DellaSala on Fire

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Just received this press release from Dominick DellaSala’s Geos Institute. The presentation is here. I agree with DellaSalla that fire is a vital element of forest ecosystems, but do not support his call to “allow more large fire to burn unimpeded” in the back country. If such large fires are needed, would he support starting them to obtain the ecological benefits he assigns them? The public, as well as many land managers, would be dubious, to say the least about letting nature take its course in this way, whether ignitions are natural or not.

One of the photos listed comes with this caption: “2013 Rim Fire in California’s Sierra Nevada produced an ecologically beneficial mosaic of fire severities.” So more Rim Fires are in order?

Active Wildfire Season in Western U.S. Offers Many Ecological Benefits, According to Geos Institute
ASHLAND, Ore., May 13, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — Fire scientists are releasing a new synthesis of the ecological benefits of large wildfires, including those that kill most vegetation in fire-adapted forests, grasslands, and shrub lands of the western U.S.
These benefits are described in a Prezi presentation, “Fireside Chat: Lessons from Fire Ecology and Post-fire Landscapes,” which can be viewed at:
http://www.geosinstitute.org/banking-on-forests/public-forests/1139-fireside-chat.html
The online Fireside Chat presents the latest science on wildfire’s ecosystem benefits, with (a) nine key findings, (b) information on the landscape impacts from climate change, post-fire logging, and fire suppression, and (c) ways to help homeowners prepare for fires.
It also includes links to fire videos and contact information for wildfire researchers.
Its purpose is to serve as an information tool for the press, decision makers, and land managers interested in the ecosystem benefits of large fires, which have been under-appreciated.
Dominick DellaSala, Chief Scientist of Geos Institute, stated “Contrary to popular belief, most large wildfires are not catastrophes of nature, as many plant and wildlife species depend on them to restore habitat in short supply and to replenish soil nutrients.”
DellaSala continued, “We can co-exist with wildfires by thinning vegetation nearest to homes and in fire-prone tree plantations, and by allowing large fires to burn unimpeded in the backcountry under safe conditions.”
According to the National Interagency Fire Center (www.nifc.gov), California, southern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico, southern Alaska, and Oregon could experience large fires this year, given the dry conditions. However dry, fire-adapted regions generally have experienced substantially less fires, compared to historical times, due to ongoing fire suppression.
Suppression costs in some years have approached $5 billion on public lands, with limited effects on slowing large fires that are mostly driven by weather events. The Forest Service already has signaled that it is likely to run out of wildfire suppression funds long before the end of the fire season.
Related CounterPunch article on the ecological benefits of large wildfires:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/30/why-large-fires-are-an-ecological-necessity/
Contact:
Dominick A. DellaSala, Ph.D., President and Chief Scientist
Geos Institute
541.482.4459 x302 (office); 541.621.7223 (cell)
Email
www.geosinstitute.org

 

The Value of Public Service: Cultivating Communities

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darinatteberry

Since I had to get on LinkedIn for the SAF group (which is open to all and has interesting discussions), I also signed up for the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation, which helps place federal lands issues within the context of other public debates.

They posted a link to this essay by Darin Atteberry, City Manager, Fort Collins, CO and Alliance for Innovation Board Member today. Here’s an excerpt:

While I cannot understate the character and commitment of public employees, it is crucial that we understand that public service is not solely the responsibility of government. All of us – from individual residents to global organizations – have to share in the responsibility of caring for our communities.

Our perception of public service must evolve. Governments at all levels no longer have the resources and ability to play the traditional role of problem solver. And quite frankly, the assertion that government has all the answers is an outdated and paternalistic model. Instead, governments, residents, organizations, the private sector, and nonprofits need to redefine our relationships. We must cultivate a collaborative problem-solving culture where we all have the responsibility to address challenges and prepare for the future together.

This is the true value of public service; it’s the ability to bring people together to accomplish a common goal. To help move beyond political beliefs, and beyond the hard lines we too often draw between your opinion and mine. I believe that people, at their core, care about their community, however that may be defined. Some may want less government, some may want more, but most want to live in a place that’s safe, welcoming, and where people genuinely care for one another.

If we can all agree that we play an important role as public servants, then we can elevate our conversations to address real issues. We can all take responsibility for our actions and speech. We can disagree while maintaining civility and an authentic commitment to find solutions that are best for our community. We can pledge to behave with integrity and candor with the intent to foster trust, because trust is imperative.

