People Like Trees: Protecting Giant Sequoia

Sequoia National Park, California.

There are a many things I like about this story: it talks about communities, and not homes.

Hundreds of firefighters were deployed Sunday to protect Tuolumne City and other communities in the path of the Rim Fire. Eight fire trucks and four bulldozers were deployed near Bunney’s ranch on the west side of Mount Baldy, where two years of drought have created tinder-dry conditions.

It also talks about infrastructure

Despite ash falling like snowflakes on the reservoir and a thick haze of smoke limiting visibility to 100 feet, the quality of the water piped to the city 150 miles away is still good, say officials with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.

The city’s hydroelectric power generated by the system has been interrupted by the fire, forcing the utility to spend $600,000 buying power on the open market.

And measures needed to keep fires out of communities

Fire lines near Ponderosa Hills and Twain Hart are being cut miles ahead of the blaze in locations where fire officials hope they will help protect the communities should the fire jump containment lines.

“There is a huge focus in those areas in terms of air support and crews on the ground building fire lines to protect those communities. We’re facing difficult conditions and extremely challenging weather,” Frederickson said.

And of course people at the end of the day are not wrapped around a philosophical question of “natural” fires and whether fires can every be “natural” with past fire suppression and climate change, they are simply protecting valued trees, even though those trees are adapted to fire.

Values seem like a straightforward way to manage; replicating the past, not so much (like impossible, really). IMHO.

Park employees are continuing their efforts to protect two groves of giant sequoias that are unique the region by cutting brush and setting sprinklers, Medena said.

and in this story:

The iconic trees can resist fire, but dry conditions and heavy brush are forcing park officials to take extra precautions in the Tuolumne and Merced groves. About three dozen of the giant trees are affected.

“All of the plants and trees in Yosemite are important, but the giant sequoias are incredibly important both for what they are and as symbols of the National Park System,” park spokesman Scott Gediman said Saturday.

Rangers tread tricky path when deciding to let fires burn

I think this story is interesting because it talks about the real world of what happens with deciding on suppression strategies..remember, we had a discussion about the Hubbard letter..in this and previous linked posts.

Here
is the link and below is an excerpt..interestingly, the Durango Herald interviewed someone who actually explained how he is making decisions. Apparently, making a phone call from Monte Vista to Golden is not all that difficult.

Often, the crew that first responds to a lightning strike will decide on the spot to put the fire out. But if the fire is too remote to reach, or there are too many little fires burning at the same time, decisions get kicked up the chain of command to a duty officer, the district ranger or the forest supervisor.

“I can’t give you a cookbook-type answer. There’s discretion. There’s professional judgment,” said Dan Dallas, supervisor of the Rio Grande National Forest.

Each national forest develops fire-management plans in advance to identify swaths of land where a fire would be welcome. But Forest Service officers also have to look at the weather and the availability of crews to monitor a fire.

The conditions aligned for Dallas this summer on the Ox Cart Fire, a blaze he wanted to let burn for resource benefits. He got permission from Regional Forester Dan Jirón in Golden, the senior Forest Service officer in a five-state area.

Until last year, Dallas would have had the authority to make the call himself, as the forest supervisor.

But in May 2012, James Hubbard, deputy chief of the Forest Service, declared that only regional foresters could approve managing a fire for resource benefits, instead of putting it out as fast as possible.

“I acknowledge this is not a desirable approach in the long-run,” Hubbard wrote in his memo.

Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell somewhat softened that policy this February in his “letter of intent” for the 2013 fire season, but he still warned that officers who want to let a fire burn will be held to the strictest performance standards.

Dallas got permission to let the Ox Cart Fire smolder on the western slopes of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, south of Salida.

Mike Blakeman, the spokesman for Rio Grande National Forest, spent several days in Salida talking about the blaze and the smoke it was emitting.

“It sat there for three, almost four weeks and didn’t grow significantly,” Dallas said.

Then one afternoon, it blew up a bowl on the mountain and burned 1,000 acres.

He would have preferred to let it go some more, but the big burn happened at the same time as the West Fork Complex blowup, which sent up a smoke column that was visible from Denver.

