Another airtanker crash on Sunday. Here’s how Inciweb, the government’s fire information portal, describes what happened:
An incident within an incident occurred during yesterday’s operational period involving a MAFFs military aircraft. Coordination of rescue with local emergency resources, Forest and military was completed.
Translated: Another airtanker crashed killing four crewmen while dropping retardant on a fire in ponderosa pine forest and grass openings that threatens no homes or communities.
As media stories come out about the final rule, the concept of Colorado Roadless increasing natural gas development in Colorado may well be stated again. As in Bob Berwyn’s piece here.
The state version of the rule leaves the door open for more coal mining, as well as natural gas development, both seen as critical to the state’s economy. Since the original national rule was first published in 2001, new energy leases have been issued on identified roadless areas, which is another irritation to conservation groups.
Here’s what happened. When the 2001 Rule was not in effect due to being enjoined by one court or another, leases went forward (as people can’t legally follow rules that are thought to be illegal by the courts; makes sense, no?). Now, there were different stages of time with different requirements in place. Nevertheless, lawyers I’ve spoken with who are familiar with this issue say that the the legality depends on the facts of each lease. So they were either issued legally or they weren’t. The key point is that whether it’s the Colorado Rule or the 2001 Rule, if they are legitimately issued allowing roads, they are; if they weren’t they weren’t. Now some people don’t like this and tried to use the “gap lease” issue to a) torpedo an independent Colorado Rule (in my view due to ideological attachment to the 2001) or b) to get the USG to buy back the leases (good investment in this economic climate? you decide) or c) simply to hold it out as a negotiating tool to get other concessions. I wonder if some groups selected this issue because it is so complex that they think people are more readily hornswoggled?
I think the correct thing is that both 2001 and Colorado don’t allow roads for new leases, and upper tier requires no surface occupancy (no roads, no wellpads). Which is actually more restrictive than 2001.
Anyway, for the curious, more on these leases here on this blog. I remember a discussion with Ted Zukoski of Earthjustice somewhere (High Country News? This blog? But can’t find it this morning..).
Here’s a link to a blog post I wrote in High Country News on roadless being possibly too complicated for newspapers and a dialogue with Pete Kolbenschlag on some related topics.
The efforts of thousands of folks, three state and two federal administrations, and seven glorious years (six or seven comment periods? I lost track a while back) have come to an end. Well, except for litigation, which seems like the dessert to every policy meal worth eating, especially ones where ideology figures in.. as it does in all things Roadless. If fireworks were allowed in Colorado right now, I’d be shooting them!
Here’s the prepublication copy at the Federal Register. It says it will be published tomorrow.
Here’s a story from KOAA, and here’s the TRCP press release.
DENVER (AP) – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has finalized a rule governing how 4.2 million acres of national forest roadless areas in Colorado will be managed.
Colorado started developing a state-specific rule following legal challenges of a 2001 national roadless rule, which the state of Wyoming and others have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review.
The Colorado rule is similar to the national policy, but Vilsack said Monday it provides flexibility to allow for thinning of forests to lessen threats of catastrophic wildfires, ski resort expansion and coal mining in the North Fork area. It includes stronger protections for 1.2 million acres of the 4.2 million acres of roadless national forests in Colorado.
The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership says it’s pleased the final rule includes changes including more protection for cutthroat trout.
Secretary Tom Vilsack has finalized a rule governing how 4.2 million acres of national forest roadless areas in Colorado will be managed.
Colorado started developing a state-specific rule following legal challenges of a 2001 national roadless rule, which the state of Wyoming and others have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review.
The Colorado rule is similar to the national policy, but Vilsack said Monday it provides flexibility to allow for thinning of forests to lessen threats of catastrophic wildfires, ski resort expansion and coal mining in the North Fork area. It includes stronger protections for 1.2 million acres of the 4.2 million acres of roadless national forests in Colorado.
The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership says it’s pleased the final rule includes changes including more protection for cutthroat trout.
Using data from tree ring studies, scientists have reconstructed a history of fires in the Southwest. The wildfires of the past were frequent and massive, but they stayed close to the ground and mainly helped prevent overcrowding. Take 1748. “Every mountain range we studied in the region was burning that year,” Dr. Allen said. “But those were surface fires, not destroying the forest but just keeping an open setting.” Cyclical wildfires were the norm.
But beginning in 1900, when railroads enabled the spread of livestock, cattle devoured the grassy surface fuels and the fire cycle stopped. A decade later, a national policy of forest fire suppression formalized this new normal. Over the next century, forest density went from 80 trees per acre to more than 1,000.
Then in 1996, the climate emerged from a wet cycle into a dry one — part of a natural cycle for this region. Winters became drier. And “we immediately began seeing major fires,” Dr. Allen said.
With so many trees crammed into the forest, fires climbed straight to the canopy instead of remaining on the ground.
“These forests did not evolve with this type of fire,” said Dr. Allen. “Fire was a big deal in New Mexico, but it was a different kind of fire.” The result, he said, is that the species that now live there — ponderosa pines, piñon, juniper — cannot regenerate, and new species are moving in to take their place.
“Ecosystems are already resetting themselves in ways big and small,” Dr. Allen said. The challenge for managing these ecosystems, he said, is to try to help them adapt.
Seeking to preserve existing systems is futile, he said.
Note from Sharon: While I can’t disagree with his conclusions in the last two sentences (although I don’t believe in the concepts of “ecosystems “resetting” themselves”) (note that Dan Botkin said much the same thing in Discordant Harmonies), I wonder about a couple of things.