I believe public service reaches beyond a responsibility to our current community. We have a growing obligation to ensure that our current plans, investments, and actions do not harm future generations. We need to genuinely embrace a model of sustainability in which environmental stewardship, fiscal responsibility, and social awareness are equally important.

It’s our job as public servants to contribute to quality of life, to demonstrate transparency, to pursue excellence, to innovate, to collaborate, and most importantly to lead by example. This is not a profession to choose without thoughtful consideration. There is certainly more fortune, free time, and privacy to be found in other careers. But I can think of no other occupation more rewarding.

Theodore Roosevelt said it best, “Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” By that definition, we’ve all earned the prize.

Do you agree? What do you think keeps “us” from that approach in federal land management?

Forest Service ESA/NFMA success story

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The West Virginia northern flying squirrel was removed from the endangered species list a few years ago, apparently mostly the result an effort to restore red spruce trees in the Monongahela National Forest.  This story doesn’t mention the forest plan, but says that 100,000 acres are being “managed primarily for red spruce.”  Here is what the plan says:

“Management Prescription 4.1 emphasizes the active and passive restoration of spruce and spruce-hardwood communities and the recovery of species of concern found in these communities, a mix of forest products, and management of hardwood communities where spruce is not present or represents only a negligible component of a stand, and research or administrative studies on spruce restoration. On lands determined to be suitable habitat for the West Virginia northern flying squirrel, vegetation management initially would be limited to research or administrative studies to determine effective habitat enhancement techniques for the squirrel. After such studies have demonstrated effective techniques, vegetation management to enhance habitat for the squirrel or other TEP species could occur on a larger scale (see FW standard TE61).”

“Objective WF11 – Maintain at least 20,000 acres of mid-late and late successional (>80 years old) spruce forest to provide optimum habitat for West Virginia northern flying squirrel, a Management Indicator Species. The long-term objective is to increase mid-late and late successional spruce forest to at least 40,000 acres.”

According to the de-listing rule:   “Implementation of the amended Appendix A guidelines by the Monongahela National Forest (MNF) effectively abated the main threat to the squirrel (i.e., habitat loss from timber management) throughout the majority of its range, by eliminating adverse impacts on all suitable habitat on the MNF without having to prove WVNFS presence.”

What’s not to like about this as an example of how public land laws can work the way they were intended?  If there’s any easterners more familiar with the back-story, maybe they could share it.

The current interest is related to coverage of the flying squirrel in the April/May issue of The Nature Conservancy Magazine.  Here’s more on red spruce.  

More on Montana Lands Designated as Restoration Priorities

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Interesting op-ed by by Julia Altemus, Exec. VP of the Montana Wood Products Association (Don’t be fooled by false claims about Bullock’s forest priorities) and comments on it, including a long one by our fellow NCFP blogger, Matt Koehler. The op-ed is in response to an April 16 article, “Conservation groups criticize governor over forest restoration,” and comments on it.

Protest of Jazz Timber Sale

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I had the pleasure of observing a protest of the Mt. Hood National Forest’s Jazz timber sale yesterday at the S.O. in Sandy, Oregon. Photo here. The group Bark organized the protest. Maybe 50 people were there (the USFS folks locked the S.O. doors and stayed inside). Bark’s video is here. For “street theater” they brought in a small wading pool, added water, let some kids splash in it, and then dumped in a few buckets of soil to illustrate how the local streams would look after the harvesting (the kids loved playing in the mud). A young woman in a salmon costume writhed in simulated pain and then “died.”

Portland TV station KGW covered the event; its video had a reporter at the protest and “on location” at a river a mile from the sale.

The sale is to be a thinning of old harvest units. USFS documents here, including Bark’s lawsuit and the district court’s decision in favor of the USFS. The decision notice describes the sale: “The Forest proposes a thinning project of approximately 2,053 acres of plantations ranging in age from 30 to 60 years old. The average tree size in plantations is 12 inches diameter. Variable density thinning is proposed to remove the smaller trees while creating skips and gaps.”

(Skips and gaps — a phrase used (coined?) by Jerry Franklin and Norm Johnson in describing t heir “ecological forestry.”)

