Summer Wildfires Severely Affected Montana Recreation Industry
Last summer’s wildfires made for big headlines in the media, but the resulting destruction and smoke combined to keep out-of-state visitors away, and with them, millions of dollars in lost income.
Director of the University of Montana Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research, Norma Nickerson said the fires had a significant negative impact on tourism.
“In terms of our nonresident visitation, those fires potentially made us lose up to 800,000 out of state visitors to Montana with an equivalent of about $240 million dollars their spending around out state,” said Nickerson, who was also surprised to discover how most of those who chose not to visit found out about the wildfires. “It was a wide range of outlets, but the majority of them were saying that they looked at air quality reports. So, they obviously knew about the fires, and so they wanted to check and see how it affected the air quality. There was also a little bit of talking with friends and relatives that they had in the state, and that was a significant part of their decision.”
Sixty-nine percent of adults in Montana said the smoke affected their outdoor activities. This included 90 percent of those respondents saying activities such as hiking and fishing were occasionally or frequently affected and 75 percent who indicated their outdoor fitness activities were impacted due to smoke.
Nickerson said the information in her report is being passed on to other state officials who are closely involved with forest management.
“This was a long fire season, and that was probably the scariest part of it,” she said. “The climate scientists are saying that this is going to be our future, the ‘new normal’, so what can we do? That’s the discussion that needs to take place.”
For Immediate Release Contact: (202) 205-1005 Twitter:@forestservice
Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture reflects on year of progress
WASHINGTON, Dec 20, 2017 — The Forest Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, today highlighted some of the agency’s accomplishments during 2017 to improve the productivity, uses, and sustainability of national forests and grasslands.
“Our accomplishments this year demonstrate the Forest Service’s strong commitment to improving the economic health of rural communities; ensuring lands and watersheds are sustainable, healthy and productive; and mitigating wildfire risk,” said Forest Service Chief Tony Tooke. “As the Forest Service moves into 2018, our priorities will continue to tie directly to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue’s strategic vision for the Department.”
Here are a few highlights of Forest Service accomplishments during 2017, derived from and inspired by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s strategic goals:
Improved the Conditions of America’s Forests
Employed the full suite of treatments and tools to improve conditions on more than 2.7 million acres of forestland. This work helped reduce fire severity and increase resilience;
Harvested more than 2.9 billion board feet of wood, leading to improved forest conditions and contributing wood products to local economies;
Used Farm Bill authorities to work on 60 projects addressing insect and disease infestations and partner with 35 states on restoration projects.
Worked toward a Fix to Fire Funding
USDA informed members of a national coalition on the impacts of the high costs of suppressing wildfire totaling $2.4 billion in Fiscal Year 2017 alone.
Built bipartisan support with key Congressional leaders to develop innovative options that fix the two-pronged problem of fire transfer and growing suppression costs;
Implemented the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Strategy
Treated more than 1.3 million high priority acres nationwide to reduce fire risk and improve forest conditions. Agency personnel focused on areas with communities, areas of high fire potential, and areas where risk could most effectively be alleviated;
Increased wildfire mitigation efforts in high-risk communities through partnerships with organizations such as the Fire-Adapted Communities Coalition and The Nature Conservancy;
Improved 1.33 million acres of wildlife habitat, and treated over 73,600 acres for noxious weeds and invasive plants;
Responded to Record Wildfires and Hurricanes
Confronted wildland fires that started in the Southeast and continued through the year in the Southwest, Pacific Northwest, Intermountain West and Pacific Northwest. At peak season, more than 28,000 personnel were dispatched to fires, along with aircraft and other emergency response resources;
Responded during three hurricane events; Harvey, Irma, and Maria. Dispatched highly skilled crews, incident management teams, and Law Enforcement Officers to Puerto Rico to rapidly clear roads, remove debris and protect public safety in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.
The mission of the Forest Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is to sustain the health, diversity and productivity of the nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations.
My first experiences with difficulties accessing Forest Service land occurred while hiking and camping. A road would look on the map as if it were a public road, but there would be signs that said “private road.” I never thought of it as a broader issue, but once we were invited on a rare and wonderful field trip from the Regional Office to the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest, to a district where this happens quite a bit. I wrote about this in a previous blog post here in 2011.