With the eyes of the country fixed on his forest, Dallas decided to put out the fire.

When fires get big enough, local foresters will call in an incident management team and delegate authority for the blaze. That’s what Dallas did with the Ox Cart Fire.

The incident team had the fire under control in five days.

Forest-Interior Birds May Be Benefiting from Harvested Clearings

U.S. Forest Service research wildlife biologist Scott Stoleson set out to learn where forest interior birds spend time after breeding season and what kind of condition they are in leading up to migration. Black-throated green warblers like this one were abundant in harvested openings following the breeding season. (Credit: L. D. Ordiway)
U.S. Forest Service research wildlife biologist Scott Stoleson set out to learn where forest interior birds spend time after breeding season and what kind of condition they are in leading up to migration. Black-throated green warblers like this one were abundant in harvested openings following the breeding season. (Credit: L. D. Ordiway)

Derek posted this in a comment but it deserves its own post..these are “interior” specialists, who apparently do better at points of their lives in openings..

Here
is a link to Bob Berwyn’s post and some quotes from him..

Currently, most of those conservation efforts focus on preserving mature forests where birds breed, but the new research shows younger forest habitat may be vital in the weeks leading up to migration.

“Humans have really changed the nature of mature forests in the Northeast,” said Scott Stoleson, a research wildlife biologist at the U.S. Forest Service’s Northern Research Station. “Natural processes that once created open spaces even within mature forests, such as fire, are largely controlled, diminishing the availability of quality habitat.

Below are some excerpts from the Science Daily article.

The study suggests that declines in forest-interior species may be due in part to the increasing maturity and homogenization of forests. Openings created by timber harvesting may increase habitat for some forest interior birds, according to Stoleson. “Humans have really changed the nature of mature forests in the Northeast,” Stoleson said. “Natural processes that once created open spaces even within mature forests, such as fire, are largely controlled, diminishing the availability of quality habitat.”

and

In 217 days of netting birds over the course of the 4-year study, Stoleson netted and banded a total of 3,845 individuals. Of these, 2,021 individuals representing 46 species were in the postbreeding stage, based on physiological criteria. Of these, 33 percent were mature-forest specialists, 22 percent were forest-edge species, and the remaining 45 percent were early-successional specialists. All 46 species were captured in cuts, but only 29 species were captured within forest.

Just a reminder that “science” is a function of what is looked at, at what place, species and spatial scale, and our knowledge is only provisional. It seems like this is sometimes forgotten and we expect more than “science” can deliver.

Forest Land – A Bad Investment?

This cartoon is from the New Yorker in 1983.. as they say "the more things change.."
This cartoon is from the New Yorker in 1983.. as they say “the more things change..AND does say something about most of us on this blog

Taking what I’m sure is a mini-break from fires.
In our discussion of timber companies who own land (and taxes they pay), I thought it might be interesting to folks on the blog to talk a little about TIMOs and REITS, which don’t get as much press in the west. For example, I received this in July in my Morningstar email..you probably can’t see it unless you are a member.

So perhaps the landowning timber company in the west will become as rare as .. the spotted owl. If we want to be a country that has forest industry, then small private and feds in the west may have to step up in terms of supply. If we want to get it from Canada, I’m sure our northern neighbors will be happy to oblige. A perhaps ironic end to years of Canadian lumber disputes.

Over the past three- and five-year periods, MeadWestvaco (MWV) shares have underperformed the U.S. packaging peer group. Unlike most of its competitors, which have shed legacy land holdings and noncore businesses to focus on packaging, MeadWestvaco still owns more than 600,000 acres of land, actively engages in property development, and runs a specialty chemical business that is largely unrelated to the core packaging business.

We consider the specialty chemical and real estate operations to be a distraction from the core business and believe they are a key reason that the packaging business has struggled in recent years. We think MeadWestvaco shareholders would be best served by an outright sale of the specialty chemical business and a tax-free real estate investment trust spin-off of the land and property management business.

Stock value is important, therefore analysts are important, therefore..