Bark’s main concerns are that the USFS would recommission 12 miles of decommissioned roads, leading to potential erosion. The group’s leader conceded that 9 acres in the sale area are suitable for logging. Bark announced that it will file an appeal with the 9th Circuit.

My take: The stands need thinning. The agency plans to take great care around streams. This is about as benign as logging gets.

Professionals in Natural Resource Agencies: How’s Life Treating You?

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Bruce Tremper conducts a field observation of a ski slope prior to composing his avalanche forecast. (Photo: Bruce Tremper/U.S. Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center)
Bruce Tremper conducts a field observation of a ski slope prior to composing his avalanche forecast.
(Photo: Bruce Tremper/U.S. Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center)
Normally I try not to mix Society of American Forester business with this blog, except for the fact that I learn things from that work I share here and vice versa. In this case, though, I’m interested in getting as broad a set of ideas and experiences and thoughts as possible, and I know that folks on this blog have such a variety.

So here it is. The SAF has a position statement that originated in the 90’s on “Professionalism in Public Natural Resource Management Agencies.” Here’s a link. It has a historic perspective that I think is out of date (like SES is here to stay). I’m wondering what folks think the issues around professionalism (and here I am thinking more broadly, planning, wildlife, hydrology) are in the natural resource agencies you all work for or deal with.

Since I retired, I have no idea what’s current. In the year before I left the Forest Service, I was told “work on the Committee on Forest Policy has nothing to do with your job” and “if you give a talk at a professional conference you must pay your own way, use leave, and even if you do that, you should really not go, because people don’t know who is funding you and might think you are violating USDA travel policy.” I was required to call the program folks at one conference and have them change my Forest Service affiliation on the program (yes, I was proud to give my affiliation instead as the administrator of this blog). Fortunately, the organizers were used to Dilbertian requests and didn’t bat an eye.

Hopefully, my experiences were a rare warp in the space-time professional continuum. I hope that FS folks are generally following the spirit of Chief Dombeck’s letter on professionalism, which has not been rescinded that I know of.

Anyway, I’m curious about what folks see the issues of today to be.

A Footnote to “How Long Has This Been Going On?”

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William the Conqueror
William the Conqueror

On May 3, a couple of days ago, I posted a little article at our “Not Without a Fight!” blog on the interpretation of King William Rufus’s death by medieval English historians and, thereafter, by generations of the British people. Rufus was the third son of William I or William the Conqueror, he who famously defeated the Anglo-Saxons in the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Rufus, who succeeded his father on the throne with the latter’s death in 1087, died in mysterious circumstances in 1100 in a place called the “New Forest.” This “New Forest” was a huge area declared by fiat as a hunting preserve for William the Conqueror and his noble friends in 1079.  It was very unpopular, according to medieval English historians anyway, among English commoners and especially those displaced by the King’s bold edict.  These same historians were fond of attributing Rufus’s death, as well as the deaths of two other members of William I’s family, to divine retribution for the King’s destruction of locals’ homes, livelihoods, villages, and churches with the New Forest’s creation.

More recent historical study — beginning, oddly enough, with a commentary on this history by Voltaire in 1753 – has questioned whether William I’s New Forest was as disruptive to local communities as medieval historians claimed. Despite more than a little evidence that undermines the old, medieval account, that account seems to have survived quite well in the popular mind or English folklore.

Now, you might be wondering why I would have bothered to recount this story on a blog site devoted to the looming economic and social crisis faced by U.S. counties with considerable acreages of national forest. Well, it all began a couple of weeks ago when our old TV gave out. We bought a new TV and its remote came with a Netflix button, for streaming videos from that source. One of the shows I began watching via this new source was David Starkey’s brilliant, 17-installment series on the history of the British monarchy. As it happens, the series’ third program briefly touched on the story of the New Forest’s creation, King Rufus’s untimely accidental death, and the place of these events in British historical memory. My immediate reaction was: “I can use this!”

How?

One side of the three-sided "Rufus Stone."
One side of the three-sided “Rufus Stone.”

