Community Sourced, Shared and Supported
It’s fall, and smoke from prescribed burns is in the air. In the spirit of “catching people doing something right”, I offer the map above.
It’s time for my annual blogging break. I should be back October 15 or thereabouts. If anything administrative needs attention, you can contact me via email, and if the WordPress gods are sufficiently propitiated, I should be able to fix it.
Forest Service summaries: Litigation Weekly Sept 7
The District court adopted the magistrate judge’s recommendations to uphold the Lostine Public Safety Project on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest. (D. Or.) (We didn’t receive the June 14 LW cited, but there is a brief summary and a link to an article here.)
A magistrate judge has recommended that the Santa Fe National Forest be required reinitiate ESA consultation on its 2012 travel management plan to address the subsequently listed Jemez Mountain Salamander. (D. N.M.)
(Update.) The district court denied plaintiffs’ motion for an injunction pending appeal of its decision to affirm the Beaver Creek Landscape Restoration Project on the Flathead National Forest. (D. Mont.)
(Notice of intent to sue.) Seven plaintiffs are seeking reinitiation of ESA consultation on grizzly bears and bull trout for the Rock Creek Mine on the Kootenai National Forest.
BLOGGER’S BONUS
On August 13, the Montana district court granted a preliminary injunction against the North Hebgen Project on the Custer-Gallatin National Forest. However, it was based on the Forest Plan Amendment 51 decision that changed a forest plan standard requiring the retention of 30% of”old growth” forest to a less-stringent standard pertaining to “over-mature” forest, which would allow the initially non-compliant project to comply with the forest plan. The court found that plaintiffs had raised questions about ESA consultation on Canada lynx sufficient to enjoin the project until completion of the litigation. (This case was previously discussed here including my comments.)
There was no consultation on the amendment. Consultation must occur if a federal agency action “may affect” a listed species. Here, the record included statements by the Forest that Amendment 51 could have a “potential effect on wildlife associated with old growth,” and indications that lynx are one of these species. The Forest Service seemed to be arguing that consultation that occurred on the lynx amendment was sufficient because there are no new adverse effects, but that appeared to be contradicted by its record. The court found that Plaintiffs have established “fair ground for litigation and thus for more deliberative investigation,” regarding whether Amendment 51 “may affect” lynx-” a relatively low threshold for triggering [Section 7] consultation.”
The Ninth Circuit rejected the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision to not list this fish species as endangered in 2014. It is found in a few lakes in southwest Montana on national forest lands, but the primary concern is the remaining river populations. The court found the decision to be arbitrary and capricious because the FWS failed to supply evidence of increased population of the Arctic grayling in Montana rivers, and didn’t properly account for climate change effects on thermal refugia.
New MSU study gauges health of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem
By Skip Anderson for the MSU News Service (Original)
BOZEMAN — A Montana State University study of Yellowstone National Park and the surrounding area shows that increased population and density, as well as a changing climate, are affecting the overall ecological health of the region.
“The study quantified trends in the condition of 35 ecological ‘vital signs’ dealing with snow, rivers, forests, fire, wildlife and fish,” said Andrew Hansen, professor in the MSU Department of Ecologyin the College of Letters and Science.
“The human population has doubled — and housing density has tripled — in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem since 1970, and both are projected to double again by 2050,” Hansen said. “Plus, the temperature has warmed 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1950 and is projected to increase by another 4.5 to 9.4 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.”
Hansen, who is also director of MSU’s Landscape Biodiversity Lab, co-authored the paper “Trends in Vital Signs for Greater Yellowstone: Application of a Wildland Health Index,” with Linda Phillips, a research scientist in MSU’s Department of Ecology. The science journal Ecosphere published the article in August.
“These changes in land use and climate have reduced snowpack and stream flows, increased stream temperatures, favored pest outbreaks and forest die-off, fragmented habitat types, expanded invasive species, and reduced native fish populations,” Hansen said.
The study uncovered good news, too, for the habitat and some animals that call it home. Large mammals, including bear and elk, are increasing in numbers and expanding in range, according to the study.
Also notable is the new methodology the MSU scientists used, called the Wildland Health Index, which resulted in a reader-friendly “report card.”
“Physicians use ‘vital signs’ such as blood pressure to gauge the heath of humans,” Hansen said. “What we’re trying to do with the Wildland Health Index is something similar by adding value to data that allows a variety of people to understand the trends in ecological health.”