Here’s an introduction to the issue by Dovetail Partners.. but you can search on “TIMOs and REITS forest impacts” and find a variety of scholarly and non-scholarly articles.

Air Tanker Video

I’m away from home now but, I just had to post this VERY interesting video of a military plane making a retardant drop on the Rim Fire. I think the radio conversation is with the lead plane. What an exciting job!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_eGiGG1B-Q

There are also several other videos of this plane on You Tube.

On a side note, I was still able to see the column over 100 miles away, from the city of Pleasanton, on Interstate 680. The smoke at my house this morning was so thick there was only 1/4 mile visibility, and the fire is about 40 miles away. The old burn perimeters haven’t even slowed down the fire, re-burning in at least 4 older burns. It’s looking REAL bad, with just 2% containment of a 105,000 acre fire.

Rim Fire

Lolo Creek Complex: Rewind the clock, what would you have done?

Google Earth image showing a pre-fire portion of the landscape now burning as part of the Lolo Creek Complex, currently the nation's number 1 priority fire.  For orientation purposes, the picture icon on the middle-bottom of the image is "Fort Fizzle" (a temporary military post erected in July 1877 by the U.S. Government to intercept the Nez Perce Indians [including women and children] in their flight from Idaho across the Lolo Pass into the Bitterroot Valley....and eventually to the Big Hole, Yellowstone and then all the way up to Canada).    The road at the bottom of the image is US Hwy 12 and you'll notice a fair number of homes and neighborhoods scattered along the highway.  The two other pictures in this post (below) were taken near Hwy 12 and are looking to the north on the slopes above Fort Fizzle.   According to a property ownership search on the official State of Montana site, nearly all of the land in this image north and above the highway is owned by Plum Creek Timber Company, although 3/4 of a section is owned by "YT Timber" out of Townsend, MT (likely connected to RY Timber in Townsend) and nearly 1/2 a section is owned by "BFP Partnership" from Missoula (which appears to be a development company).   If we could turn back the clock to pre-Lolo Creek Complex what specific land management activities would you recommend in this landscape in terms of restoring the forest, addressing "fuels" or protecting the homes and neighborhoods from the inevitability of wildfire?
Google Earth image showing a pre-fire portion of the landscape now burning as part of the Lolo Creek Complex, currently the nation’s number 1 priority fire. For orientation purposes, the picture icon on the middle-bottom of the image is “Fort Fizzle” (a temporary military post erected in July 1877 by the U.S. Government to intercept the Nez Perce Indians [including women and children] in their flight from Idaho across the Lolo Pass into the Bitterroot Valley….and eventually to the Big Hole, Yellowstone and then all the way up to Canada). The road at the bottom of the image is US Hwy 12 and you’ll notice a fair number of homes and neighborhoods scattered along the highway. The two other pictures in this post (below) were taken near Hwy 12 and are looking to the north on the slopes above Fort Fizzle. According to a property ownership search on the official State of Montana site, nearly all of the land in this image north and above the highway is owned by Plum Creek Timber Company, although 3/4 of a section is owned by “YT Timber” out of Townsend, MT (likely connected to RY Timber in Townsend) and nearly 1/2 a section is owned by “BFP Partnership” from Missoula (which appears to be a development company). If we could turn back the clock to pre-Lolo Creek Complex what specific land management activities would you recommend in this landscape in terms of restoring the forest, addressing “fuels” or protecting the homes and neighborhoods from the inevitability of wildfire?

It’s a smokey, rainy morning here in Missoula. After over three weeks without a computer (well, if you don’t count borrowing the wife’s computer at 5 minute intervals) due to a fairly significant hard-drive crash I’m back in the game, which I’m sure will be of great joy to some people.

Before the hard-drive crash I couldn’t even have dreamed of running something like ‘google earth’ on my computer. But my tech guy has this computer running better than new, so I spent some time on ‘google earth’ this morning. Really, it was Derek W who put the idea in my head, as a comment from him elsewhere on the blog mentioned that the area burned by the West Mullan fire near Superior, MT was now ‘refreshed’ on ‘google earth.’