What I heard from folks on the AR was:
If you talk to them, you will find out some of the problems facing public lands-neighbors attempting to cut off access to the public, through
land exchanges, trespass and subsequently being granted the land through efforts of their Congresspeople, putting gates on public roads, signing public roads as private, removing Forest Service signs, and probably other approaches I have not yet heard about.
On the field trip, we heard about a couple of different issues:
Neighbors trying to keep people from legally accessing federal land through signage and illegal fencing.
Land exchanges and trespass settlements that effectively cut off public access.
But there are also issues that I heard about later from reading:
Access roads not existing in the first place.
Owners of property not agreeing that the FS access is legally OK.
Here is a quote about capacity to deal with access issues in Montana in a 2015 High Country News article here:
But the bad news is that partnerships are becoming more necessary as the Forest Service is hit with tighter budgets and staff reductions. Dennee can remember a time, as recently as a decade ago, when each of Montana’s eight national forests had a lands specialist dedicated to improving and safeguarding public access. Now only three staffers oversee access issues for the national forests and grasslands extending over the greater part of Montana and into North and South Dakota. Meanwhile, younger staffers coming up through the ranks lack the necessary expertise, he says.
“We have (many) willing landowners who want to work with us to resolve access needs,” Dennee told me, “but we can’t keep up with the demand.”
So here’s my question: everything I’ve found so far is about the Rocky Mountain or intermountain west. Do these kinds of access issues (especially those with adjacent landowners) with National Forest land occur in California, Oregon, Washington or in the North Central, Eastern or Southern States? I am looking for personal experiences or studies, from employees, retirees or the public. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Here are links to a few wildfire and climate syntheses.
(1) This one is by Cliff Maas, a University of Washington meteorologist, and describes the southern California weather and climate models specifically and in detail. It’s interesting because there is no forest, forestry, nor forest industry getting in the way of dealing with fire. Here are his conclusions:
Those that are claiming the global warming is having an impact are doing so either out of ignorance or their wish to use coastal wildfires for their own purposes. For politicians, claiming that the big wildfires are the result of global warming provides a convenient excuse not to address the real problems:
*Irresponsible development of homes and buildings in natural areas that had a long history of wildfires.
*Many decades of fire suppression that have left some areas vulnerable to catastrophic fires.
*Lack of planning or maintenance of electrical infrastructure, making ignition of fires more probable when strong winds blow.
*Lack of attention to emergency management, or to providing sufficient fire fighting resources
*Poor building codes, improper building materials (wood shake roofs), and lack of protective space around homes/buildings.
And to be extremely cynical, some politicians on the left see the fires as a convenient partisan tool.
Wildfires are not a global warming issue, but a sustainable and resilience issue that our society, on both sides of the political spectrum, must deal with.
I would add that some politicians on the right in other parts of the country also use as a convenient partisan tool ;).
The below two pieces are not related to Southern Calfornia coastal fires specifically.
(2) This one is a round-up of literature by Larry Kummer, editor of a blog called Fabius Maximus. I think it’s interesting because he looks at a variety of literature that we have touched on, but not all at once, and his background is in finance and climate. It’s very long, but covers much the same ground as we do in our discussions but from a different, more climate-y angle.
In (3) this 2016 paper, “Global trends in wildfire and its impacts: perceptions versus realities in a changing world”, the authors take a world wide view of wildfire and why it is an issue. I think it’s interesting because there is no general increase in wildfires across the world- that still doesn’t mean that locally it can’t be a problem.
Please feel free to quote and give your ideas about any of these papers or posts in the comments. Bill Gabbert has a comprehensive round-up of all the possible other reasons for increased fire acreage here.
My question is “does anyone have ideas for how our “living with fire” responses would change if it were 60% climate (on the high side) or 20% climate (on the low side).” compared to all the other reasons that fire is a problem. Does proportion of the problem created by climate actually affect what options might be chosen to live with fire? In what way? My point being that maybe all the research funds on attribution (which we will never know for sure, despite all the computing power that exists) might be more profitably used to work on improving fire models. What if we could decide “we will never know this for sure” and moved on?