To do this, Hansen and Phillips evaluated the data to identify the trends over times in the GYE’s vital signs and used criteria to rate them from “deteriorating” to “stable and improving.”
“We then boil down the metrics to the six or eight key vital signs that will matter to policymakers,” Hansen said. “And, this study can be applied each year across the GYE and used for other large wildland ecosystems in the United States to better inform land managers to assist them in sustaining these special places.”
Diane Debinski, head of MSU’s Department of Ecology, said the index is a new tool that can be used measure ecosystem health around the world.
“Because the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem serves as an icon for wildland management, the Hansen and Phillips Wildland Health Index will have global reach, serving as a template for similar assessments worldwide,” she said.
Hansen noted that the ecological health of the region was strongest inside the boundaries of Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. That’s not surprising, he said, given the focus of its caretakers in managing the ecological health of the parks. He said this study shows that the greatest need for improvement is outside the parks, where private landowners don’t necessarily have access to data that may help them be better stewards of the land they own and the water that passes through it.
“There’s a real opportunity to let people know what they might worry about on their own property with regard to impact,” Hansen said.
He also indicated that there’s plenty of room in the near future for citizen scientists to gather and report data that will help policymakers as they consider the overall ecological health of the GYE, which includes tens of thousands of square miles beyond Yellowstone National Park, including Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.
“We have so little information about large river systems, especially on private lands,” Hansen said. “There’s just no consistent monitoring of water quality on those major rivers on a scale that can tell us how well they’re doing, and that’s surprising because so many people here love our blue-ribbon trout streams that we’re famous for.
“There’s real opportunity to engage people to do the monitoring and the science to fill in the gaps,” he added. “One could visualize high school students across the GYE doing water-quality monitoring and submitting the data to a central repository. By doing so, they become heavily engaged participants.”
When the U.S. Forest Service logs “dead and dying” trees impacted by mountain pine beetles as part of a ‘salvage’ timber sale, might they also literally be cutting down the toughest and strongest trees that contain the best genetics?
New research from one of the nation’s leading entomologists lends some credence to that theory.
I was first made aware of this concept back around 2005, when we had just spent a day in the woods with a number of University of Montana scientists and reachers from the College of Forestry & Conservation, including Dr. Diana Six.
We were taking a look at the Bitterroot National Forest’s proposed Middle East Fork Healthy Forest Restoration Act Timber Sale. While conservation groups like WildWest Institute and Friends of the Bitterroot were generally supportive of about 2,000 acres of ‘thinning’ and ‘fuel reduction’ work immediately around a community of homes and cabins up the East Fork of the Bitterroot River, we strongly objected to the fact that the Forest Service and logging industry wanted to cut down nearly 2,500 acres of previously unlogged, native forests – including some Douglas fir that measured 3 feet in diameter – far from homes under the guise of “restoration” and “fuel reduction.”
In fact, much of the 2,500 acres of unlogged, native forests were previously considered old-growth habitat by the Forest Service until 2005 – when the Forest Service resurveyed the stands and determined they weren’t old-growth forest habitat after all supposedly because of the number of dead and dying trees, especially huge Douglas fir, which were impacted by bark beetles.
One thing back on that field tour in 2005 that Dr. Diana Six really got us thinking about was the genetics of trees that were dying as a result of bark beetles, but not yet dead. Of course, all living things are dying – including you and me – but what if the Forest Service was actually cutting down dying trees that might rebound and successfully fight off the bark beetle attack? Might these trees, if the Forest Service didn’t let the timber industry cut them down on our public lands, actually have possessed in their DNA the best genetics to fight off future bark beetle epidemics?
On September 11, 2007 I took some reporters to the Bitterroot National Forest for a tour of what the Bitterroot National Forest did under the guise of “community fire protection” and “restoring fire adapted ecosystems” over four miles away from the nearest home in the area. Here’s what we found.
Now, while I realize that mountain pine beetles (the subject of Dr. Six’s latest research) are different than Douglas-fir beetle; it seems as if the same general concept applies to all trees that someone fend off beetle epidemics.
Below is the press release from the University of Montana.
MISSOULA – A University of Montana researcher has discovered that mountain pine beetles may avoid certain trees within a population they normally would kill due to genetics in the trees.
UM Professor Diana Six made the discovery after studying mature whitebark and lodgepole trees that were the age and size that mountain pine beetle prefer, but had somehow escaped attack during the recent outbreak.