So at the top of this post is an image of the landscape that’s now burning as part of the Lolo Creek Complex wildfire. I put quite a bit of information in the caption above, including the fact that Plum Creek Timber Company owns almost all the land in the image, so I won’t repeat it here, except to again ask an honest question:

If we could turn back the clock to pre-Lolo Creek Complex what specific land management activities would you recommend in this landscape in terms of restoring the forest, addressing any “fuels” concerns and/or protecting the homes and neighborhoods from the inevitability of wildfire?

Like I said, this is an honest question, especially in the context of all the debates and discussions we’ve had on this blog about the need to “do something” regarding forest restoration or dealing with “fuels” or protecting homes and communities from wildfire.

To date, according to the official Inciwb report on the fire, 9504 acres have burned. Of that 83% is private land, the vast majority of which is owned by Plum Creek Timber Company. There are currently 652 firefighting personnel on the fire and, according to the Missoulian, some of the firefighting crews are being flown in from as far away as Virgina and Michigan. Additional resources include 9 helicopters, 31 engines, 14 dozers and 9 water tenders.

Photo and text from Inciweb.
Photo and text from Inciweb.

Missoulian Fort Fizzle

USFS To Take Back SRS Funds

You’ll probably see this in tomorrow’s papers — especially here in Oregon, which stands to lose $4 million.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ap-newsbreak-forest-service-taking-back-federal-funds-governor-refused-to-return/2013/08/22/9274ef6c-0b66-11e3-89fe-abb4a5067014_story.html

Forest Service taking back federal funds from 22 states

By Associated Press, Updated: Thursday, August 22, 2:42 PM

JUNEAU, Alaska — The U.S. Forest Service plans to take a portion of the timber payments it has promised or paid out to 22 states, citing federal budget cuts.

Collection letters from Forest Service Chief Thomas Tidwell went out to governors around the country Monday, saying money would be taken from funds used for habitat improvement and other national forest-related projects that put people to work under the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act.

Oregon stands to lose the most in the move, with nearly $4 million in reductions. That would leave the state with about $3.4 million under that program.

California would lose nearly $2.2 million, leaving it with about $1 million for the program. Idaho is set to lose $1.7 million, Montana nearly $1.3 million and Alaska, about $930,000 — nearly half the total allotment it had been expecting.

Earlier this year, Tidwell sent letters to 41 states, asking for the return of $17.9 million in timber payments used to pay for schools, roads, search and rescue operations in rural counties and conservation projects.

“We regret having to take this action, but we have no alternative under sequestration,” Tidwell said in his letter to Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell, dated March 19.

Alaska was given the option of having about $826,000 the state had received or expected under the act reduced from its so-called “Title II funds,” for habitat improvement and other projects, or getting a bill for the money that had already been paid out under other sections of the act. Parnell refused, saying there was no basis in law for the request.

It wasn’t immediately clear why the agency was taking a greater share of funds from Alaska now.

Parnell spokeswoman Sharon Leighow said by email that the state will be exploring all options to address the agency’s actions, “as an individual state and in concert with other states.”

The Western Governors’ Association, in a letter to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in May, said the budget act that triggered the automatic federal budget cuts, known as sequestration, does not include language authorizing “retroactive application of the spending reductions or limitations. Nor does it contain language requiring reimbursement of funds that were already distributed in order to satisfy spending limitations.”

The Forest Service falls under the Department of Agriculture.

The Associated Press reported Wednesday that the Forest Service was diverting $600 million from other areas to put toward wildland firefighting efforts.

Agency spokesman Larry Chambers said the Forest Service had been dealing with the issue of collections under the Secure Rural Schools act since March, “well before any decision was made regarding transfer of fire funds.”

___

At $5 Million, This is a Deal: Jumpstarting the Restoration of Big Tujunga Canyon by Char Miller

station

Char sent this as a comment on another thread, so I thought I would repost. Kudos to NFF; it is good to hear positive stories about people working together.
Here’s a video.
Excerpt below..

