Paul Gosar on Forests, Fire and Litigation

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Congressman Paul Gosar, a member of the House Natural Resources Committee, represents Arizona’s First Congressional District.

Column: Forest policy must be proactive, sustainable
By U.S. REP PAUL GOSAR
Special to the Courier

This year, our communities have been victims of the largest forest fires in recorded history. The Wallow fire on the Apache-Sitgreaves Forest grew to over half a million acres, charring in its wake some of the most treasured parts of ponderosa pine country. In total, over a million acres of Forest Service lands, as well as another 600,000 acres of federal, state, and private lands have burned across the American Southwest.

The frequency of fires, and the magnitude of the acreage burned, has exponentially increased since 1990. It is time for us to be honest about the problem as well as the solution. We must re-evaluate our forest management policies at all levels of government because the status quo is detrimental to our safety, Arizona’s ecological health, and the local and national economy.

The current federal system continues to give funding priority to suppression. Although the need to suppress fires is never going to go away, it is clear we must shift priority toward pro-active forest restoration management. It is estimated that long-term restoration and rehabilitation generally amount to two to 30 times the reported suppression costs.

There is roughly 80 million acres of forests across the West that are overgrown and ripe for catastrophic wildfire, according to the Landfire multiagency database. We simply cannot afford to use taxpayer dollars for 100 percent of the large-scale restoration work necessary to prevent unnatural fires like Wallow, Rodeo-Chediski, or Schultz. Empowering private industry is going to be the key to the future of forest management.

The Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4-FRI) is a proposal that will restore 2.5 million acres of ponderosa pine forests on the Apache-Sitgreaves, Coconino, Kaibab, and Tonto national forests and revitalizes the Arizona logging industry. Instead of relying on the Forest Service to pay all of the costs for restoration thinning, 4-FRI recognizes the fiscal reality and puts forth a proposal that calls for the Forest Service to partner with private industry to restore proper forest health.

This first of its kind large-scale treatment will reduce damaging wildfire impacts, as well as provide forest jobs, markets for wood products, and ecological restoration. It has garnered my support, as well as colleagues in the Arizona Congressional Delegation, Gov. Jan Brewer, leaders in the state Legislature, the affected counties and cities, and an unprecedented range of environmental groups and industry partners.

When the federal government partners with local government, stakeholder groups, and private industry, together we can create much needed jobs and a safer environment for our citizens. Landscape-scale, fiscally responsible forest restoration treatments are the only way our state and the country is going to make real progress toward proper forest health.

I am also looking at a wide variety of legislative initiatives that will improve federal law affecting natural resources management. I am reviewing environmental laws in need of reform to make the process more streamlined, efficient and fair. Compliance has become muddled and overly bureaucratic, leading to project-killing delays. The goal is not to dismantle important environmental protections, but to ensure they are working with us, not against us.

I am also looking at reforming the Equal Access to Justice Act, a law that is frequently misused to obstruct important conservation and economic development initiatives. While some lawsuits are important to ensuring our environmental laws are upheld, some groups sue federal agencies excessively, tie up the process for years, and then submit a bill to the taxpayers via EAJA.

I am a cosponsor of HR1996 the Government Litigation Savings Act, which will put a halt to these abuses by reinstating tracking and reporting requirements and instituting reforms that will reduce the taxpayer’s burden to pay for the attorney’s fees. These reforms will return the law to its original intent – to help individuals and small businesses during a once-in-a-lifetime need to battle the federal government in court.

Our forest and natural resources are a way of life in Arizona. I remain saddened by what has happened to my constituents who have been adversely affected by this fire. I think if we look forward and work collaboratively in stewardship, we can address the desperate forest maintenance crisis and other natural resources-related issues facing our state.

Here is the link to HR 1996

National Voter Attitudes Toward America’s Forests

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I ran across this report of a survey done by NASF which I thought was interesting.
Here’s the survey.