After DNA screening, survivor trees all contained a similar genetic makeup that was distinctly different from the general population that were mostly susceptible to the beetle.
“Our findings suggest that survivorship is genetically based and, thus, heritable,” Six said, “which is what gives us hope.”
In western North America, whitebark pine, a high elevation keystone species recommended for listing as an endangered species, and lodgepole pine, a widespread ecologically and economically important tree, have experienced extensive mortality in recent climate-driven outbreaks of the mountain pine beetle.
“Our results suggest that surviving trees possess a wealth of information that can be used to inform our understanding of the genetic and phenotypic bases for resistance and to develop management approaches that support forest adaptation,” Six said.
The study was published July 23 in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science and is available online right here.
An op-ed from the NY Times last week by Chad T. Hanson and Michael Brune, who are against forestry provisions of the Farm Bill, now in Congress: “Using Wildfires as an Excuse to Plunder Forests: Logging won’t end the blazes that are sweeping the West.” Hanson is an ecologist whose research focuses on forest and fire ecology. Brune is the executive director of the Sierra Club.
The authors make at least one point of fact that hasn’t received enough attention:
“Most of the homes that were destroyed by wildfires over the past year, as in the Tubbs fire and Thomas fire last fall in California, were not primarily in forested areas, but in grasslands, shrub lands and oak savannas.”
They are correct that taking measures to help individual homes survive fires is important, but grasslands, shrub lands, and oak savannas will need some form of fuels management if the threat of large fires in these types of ecosystems is to be significantly reduced. Doing nothing means that large fires will remain a threat.
However, Hanson and Brune recycle old falsehoods in an attempt to make their case.
The Farm Bill provisions the object to “would include logging of old-growth forests and clearcutting of ecologically important post-fire habitat, upon which many imperiled wildlife species depend.”
Large-scale Logging of old-growth forests isn’t occurring on federal lands in the western US and isn’t likely to be used where fuels reduction is the goal. And “clearcutting of ecologically important post-fire habitat” typically occurs on very small portions of burned areas, such as the Chetco Bar Fire on the Rogue River Siskiyou National Forest in 2017, which burned 170,321 acres of National Forest System lands. The USFS says it plans to salvage 71 million board feet of burned timber from 4,090 acres, or 2.5% of the Chetco Bar Fire area — 97.5% of the “ecologically important post-fire habitat” will remain.
(Note that the Chetco Bar Fire burned a total of 191,197 acres, a bit less than the area of New York City, 197,760 acres.)
The authors insist that “logging does nothing to curb fires. On the contrary, increased logging can make fires burn more intensely. Logging, including many projects deceptively promoted as forest ‘thinning,’ removes fire-resistant trees, reduces the cooling shade of the forest canopy and leaves behind highly combustible twigs and branches.”
Forest thinning, if applied at the appropriate intensity for a site’s conditions, can lead to a significant decrease in fire severity and extent. See “Basic principles of forest fuel reduction treatments,” by noted fire ecologist James K. Agee and Carl N. Skinner of the USFS Pacific Southwest Research Station, who report in Forest Ecology and Management that “Applying treatments at an appropriate landscape scale will be critical to the success of fuel reduction treatments in reducing wildfire losses in Western forests.”
Yellowstone burn recovery
“The Department of the Interior (DOI) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have requested a Federal Advisory Committee to review USGS’s current free-and-open policy for user access to Landsat data. The following material provides a synopsis of frequently-asked questions and answers about the ongoing review.”
(Making the truth harder to find?)
Missoula 2017
I think this is the way it should work. We encountered the smoke as we drove into town Friday evening from the south. We learned here that it was from some prescribed burns in Idaho. It showed up red here as now the first yellow spot just inside Idaho west and slightly south of Missoula. That lines up with the few thousand acre Kelly Creek area mentioned by the Forest Service. Missoula’s air quality quickly went from “good” to “unhealthy” as shown here, and you can advance to “next day” to see that it was back to essentially “good” within 24 hours of when it got bad. We slept with our windows closed in a warm house for one night. To me, that’s a lot better than the days to weeks we did the same thing in a hotter August 2017 due to wildfires. (But I wonder if doing Missoula a favor was really the reason, “Planned treatment areas on the North Fork and Lochsa Ranger Districts are located within remote, roadless areas or areas with very limited road access.”)
(Sharon – did I miss a new rule about threads being closed to new comments? This one was started 8/13, and Steve replied 9/7, but I couldn’t today and it says “comments are closed” at the end.)