The life-giving watershed is in trouble, however, in part as a consequence of the 2009 Station Fire. Ignited by an arsonist late that August, it blew up into the largest conflagration in the recorded history of Los Angeles. Torching approximately 250 square miles during its two-month-long fiery run, it burned through chaparral shrubland, oak woodlands, and up-elevation mixed pine forests.

Particularly hard hit were riparian and terrestrial ecosystems within the upper reaches of the Los Angeles River, including those in Big Tujunga Canyon. Depending on the location within the 97,000-acre canyon, the Station Fire charred upwards of 95% of the subwatershed’s vegetation.

As every Angeleno knows, or should understand, wildland fire comes with a one-two punch: after flames scorch the earth during the now-extended spring-to-fall fire season, the unstable soil can wash away in a hurry if lashed by winter storms.

That pattern was manifest during the colder, rainy months of late 2009, early 2010. According to the NFF, the post-storm sediment discharge from Big Tujunga Canyon alone “proved to be three to four times higher than normal, and annual sediment yield increased to levels 15-25 times higher than normal during the first year post-fire.”

Those super-heavy debris-and-rock flows, with the battering force of concrete slurry, gouged out creek- and riverbeds, rampaged through sensitive habitat, and damaged regional water quality, jeopardizing the life chances of the Santa Ana speckled dace, Arroyo chub, Santa Ana sucker, and the western pond turtle.

Some of these harms will be repaired through a slow process of natural regeneration, as has occurred over the millennia. Yet so dependent is Los Angeles on this canyon for water, so vital are its recreational offerings — more than one million visitors annually walk its trails, camp, fish, or simply rest beneath the shade of a spreading oak — and so invaluable is the biodiversity that it sustains, that the NFF, the Forest Service, and a host of local partners have agreed to raise $5 million to accelerate the restoration of Big Tujunga.

Lolo Creek Complex: Majority of acres burned owned by Plum Creek Timber Co

To date, the vast majority of the land burned in the Lolo Creek Complex fire has been heavily logged, roaded and weeded sections owned and managed by Plum Creek Timber Company
To date, the vast majority of the land burned in the Lolo Creek Complex fire has been heavily logged, roaded and weeded sections owned and managed by Plum Creek Timber Company

On Wednesday, the Lolo Creek Complex fire was named the nation’s Number 1 firefighting priority. Over the past few days the fire has made a number of good runs due to winds approaching 50 miles per hour and humidities in the teens. This has all been reported in the media.

What hasn’t been reported in the media at all is the fact that the majority of the acres burned to date as part of the Lolo Creek Complex fire have burned on lands owned and managed by Plum Creek Timber Company. Much of that Plum Creek Timber Company land has been heavily logged, roaded and infested with noxious weeds.

According to the official Inciweb report on the Lolo Creek Complex fire, to date the fire has burned 1,455 acres of the Lolo National Forest and 7,143 acres of private land. For what it’s worth, much of the Lolo National Forest land burned in this fire to date could also be characterized as heavily logged, roaded and infested with noxious weeds.

What Inciweb doesn’t tell us, or show, is that the vast majority of that private land burned to date in the fire is owned and managed by Plum Creek Timber Company.

To verify this fact I used the most current fire perimeter maps on Inciweb and then consulted with a tool called the Montana Cadastral, that I’ll sometimes use during hunting season to confirm land ownership. The Montana Cadastral is a Montana Base Map Service Center, which is a part of the Montana State Library. It provides the most up-to-date information concerning land ownership throughout Montana.

As anyone can clearly see using these tools, section after section of land owned and managed (mis-managed?) by Plum Creek Timber Company has burned as part of the Lolo Creek Complex fire. Currently, over 500 firefighters (and numerous helicopters, bull-dozers, tanker trucks, etc) are battling the fire. What the total cost of this fire to US Taxpayers will be is anyone’s guess. The total cost of all this fire suppression activity that will be paid for by Plum Creek Timber Company is likely a little easier to figure out.

Why the Montana media hasn’t utter one single word about the fact that the majority of land burning in this fire is owned and managed by Plum Creek Timber Company is a real mystery.