Well, it struck me that the locking up of our national forests – by which I mean, in this case, the great decline in logging and forest management activity over the past two decades – has a very, very long history:  i.e., stretching all the way back to the creation William the Conqueror’s New Forest in 1079. That’s very nearly a thousand years ago. It also struck me also that the persistence of the divine punishment interpretation of Rufus’s death in the English historical memory represents a kind of long term – indeed, very long-term! – symbolic price William the Conquer had to pay for his love of hunting and his creation of the New Forest. That price, in turn, might strike a cautionary note for today’s officialdom and their green friends, where these folks are (or appear to be) happy with the prospect of shutting down the multi-use of our national forests.

So that was my thought process. Unfortunately, the blog post didn’t communicate all of that as well as it might have – indeed, or even as well as I’ve communicated it here.  Nevertheless I’d like to invite members of this list to have a look at this NWAF! post when and if they have a moment to spare for some very old history.

— Ron Roizen

More on Wildfire and Sound Forest Management

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These links are from a USFS Quarterly List of Recent Forestry Related Publications

FUEL REDUCTION EFFECTIVENESS:

– “Fuel Treatments and Fire Severity: A Meta-Analysis” – “Thinning treatments have demonstrated the greatest reductions in wildfire severity, but only by those treatments that produce substantial changes to canopy fuels, shift the diameter distribution towards larger trees, and are followed by broadcast burning or other means of removal. Until the residual activity fuels are disposed, they will largely offset much of the hazard reduction benefit achieved from opening the canopy. … Modifications in fire behavior achieved within a single treated stand, however significant, are unlikely to change the total area burned by a large wildfire, aid fire control efforts, or impact the distribution of severities across a landscape (Finney and others 2003). Fuel treatment effectiveness ultimately depends on the cumulative impact of a treatment regime applied across landscapes and maintained through time.”

–> Note: This cessation of treatments is what resulted from the 80-90% reduction in NF harvest levels. This cessation is a primary factor in the increase in wildfire (documented repeatedly in other posts on NCFP) acres burned since the harvest reduction policy was instituted after 1990 at the behest of those opposed to sound forest management – it’s called shooting yourself in the intestines.
–> Note: This is a combined statistical analysis of various controlled experiments wherein the model referred to is the normal statistical model used to test a hypothesis for significance of the independent variables.

INCIDENT LEVEL WILDFIRE DECISION MAKING PROCESS:

– USFS – “Decision Making for Wildfires: A Guide for Applying a Risk Management Process at the Incident Level”

So-called “Truthometer” Gets Simple Things Wrong

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rulings_tom-mostlyfalse

If you purport to be a “Truth” ometer, shouldn’t you check your facts?


Here’s the link.

OK, we know that this question (separating all these factors that have occurred together to make wildfires more troublesome than in the past) is very complicated… still.. “SAF, a trade association for the people who harvest timber”, really?

Now what would it have taken to look that up..oh, one click away from the SAF main screen, we can find here the mission statement.

The Society of American Foresters (SAF) is the national scientific and educational organization representing the forestry profession in the United States. Founded in 1900 by Gifford Pinchot, it is the largest professional society for foresters in the world.

OK, I get it, it’s hard to look things up. But hey, they found “consensus” about this tough question.

Where we found broad consensus is that decades of aggressively putting out every fire as quickly as possible, and the use of land for grazing, created circumstances where the forests are brimming with fuel. That in conjunction with extended dry periods have turned them into tinderboxes.

It seems to me that putting out fires means fuels won’t burn up in these fires and hence continue on the landscape, for later burning or removal, while “not removing fuels” also would lead to more fuels on the landscape. And I am curious about how cows eating grass might lead to more forest fuel. So, logic would tell us that “not removing fuels” and “not letting fuels burn” would both lead to “more fuels.”

Anyway, at least they interviewed Ann Camp who has experience in this area, so I guess that’s good.

Collaborative objections?

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This is apparently the first test of the 2012 planning rule objection process for forest plan revisions (though the plans were prepared under the 1982 rule).  On the Kootenai, there were 38 objectors and the same number of ‘interested persons’ (presumably some overlap).  On the Idaho Panhandle, 22 objectors and 94 interested persons.  Someone distilled that to these four topics for discussion and possible resolution at a meeting on each forest:  county coordination, Wild and Scenic Rivers, recommended Wilderness and wilderness study areas, and management indicator species.  Meetings with objectors are optional, but if held must be open to the public (interested persons can participate but the general public can’t).  The reviewing officer, Associate Deputy Chief Jim Pena, attended in person.  What do you think?