Steve posted this from AFRC:
Ninth Circuit Undercuts Collaborative Landscape Management
A Ninth Circuit ruling on August 13 strikes an unfortunate blow against collaborative landscape management. The court rejected the Lost Creek-Boulder Creek collaborative project, which is part of the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP). Most strikingly, the court’s analysis contains a fundamental misunderstanding of forest planning. It wrongly assumes that the project’s design is binding on future projects in the same area, though the project did not amend the governing forest plan. The irony is that the project focuses on restoration rather than timber production, and the court accepted the environmental groups’ challenge on that basis. The court’s decision is so flawed that the government has already taken the unusual step of filing a petition for rehearing.
In the Payette National Forest, fire suppression has led to accumulations of small and medium-sized trees, making wildfires harder to control and more damaging to the land and adjacent communities. A diverse group of private and not-for-profit interests came together and formed the Payette Forest Coalition (PFC). Despite different backgrounds, the group found a shared interest in reducing uncharacteristic wildfires, improving wildlife habitat, water quality and watershed health, enhancing recreational access, and supporting the economies of local communities. The PFC worked closely with the Forest Service to design the Lost Creek-Boulder Creek project, which aims to restore approximately 80,000 acres.
The project reflects a common understanding that doing nothing is not an option. Without prescribed burns and noncommercial thinning, at least 40,000 acres remain at risk of mortality from insect, disease and fire, 25 culverts will not be replaced (to the detriment of bull trout), and 55 MMBF of logs will not be manufactured into wood products while maintaining the approximately 1,100 associated jobs.
Environmental plaintiffs alleged that the Forest Service improperly failed to consult on bull trout critical habitat at the Forest Plan Level, improperly relied on a draft wildlife conservation strategy, improperly changed the desired condition for forested lands within the project area and failed to follow the proper procedures regarding the minimum road system in the project area. AFRC attorneys represented both the PFC and Adams County in the litigation.
The district court rejected all these challenges. In denying a request for injunctive relief, it found “the collaborative efforts of all Defendants in developing the Project is in the public’s interest,” and that “the public has an interest in supporting the collaborative process that was used in this case to develop the Project.”
The Ninth Circuit ignored all these factors, and its opinion does not mention the collaborative process at all. Instead, it assumes that the restoration emphasis of the project is a binding forest plan amendment and compares that to the existing forest plan, rather than analyzing whether the project is consistent with the forest plan. This upside-down ruling shows that litigation reform is a necessary element to any meaningful change on our forests.
The PFC has reiterated its commitment to restoration work despite the court setback. AFRC will continue to work with the PFC in its efforts to bring meaningful forest restoration to the Payette and appreciates the work of our partners on the Forest. /Lawson Fite
My response:
Not surprising. The “fundamental misunderstanding of forest planning” (NFMA) lies with the Forest Service.
“It (the court) wrongly assumes that the project’s design is binding on future projects in the same area… Instead, it assumes that the restoration emphasis of the project is a binding forest plan amendment and compares that to the existing forest plan.” The court didn’t “assume;” it took the Forest at its word that it had changed plan direction applicable to this project, and the court decided that as a matter of law, the changes that the Forest admitted it made can’t be made project-by-project. Even if the Forest hadn’t admitted it, desired conditions, by definition, apply to areas and timeframes larger than a project and require the forest planning process. The court understood that if the Forest Service could legally do what it did here, plan components wouldn’t matter, which is not what was intended by NFMA’s consistency requirement.
“its opinion does not mention the collaborative process at all.” Once the 9th Circuit decided that the agency action was illegal (unlike the district court), any “public interest” arguments became pretty much irrelevant. It’s kind of absurd to suggest that an illegal action should proceed just because there is “collaborative landscape management” (at least until the politicians make it so). See earlier discussion of this point from the district court TRO opinion here:
Back in April 2013, I wrote a post for this blog titled “Rough and Ready: The Other Story.” Here’s the opening for paragraphs of that April 2013 article:
Earlier in the week the owners of the Rough and Ready Lumber mill south of Cave Junction, Oregon announced they were closing their doors for good. There was one reason cited by the owners: A lack of logging on Forest Service and BLM lands in southwestern Oregon. Jennifer Phillippi even went so far as to describe the situation this way, “It’s like sitting in a grocery store not being able to eat while the produce rots around you.”
