move. It’s hostility toward science.

“I think that moving the agencies out of D.C. is going to significantly dilute their effectiveness as well as their relevance,” says Ricardo Salvador, who is the Director of the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The plan is to leave some folks in DC according to these stories. In terms of NIFA, when I worked there, my office was in a rented building near the L’Enfant Plaza Metro. Honestly, I could have been anywhere. I traveled to review university programs, but I never visited the Congress nor I don’t think anyone in the “head shed” as we called the USDA building (until I was called on the carpet, but that’s another story). We were absolutely outward looking to where the work was and the communities we served (research, education and extension), so it’s a peculiar argument that folks with jobs like I had “need” to be in DC to be “effective” and “relevant.”

Second, part of who you are is who you hang with at work, and who you talk to, which papers you read or what people are discussing on your Nextdoor app, and so on. With people at the agency in DC and also elsewhere, you’d get more diverse perspectives within your workforce. It seems to me that you can argue it either way.. one way is that locality doesn’t make any difference because we all consume the same media and are all interconnected via teaming apps, (so why not move to somewhere cheaper? ) or locality does matter, and so you should be near the people you serve or study.

Now if I were Secretary, I would not move people against their will because it is so disruptive (remember the move to Albuquerque Service Center?) and you might lose precisely those employees you want to keep. I would let those who want to go, go, and let the others be virtual employees- and hire all the new folks at the new site. I bet if the FS had to do the ASQ thing over, they would do it this way.

Here’s a piece on the top three sites.

If we get away from the “war on science” partisan mantra, we can see that there are many arguments why this might be a good idea, and many ways to mitigate negative effects. And IMHO it’s most peculiar that the idea that moving to the Midwest will give us poorer science goes unquestioned at, of all places, Minnesota Public Radio.

This link was in today’s Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities news roundup from Nick Smith

Kevin Mecham: An open letter from a Forest Service Firefighter

“The catalyst of this letter is the line of duty death of friend and co-worker Daniel Laird and the WO and RO’s management of its Forestry Technicians. Our current management structure and its subsequent repercussions on our Firefighting workforce are not new problems. Line of Duty deaths are not new problems. But Dan’s death and the Agency’s structure have shone a glaring light on the implications of our current leadership organization. As these tragedies and issues hit closer and closer to home for the “boots on the ground” it makes the weight feel even heavier. …”

Fire and forests folks, this collection of papers probably has something for every one of us:

Proceedings of the fifth international symposium on fire economics, planning, and policy: ecosystem services and wildfires

For example, “Do Fuel Treatments Reduce Wildfire Suppression Costs and Property Damages? Analysis of Suppression Costs and Property Damages in U.S. National Forests.” Abstract:

This paper reports the results of two hypotheses tests regarding whether fuel reduction treatments using prescribed burning and mechanical methods reduces wildfire suppression costs and property damages. To test these two hypotheses data was collected on fuel treatments, fire suppression costs and property damages associated with wildfires on United States National Forests over a five year period. Results of the multiple regressions show that only in California did mechanical fuel treatment reduce wildfire suppression costs. However, the results of our second hypothesis tests that fuel treatments, by making wildfires less damaging and easier to control, may reduce property damages (i.e., structures—barns, out buildings, etc. and residences lost) seems to be confirmed for acres treated with prescribed burning. In three out of the three geographic regions of the U.S. which experienced significant property losses, prescribed burning lowered the number of structures damaged by wildfire.