Given these factors, seven out of ten voters support maintaining or increasing efforts to protect forests and trees in their state. Among the key specific findings of the poll are the following:
• Voters continue to value the nation’s forests highly, particularly as sources of clean air and water and places for wildlife to live. The survey found most voters are personally familiar with the nation’s forests: two-thirds of voters (67%) say they live within ten miles of a forest or wooded area. Voters also report engaging in various recreational activities that may bring them to forests. These include: viewing wildlife (71% of voters say they do this “frequently” or “occasionally”), hiking on outdoor trails (48%), fishing (43%), overnight camping (38%), hunting (22%), using off-road vehicles (16%), snow-shoeing or cross-country-skiing (15%), and mountain biking (14%).

Taking all of this into account, it should be no surprise that voters value the many benefits forests provide. As shown in Figure 1, 92 percent of voters surveyed believe that helping to keep the air clean is at least a “very” important benefit of forests, including 58 percent who believe it is “extremely” important. A nearly identical 91% of voters assign similar importance to forests’ role in filtering water to keep it clean. Solid majorities of voters found other benefits of forests to be “very important” as well, including providing a place for wildlife to live (86%), providing a source of good-paying jobs (73%), supplying products like wood and paper (73%), providing a place for recreation (71%), and reducing global warming (60%).

Appreciation of the economic benefits of forests has increased sharply in recent years. Most likely due to the economic downturn, voters appear to have a more acute awareness of the good-paying type of jobs provided by forests. Only 47 percent of voters considered this to be an “extremely” or “very” important benefit of forests in a 2007 national survey, a proportion which rose to 73 percent this year. There were also gains in the proportions viewing it as important that forests supply essential products and provide a place for recreation.

• At least three in five voters see major threats to forests from wildfire, development, and insects and diseases. American voters recognize that the nation’s forests face a variety of significant threats. As shown in Figure 2, 73 percent of all voters consider wildfires to be a “major” threat to forests. Three in five voters believe the same about insects and diseases that harm trees (62%) and development (62%).

Three-quarters of voters want to see efforts to protect and manage forests maintained or increased. In total (as shown in Figure 3), 74 percent of voters say they are comfortable with the current level of forest management and protection, including 41 percent who say it needs to be increased.

The figures included are interesting but I couldn’t transfer them to this post.

Fire Bringing Communities Together

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Another Fine Photo by Bob Berwyn

Link here.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – As homes and cities expand closer to forests and wildlands across the American West, increasing wildfire threats have created an unlikely new phenomena – confidence in government.

Recent studies show that people in neighborhoods adjacent to public forest lands can and do trust natural resource managers to a surprising degree, in part because the risks they face are so severe.

Thousands of acres burn every year, threatening homes, lives and property, and in many groups and areas, the phrase “I’m from the government – trust me” is no longer being used as a joke or punch line.

In a survey done in seven states, researchers from Oregon State University and other institutions found that a large majority of people rated agency management of public forest lands as good or excellent.

Additionally, more than 80 percent of those surveyed – and up to 90 percent at some sites – showed support for mechanical thinning or mowing to reduce fire risks. Only such approaches as use of herbicides found lower degrees of support. The findings have been published in the International Journal of Wildland Fire.

“Declining forest health and wildfire are such serious and increasing threats that we are beginning to see partnerships forming among mill owners, logging contractors, residents and environmental groups,” said Bruce Shindler, an OSU professor in the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society. “The stakes are just too high for everyone.”

The studies found that local, personal relationships were what mattered most in coming to agreement on natural resource plans and policies, topics that have often been contentious among various interest groups in the West. Positive interactions between homeowner associations, local leaders and individual land managers make the difference, scientists say. Teachers and retirees, for example, are now organizing programs to create defensible space in their neighborhoods and learning steps that can be taken to protect their homes.