Well, if you wander away from the timber mill’s talking points even a little bit and talk with actual neighbors in southwestern Oregon who have witnessed Rough and Ready’s handywork over the years, you get a much different story – a story of over-cutting, mis-management, toxic contamination and political manipulation.
Also in April 2013, the NBC station in Medford, Oregon had more information on the announced closure of the Rough and Ready Lumber mill near Cave Junction, Oregon:
Today, as the last saw mill in Josephine and Jackson county announces it’s plans to close, some residents are sharing the other side of the story: one they say includes political manipulation, mis-management, and contamination. For some, the news that Rough and Ready Lumber in Cave Junction is going out of business threw up a red flag. Residents fear the threat to close is a ploy to gain access to more timber.
Residents say they’ve seen this happen before. “It’s been some years back the Rough and Ready mill was up for sale,” says South Cave Junction Neighborhood Watch member, Guenter Ambron.
“It’s just wrong,” says a neighbor of Rough and Ready, too scared to identify herself on camera for fear of retaliation. She tells us there’s more than meets in the eye in the company’s announcement to close. “I think it’s being used as a tool to push our representatives and governor into giving them O&C lands,” continues the neighbor.
She says at one point, Rough and Ready was considered a self sufficient company with private logging lands, but she says it’s their own fault they’re out of wood. “If they actually maintained their resource lands and had not clear cut and sprayed with poisons they would actually have a constant supply of timbers to harvest.”
Rough and Ready was in the news again recently. On September 5, 2018 the Oregonian published an article titled, “Oregon sawmill deal cost taxpayers millions. Was it a crime?”
Last month, the state forcefully reasserted that a corporate arm of Portland-based Ecotrust unlawfully inflated project costs and omitted material facts to get millions in tax credits it didn’t qualify for.
A question now, some legal experts say: Will the state investigate that as a potential crime?
Officials at state economic development agency Business Oregon used unusually strong language in a memo to Ecotrust managers, characterizing the tax credit deal as built on untrue and incomplete information. The deal, approved in 2014, was intended to throw a lifeline to the Rough & Ready sawmill in Southern Oregon….
The complicated transaction at issue began in 2013, when Rough & Ready was looking for a bailout and Ecotrust stepped in with the know-how to connect the sawmill to investors via tax credits. The mill owners and Ecotrust executives sought to rebuild the Josephine County economy by restarting the mothballed mill.
To get the $3.1 million in state credits it sought for the Rough & Ready deal, Ecotrust needed to show Business Oregon the mill would spend at least $8 million on qualifying expenses. Its 2013 application promised it would do just that.
However, in its August 16 memo recently released to The Oregonian/OregonLive, Business Oregon said Ecotrust managers made “material misrepresentations and omissions” and failed to “accurately describe” their plans.
The state found Ecotrust failed to disclose that it orchestrated a one-day loan of nearly $5 million from Chase Bank to Rough & Ready. That loan, Business Oregon concluded, did not “represent an arms-length transaction” and was used in essence to let the couple who own the sawmill buy it from themselves.
The transaction was included in the overall budget for the project, which meant it qualified on paper for more credits than it would have otherwise. But Business Oregon determined the transaction should not have been counted and, if it had been disclosed, the deal likely wouldn’t have been approved.
The undisclosed loan “unlawfully” boosted the project budget, and Ecotrust and Chase “improperly benefited” as a result, according to the Business Oregon memo, written by director Chris Harder.
Rough & Ready’s owners and Chase Bank knew the one-day loan was “circular” and was not used to make a valid purchase, Harder wrote. Ecotrust structured the deal so that the loan passed from Chase to Rough & Ready via a second corporate subsidiary of Ecotrust established just for the sawmill deal.
Chase, which provided the loan and then was able to buy the resulting tax credits at a deep discount, declined to comment on the appropriateness of the single-day loan. A Chase spokeswoman said the bank makes investments “supported by economic development authorities that intend to meet local needs.”
The Rough & Ready sawmill went belly up barely a year after the deal closed, erasing all 70 promised jobs. Taxpayers lost at least $7 million in state and federal underwriting on the deal gone wrong….
Some legal experts say the state should not only seek to claw back the money, but should also seriously consider a criminal investigation….
Hafez Daraee, a corporate defense attorney who is not involved in the case, said someone who knowingly makes a misrepresentation in the course of receiving public financing could face civil financial penalties.
“The rule of thumb is if you try to fudge your numbers, the government has every right to come after you, as they should,” Daraee said….