Wait a second . . . go back and click on that last link. The one about trees falling over after forest fires. Most of those lodgepole pine trees are still standing. And they’ve been standing long enough for the aspen in the understory to sprout and grow.
So how long does a tree stand after being killed by fire? It’s an area of research almost wholly neglected by so-called tree hazard evaluations (“There are no scientific publications, however, that evaluate, test or compare the [tree hazard] procedures or methods”). Ecologists, however, have studied snag persistence to assess wildlife habitat.
In a western Idaho study, for example, 95% of Douglas-fir snags were still standing four years after fire. Over 80% remained up-right 11 years later.
If the Forest Service thinks wilderness should remain closed until the fire-killed trees have fallen over of their own accord, they’ll have to lock the public out for years. The Forest Service could treat wilderness trails as it does roads and cut the potentially hazardous trees, if doing so “preserves its wilderness character.” Or the Forest Service could do as it has in Idaho — open the wilderness and warn visitors to “abandon hope all ye who enter here.”
Pacific Crest Trail thru-hikers had better be ready for a lot of detours in Oregon this summer. In November and December, after fire season-ending rain and snow storms, the Forest Service issued orders closing three of Oregon’s most popular PCT segments (e.g., Three Sisters & Mt. Jefferson), along with their associated wilderness areas and connecting trails. The reason? “Public Safety.”
The Wilderness Act directs the Forest Service to manage wilderness areas for “their primeval character and influence” to “preserve natural conditions.” Wilderness areas are to be “affected primarily by the forces of nature” and “offer primitive and an unconfined type of recreation.” The Act’s only reference to safety is an exception to the ban on motorized equipment (e.g., aircraft) if “required in emergencies involving the health and safety of persons within the area.”
Even if the Wilderness Act countenanced a nanny state approach to wilderness management, the Forest Service did not explain its closure decisions, nor invite public comment on whether it’s too dangerous to hike in these woods. People do die in wilderness areas. They drown, freeze, fall off mountains, and have heart attacks. Trees cause about 1% of wilderness-related fatalities.
The default condition of national forests is that they are open, by law and without permit, to dispersed recreation. The Forest Service must follow the law when it decides to lock the public out. Under the Administrative Procedures Act, the Forest Service must explain its reasons, including how the facts support its conclusions. The Forest Service did not do so. The agency must also follow NEPA’s procedures, including explaining the degree to which its closure decision affects “extraordinary circumstances,” such as wilderness. The orders have an obvious and profound effects on wilderness and Pacific Crest Trail users, eliminating all forms of dispersed recreation. The Forest Service made no attempt to comply with NEPA.
Timber harvesting is by far the largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Oregon. Since 2000, annual emissions associated with removal of stored carbon, sacrificed sequestration, and decay of logging residuals averaged 33 million metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent (mmt CO2-e).Nationwide, logging emits more carbon than the residential and commercial sectors combined.
According to the Center for Sustainable Economy:
The report – entitled Oregon Forest Carbon Policy: Scientific and technical brief to guide legislative intervention – is a synthesis of scientific and technical information about the effects of industrial forest practices on climate change and climate resiliency and a discussion of legislative options for moving forward. It builds on a 2015 report published with Geos Institute that helped lead to a reconvening of the Commission’s forestry task force to revisit their assumptions – published in their Interim Roadmap to 2020 report – that forestry’s effects on climate were an unqualified benefit. Today’s report paints a drastically different story.
What happens if forest fire ignitions are not suppressed? It’s a tough experiment to perform, but some old Forest Service data may help answer. In 1923, the Forest Service published an analysis of fires in 12 California national forests (excepting southern California) that ignited between 1911 and 1920. The data include suppression costs, which are a good proxy for suppression effort. Recall that 1910 was the “Great Fire,” which ushered in the era of Forest Service fire suppression. In 1911 fire suppression was almost non-existent with costs on the 12 forests totaling $18,746. That’s $450,000 in today’s dollars. Compare to 2015’s $500 million spent by the Forest Service suppressing fires in California (even more in 2017), and the numbers show the Forest Service puts about 1,000 times more effort into suppressing fires today than it did in 1911. In 1911 there were no air tankers, no fire engines, and few roads into the national forests. In sum, 1911 is a pretty good proxy for what happens when ignitions are not suppressed.