“People may still not trust big business or big government, but they trust Joe, the local Forest Service district ranger,” Shindler said. “In forest communities there’s a growing understanding that threats from wildfire are everyone’s concern. It helps get these groups past that us-versus-them mentality. And this rings true in diverse places we surveyed in Utah, Colorado, Oregon, and Arizona.”

Surveys were done in 2002 and 2008 – with the same individuals over time – analyzing the status and changes in people’s attitudes towards fire and land management policies. The greatest progress was made where local residents had become involved, Shindler said, and worked closely with government and community groups to develop enlightened management approaches that help protect property and improve forest health.

“I was at a judicial hearing a few years ago in Sisters, Ore., where a large crowd of residents spoke in support of local Forest Service policies,” Shindler said. “It was pretty incredible. It’s just not something you see all the time.”

One study of forest communities was recently published. Among its findings:

The average annual area burned in the U.S. has more than doubled from that of the 1990s, and 38 percent of all the nation’s housing units are now located in the wildland-urban interface.
Thousands of homes and structures have burned in massive fires in California, Colorado, Arizona and other areas, despite record federal expenditures on fire suppression.
Residents in forest interface areas generally agree that agency use of prescribed fire and mechanized thinning along with property owners reducing fuels around their homes offer some of the best options to reduce losses.
The USDA Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and state management agencies all enjoyed “full” or “moderate” support by a majority of residents who trusted them to make good decisions about wildfires and fire prevention.
Citizen trust in agency managers is particularly influential in public acceptance of fire management strategies. Dedicating resources that build and maintain citizen trust will be important to long-term success.
“Nearly all participants indicated a good relationship existed between local managers and community members,” the researchers wrote in their report. “Such results may be surprising given the often contentious debate surrounding many forest management decisions in recent years.”

This study was supported by the Joint Fire Science Program of the USDA Forest Service. Other collaborators were from The Ohio State University and Northern Research Station of the USDA Forest Service.

“Fire is probably the easiest issue to build agreement around, because no one wants our homes or forests to burn up,” Shindler said. “However, this also shows the power of building relationships and trust among community members. These approaches may lead the way to resolving other natural resource conflicts.”

Out-of-Date Planning

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Last week the Colville and Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forests released their “proposed actions,” a new step in NFMA planning preceding the draft EIS and proposed forest plan.

This gem from both plans (the plans appear identical — only the maps differ) illustrates that adding more process does not make plans any more timely:

While the U.S. demand for timber remains relatively high and is expected to increase in the future (USDA FS 2000), timber harvests from 1990 to 2002 in Washington have declined by 39 percent (Washington State Department of Natural Resources 2004). United States lumber markets have relied increasingly on foreign imports, such as from Canada, to help offset declining timber harvests in the state. Softwood lumber imports into the Seattle Customs District from 1992 to 2002 have increased by 11 percent (Warren 2004), while inflation adjusted wholesale prices for Douglas-fir 2x4s have dropped by 33 percent (Warren 2004).

Washington DNR has issued no fewer than five state-wide timber harvest reports since the 2004 report cited here. And Deb Warren has published five more annual statistical summaries, up through 2009, since the 2004 version.

Lo and behold, using the more up-to-date statistics shows that softwood lumber imports into the Seattle Customs District have dropped 70% since 2002 — a far different picture from the 11% increase claimed in the already out-of-date plan.

I suspect that these “proposed actions” were actually written several years ago and have been gathering dust on the shelves while the Forest Service tried to sort out its planning process. Rather than up-date these documents, the FS just slid them out the door with nary a glance.

Just one more illustration of how silly it is for the FS to bite off more planning than it can chew.

Coal Mine Methane- Colorado Voices II

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A methane drainage well

There are many compelling public lands issues not related to vegetation treatments. This is a small contribution to increasing public knowledge of some of these.