First, is that getting trees back in dry climates has always been a bit of a stochastic process; seed source, ground conditions, wetness of years of establishment. Humans can help this out by planting. Could we? Should we? It doesn’t come up in this piece and I wonder if it’s because that’s not the expertise of the interviewed person. A
Second, as did some of the commenters I’m not sure of this version of history. Cattle used to be driven to the railroads which implies that they did not require railroads to spread.
I think we can all say that making this part of my old stomping grounds into a “Land Trust” is a very good thing. As a kid, I rode my bicycle all around Napa County, with the west side being my favorite. Way up at the end of Napa’s Redwood Road is a large parcel of land dominated by second growth redwoods and an isolated waterfall complex. They like to guide people during a visitor’s first hike, and I asked if they were worried about their fuels problem. They didn’t seem to care, willing to take whatever future wildfire will give, Man-caused or not. While the east side of the Napa Valley is notorious for intense brush fires, the wetter west side has a lot more fuels. Where fire-return intervals are long, increased impacts, due to higher fuels buildups, are not easily apparent. I think we’ll see that we underestimated fire intensities in unmanaged forests.
This kind of preservation is not a fight against resource extraction. It is more about banning human development, like mansions, retreats and recovery centers (smirks).
Smoky Denver metro area from White Ranch Open Space July 1, 2012
Let me tell you about some of my favorite things this fire season. Not raindrops on roses, although raindrops in general would be good.
First, is people who send fire photos, so we don’t have to worry about copyright or lack photos.
Second, is people who resist the temptation to frame today’s issues as partisan or reflecting battles from the past. The question is what do we need to do today and going forward.
There were a couple of interesting fire stories again in the Denver Post. I think it’s important from the perspective that the Denver Post is thought to be one of the major interior west media outlets.
Here’s one about wildland fire in urban areas, below is an excerpt:
As a psychologist at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Benight has studied disasters since Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and examined evacuees and their psychological adjustments during the massive Hayman fire, which charred nearly 140,000 acres and claimed 133 homes nearly 100 miles from Denver in 2002.
Now, he’s witnessing the psychological impact of a different sort of wildfire — one that has wreaked devastation on the fringe of an urban setting.
“In general, we often live in a sort of lulled state,” Benight said. “The potential threat that’s there when these things push into our world is serious, and it’s real. In our setting, wildfires have been a potential, but they haven’t directly affected a metropolitan area more recently.
“This is a teachable moment.”
The hard lessons will only expand, experts say, largely because of a combination of ongoing growth in wildland areas and climate concerns that provide optimal burn weather.
Kristen Moeller believes in personal responsibility when it comes to living in wildlands such as the area where she and her husband bought their dream house southeast of Conifer in 2003.
They lost it, and most of their possessions, in the Lower North Fork fire in March. And now, even as she navigates the tricky terrain of emotional and financial recovery, she watches with interest and empathy as the hard reality of wildfires sweeps into the urban corridor with the Waldo Canyon blaze.
“It came down the hill — we’re all at risk,” said Moeller, who has reached out to current wildfire victims through her blog Walking Through Fire. “Us mountain people choose to live there. We’re a different breed, and the fires typically stay up with us (in the mountains), but not now. It’s shaking people up.”
Public policies regarding population growth and forest management are adding to the wildfire problem:
• It costs millions to protect homes in the red zone from wildfires, but homeowners don’t foot that bill exclusively. All taxpayers do. That creates a perverse incentive to build there despite risks.
• A continued population boom in the red zones is pushing homebuilders to higher elevations, where forest conditions increase the chances of more intense fires.
• Rocky Mountain forests have become overgrown and in many cases unhealthy. State and federal forest- management policies call for cutting down excess trees and doing prescribed burns. But the population boom puts pressure on these strategies — people often don’t want to see trees cut or landscapes burned near their homes. That leaves the forests full of highly flammable fuel, waiting for the next fire.
Preventive measures
Researchers at the Fort Collins Laboratory of the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station reviewed satellite images of three forests with heavy damage from pine beetles that had been mechanically thinned. They found around 150,000 “jack piles” — stacks of dry timber from forest-thinning efforts waiting to be burned.
“There’s little time to treat all those,” says Chuck Rhoades, research biogeochemist at the Fort Collins Laboratory. “A lot of them are probably not going to get burned.”
At least not until a wildfire reaches them.
“If those things burn hot, you’ve created a new fire hazard,” Rhoades says. “You may have just moved the problem around.”
In the wake of the Hayman fire, federal and state foresters increased the area of the forest treated with mechanical-thinning and prescribed-burning projects but say they have hardly scratched the surface of millions of acres of Rocky Mountain forests that need restoration. In the meantime, the increasing population in the woods requires greater protection from wildfires.
In 2006, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of Inspector General estimated that, between 1998 and 2005, forest managers let burn only 2 percent of wildfires that started naturally. The rest were fought, largely to protect homes in high-risk fire areas — areas the federal government calls Wildland Urban Interface, or WUI. But snuffing natural fires allows biomass buildup that can fuel more catastrophic fires.
The fact that the bill for protecting private homes is borne by taxpayers at large “removes the incentives for landowners moving into the WUI to take responsibility for their own protection and ensure homes are constructed and landscaped in ways that reduce wildfire risks,” the Office of Inspector General reported.
Note from Sharon: I thought the recession and recent fires had decreased prices in the red zone. When I drive around certain parts I see lots of homes for sale that have been for sale for years. I wonder where this information comes from about moving up into higher elevations?
Also, it is interesting that they interviewed a research biogeochemist about the probability of piles getting burned. I guess it’s the Rolodex question again.