So what did happen to ignitions in 1911? Click on the table above: 70% remained smaller than 300 acres, while 30% exceeded 300 acres. [“C” fires are those greater than 300 acres]
Areas in the Santa Fe National Forest, near Bandalier National Monument in New Mexico, were still scarred in September 2015, four years after the Las Conchas Fire. Credit Nick Cote for The New York Times (this was used to illustrate the article described below)
Steve Wilent posted this NY Times article in a comment, but I think it is worthy of its own post. It’s always interesting to see what shows up in the New York Times about trees and forests. It was in the Science section, and refers to a paper (fortunately open-access, yay!) in Environmental Research Letters.
Here are the quotes in the NYT article:
“The confidence we’ve developed about our forests being at great risk is really high now,” said David D. Breshears, a professor of natural resources at the University of Arizona and a co-author on the paper. “Warming makes droughts more lethal.”
Dr. Breshears said that the research shows that warming temperatures and drought alone could cause 9 or 10 additional forest die-offs per century during this century by killing seedlings. “It’s not sustainable if you knock out a forest every ten or twelve years,” Dr. Breshears said. “We are at a big risk of losing lots and lots of forest.”
This was very interesting to me, as I’ve been saying for a while “we don’t know how much of what weather conditions will kill a live adult tree, we don’t know the genetic variation among its open-pollinated offspring, so we can’t really say what will happen to a species under changing climate conditions.” We can say in many drier climates the main problem is to get a seedling established, because pines have trouble getting established through brush or grass cover- will there be bare mineral soil after a good seed year? These are all simple things about pine regeneration (and I’m talking ponderosa here, other pines may have different issues) that were well known about 40 years ago when pine planting for reforestation was common. There were scientists at Oregon State University, for example who worked on seedling establishment (the field was called “tree physiology” back in those days).
So how did Dr.Breshears and colleagues arrive at this (somewhat scary) prediction about western forests?
This is part of the methods section:
We obtained pine seedlings in ‘cone-tainers’ (height 21 cm, volume: 175 ml) of two species (P. edulis and P. ponderosa) from the Colorado State Forest Service Nursery (Fort Collins, CO) in March 2010. The nursery used a Colorado seed source for P. ponderosa, but for P. edulis, seeds were obtained commercially, and their provenance is unknown. Seedlings were kept in growth chambers (Conviron, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) at 25 ◦C during the day under photosynthetically active
radiation of ∼700 ?mol m−2sec−1 and at 10 ◦C at night…. .
So the new data is based on seedlings in a growth chamber (from an unknown source of P. edulis?) and conclusions are drawn. Interesting that in the discussion the authors say:
Our experimental and projection results are specific to seedlings but we expect these have implications for other life stages, including adults. Although seedling studies have been recognized as an effective method of investigation in tree mortality prediction where breakthrough tests are needed (McDowell et al 2013), caution should be used in extrapolating from our growth chamber experiments to large adults in the field (Leuzinger et al 2009).
(my italics)
But is this “using caution?”
That tree mortality can be expected to accelerate across a range of increased temperatures should be represented in such models and motivate policy to reduce the anthropogenic drivers of climate warming. As continued temperature increases will progressively cause more tree mortality, these results clearly illustrate the profound benefits of slowing warming as rapidly as possible, as forest persistence is critical for globally coordinated carbon management.
If you lived, as some of us did, during the time when reforestation and tree physiology was the topic of study at Oregon State University, as well as other places, you would be amazed that that proposal and experimental design would be approved with the idea of extrapolating from this experiment to western forests. So, we might ask “who funded and reviewed this proposal?”? It’s an alphabet soup, including DOE, NSF and EPA. I think it illustrates that different disciplines have had and continue to have different review expectations and criteria.