P.S. It’s also worth pointing out that another large chunk of the private land burned to date in the Lolo Creek Complex Fire is owned by Illinois-based Potomac Corporation. It’s tough to find info about them on-line, but they appear to be in the cardboard manufacturing business. Calls to their listed 847-259-0546 number have gone unanswered all day.

USFS Fire Lab and Wuerthner: Wind Drives All Large Blazes

Below are excerpts from a couple of articles about the fact that wind and weather conditions drive all large wildfires.

From the Missoulian:

Larry Bradshaw was riding his motorcycle down U.S. Highway 12 on Monday afternoon when he noted the building smoke and stiffening winds.

It was an acute observation for a meteorologist who has worked at the U.S. Forest Service’s Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula since 1992, and still maintains the National Fire Danger Rating System.

Bradshaw tuned into the scanner a few hours later and listened as chaos unfolded ahead of the West Fork II fire, the blaze jumping the highway he’d ridden hours earlier before making a run east down the Lolo Creek Canyon.

“The winds were really strong out of the west,” said Bradshaw. “The inversion broke there earlier than it did in Missoula.”….

“It was the same recipe used on every fire – it’s dry and it’s windy,” said Finney. “We have a canyon situation and a couple fires low in the canyon. The fires have topography working in their favor – the canyon topography helping with the winds.”

The tools used by fire managers to predict the interaction of wind, topography, weather and fuel were developed here by the likes of Bradshaw and Finney and dozens of other scientists working up and down these hallways, part of the government’s Rocky Mountain Research Station….

“The thing we have to realize is that fires are inevitable. They’re impossible to completely exclude from the landscape,” Finney said.

“By trying to do that and doing it so successfully, what we’ve done is saved up the fires for the worst conditions. When you get rid of all the fires under moderate conditions, all you have left are the extreme ones.”

The other article is a column by George Wuerthner, which appear at The Wildlife News:

As large fires have spread across the West in recent decades, we hear increasing demands to reduce fuels—typically through logging. But logging won’t reduce the large fires we are experiencing because fuels do not drive large fires….

The ingredients found in all large blazes include low humidity, high temperatures, and drought. Assuming you have these factors, you can get an ignition if lightning strikes. But even an ignition won’t lead to large fires.

The final ingredient in all large blazes is wind.

Wind’s effect is not linear. In other words, increasing wind speed from 10 mph to 20 mph does not double fire spread, rather it leads to exponential fire growth and increases the burn intensity….

Most large fires have wind speeds of 30-50 mph or more. Wind makes fire fighting difficult since embers are blown miles ahead of the burning fire front. It is also the reason why wind makes fuel reduction projects ineffective.

Wind drives flames through and over fuel treatments. Even clearcuts with little or no fuel will not halt a wind driven fire. The wind driven fire just dances around and over any fuel breaks.

The biggest problem with fuel reductions is that one can’t predict where and when fires will occur. The likelihood of a wildfire will encounter a treated forest in the time scale when fuel reduction are effective is incredibly low.

The vast majority of acreage burning around the West are occurring in higher elevation forests like lodgepole pine and various fir species that naturally burn at infrequent intervals, often hundreds of years apart. As a consequence, a fuel treatment in such forests is a waste of time because the probability of a fire occurring at all in the time when fuel reductions are effectiveness is extremely low.

Even in drier forests like ponderosa pine that burn more frequently the chances that a fire will encounter a fuel treatment while it’s most effective is around 1-2%.

There is a role for fuel reduction projects. The best ones are targeted near communities and other areas of interest. The idea being one cannot predict where a fire may start, but one can predict what you don’t want to burn up in a fire. So focus fuels reductions adjacent to those places.

The most important fuel reduction projects should occur in the communities themselves. Removal of wood piles from adjacent to homes. Clearing pine needles from roofs. Getting rid of flammable building materials like cedar shake roofs.

Reducing the flammability of homes are the kinds of “fuel reductions” that work and should be encouraged. If these fuel reductions were implemented religiously, we wouldn’t have to worry about wildfires in the hinterlands, and we could permit these blazes to do the important ecological work they perform without continual interference from humans, yet feel secure in the knowledge that our communities were safe from wildfires.