The quagmire Business Oregon now finds itself in was avoidable. There were clear signs the Rough & Ready project was doomed from the start, The Oregonian/OregonLive first reported in March.
Glaring signals included an overly rosy financial analysis and a hand-written budget proposal in which all expenditures came out to an even $100,000. But the state and federal tax credit programs that financed the project allow for little scrutiny of potential deals and rely heavily on the accuracy of submitted applications.
The memo relates that Ecotrust had to show the project had $8 million in qualifying expenses to land $3.1 million in tax credits. To reach that threshold, the memo asserts, Ecotrust inflated the project’s expenses using a “one-day” loan. Mill owners Jennifer and Link Phillippi used a $4.8 million from Chase Bank to essentially buy the mill from themselves and then paid off the loan the next day. Yes, you read that right.
Yesterday, the editorial board of the Oregonian published this editorial, titled, “Oregon sawmill deal cost taxpayers millions. Was it a crime?”
[Oregon Attorney General Ellen] Rosenblum should investigate Ecotrust’s use of the New Markets Tax Credit program to determine whether its practices rise beyond sloppiness to criminal malfeasance.
Rosenblum knows more now, considering that Business Oregon officials have spent the past six months scrutinizing Ecotrust CDE’s deal. In mid-August, officials reported their findings to the Oregon Department of Revenue. Among numerous accusations, the memo claimed that Ecotrust “omitted material information,” “failed to accurately describe the sources and uses of proceeds” and “failed to disclose the intentions” of the one-day loan.
The memo relates that Ecotrust had to show the project had $8 million in qualifying expenses to land $3.1 million in tax credits. To reach that threshold, the memo asserts, Ecotrust inflated the project’s expenses using a “one-day” loan. Mill owners Jennifer and Link Phillippi used a $4.8 million from Chase Bank to essentially buy the mill from themselves and then paid off the loan the next day. Yes, you read that right….
Business Oregon shouldn’t continue to extend the deadline that would provide Ecotrust a second chance. Instead, the state should seek to recoup the tax credits that this deal never should have received. And, Rosenblum should aggressively investigate what went wrong and who was responsible.
Across the state, Oregonians could use the help that sound economic investment can provide. But the investment needs to be real and long-lasting, with money going reliably home in their paychecks — not out the mill door through management fees.
Amen.
Get the full scoop from the Missoula Current. Below are some snips from the recent article.
As paleo-ecologists, Cathy Whitlock and Philip Higuera study past wildfires to better understand fire behavior. But what they see is that wildfires today are very different because of the Earth’s changing climate….
Higuera said that since the 1980s, the area consumed each year by wildfires is 10 times larger than the area that the Forest Service can log, thin, burn or restore.
“It forces you to recognize that you’re not going to get out of this problem simply by doing more treatment to the landscape,” Higuera said. “It’s unlikely that we would be able to eliminate years like 2017. So we need to expect and plan for more years like 2017.”
Whitlock and Higuera agreed that because wildfires are going to happen with increasing regularity as summers get hotter and drier, the Forest Service should use them as a tool to restore forest health. As long as they don’t threaten lives, wildfires can burn out all the dead wood and excess vegetation, setting the stage for a more healthy ecosystem.
Treatment projects tend to be small due to funding limits. So they should be focused on areas around people’s homes where they can make a difference, Higuera said.
The human factor can be a problem because people expect the Forest Service to put fires out. Also, too many people are building their homes in forested areas – the wildland-urban interface – that are bound to burn. In any given wildfire, firefighters spend an increasing amount of time and effort and risk lives to save homes rather than fighting fire.
Since 1990, 2 million new homes have been built in the wildland-urban interface – mostly in fire-prone low-elevation forests. Already 900,000 homes are in zones of high fire risk. By 2040, it is projected that 40 percent of the WUI will have an increased risk of burning, according to a 2015 University of Colorado study.
“I think that’s where the conversation needs to focus,” Whitlock said.
Education is needed to make people aware of the threats so they don’t build in risk-prone areas, but also so they understand the positive aspects of wildfire. Americans need to accept the inevitability of fire like they accept the inevitability of earthquakes or tornadoes, Higuera said.
“The forests are continually adapting to climate change and one way is by burning. I think what we’re seeing is the forests are equilibrating to climate change. The trouble is the climate is still changing. But these fires really should be thought of as a natural ecological process of adjusting to a new climate,” Whitlock said.