Remember Ed Quillen in his op-ed Maximum Trashing Utilization, here, described the coal mine methane issue this way…

here has been some progress on the regulatory front. Back in 2008, High Country News carried a story about methane escaping from Western coal mines. Methane is a flammable gas (it and its close chemical relative ethane are the major components of natural gas) that is given off by coal as it decomposes underground.
Since methane is flammable and sometimes explosive, mine safety requires venting it away from the working area.
Logically, this methane should be burned in a productive way. Unburned methane is more than 20 times as potent a greenhouse gas as the carbon dioxide produced by combustion. Plus, there’s the energy from burning it, which could be used to heat homes or generate electricity.
But certain regulatory policies for coal mines on federal land prevented the methane from being put to public use. Essentially, the mining companies had the right to use the coal, but not the methane. For safety reasons, they have to vent it — but they couldn’t put it to work.
That’s changed recently, at least on a case-by-case basis. The Interior Department now allows the capture and sale of methane. But is it economical to do so when the methane is diffuse and the nearest pipeline might lie miles away?
“We’ve tried to look at it every way in the world. If it were economic to do, we would already be doing it. It would add to our income.” That’s what James Cooper, president of Oxbow Mining, which operates the Elk Creek Mine in western Colorado, told a Grand Junction business journal.

Cap-and-trade legislation might change the economics by paying the coal company to capture methane. It’s unlikely to be enacted in the current political climate, but again, if some subsidies are required to get MTU, there are certainly worse ways to spend public money.

Here’s Ted Zukoski from Earthjustice on flowers, coal and methane (“Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment.”).

With hot summers hitting the high country in the Rockies hard, one would wish the agencies that manage many of the mountain meadows – the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management – would be doing something about climate change.
To the contrary. BLM recently proudly approved a new coal mine expansion on Colorado’s West Slope, enabling the Elk Creek Mine to vent untreated more than 5-million-cubic-feet of methane pollution into the atmosphere every day. BLM refused to even take a hard look at alternatives to require the mine to capture the methane or reduce its climate change impact. This unnecessary methane pollution will have the warming impact of 1 million tons of carbon dioxide over a year – about the same as a small coal-fired power-plant.

Ted also makes some comments on Colorado roadless and coal, which I’ll discuss in a later post.

In my view, BLM did take a pretty good look, check it out for yourself here. But ultimately more pages of analysis are not going to change the fact that it’s not economic to do it, and that’s what the regulations are based on. The BLM regulations were designed for methane to be a gas that has economic value. If, instead, methane from coal mines were regulated as a pollutant, mines could simply be required to capture it. We don’t need cap and trade or any fancy mechanism to do this. It could be as simple as legislation to require capture of methane from coal mines on federal land.

But one thing I know is that many people could write paragraphs pages or books on the environmental impacts; virtual roomfuls of attorneys could have lengthy and expensive conversations (and have had) but that won’t solve the regulatory problem. In my opinion, joint efforts toward a surgical piece of legislation would probably be much more productive for the environment than more analysis and roomfuls of folks jawing or writing.

Ed Quillen brought up subsidies, I suggested legislation. A group of environmental lawyers are litigating (predictably). Would there be less methane in the air today if all had worked together on identifying and pushing one policy solution?

Spotted Owl Recovery Plan- Oregonian Article

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Spotted owl recovery plan recommends preserving old forests and doing away with new invaders

Eric Mortenson, The Oregonian Here’s the link.

Again, it’s not really clear to me why “Controlled removal of barred owls to determine if spotted owls reclaim territory would be a worthwhile experiment, he (I think Forsman?) but isn’t financially or logistically sustainable.” killing creatures to find out whether a policy works- a policy you could never implement anyway, is the right thing to do. Note whatever kind of question this is, it is not a “science” question.

One of the commentors to the Oregonian piece wrote that there is a difference between “not doing something” (e.g., cutting trees), doing something (growing more habitat), and doing something that involves direct killing of other species. I am more focused on killing to do something that can’t work to save the species, but there is an ethical issue even if killing one species of owl would be effective in saving another species.

A long-anticipated recovery plan for the northern spotted owl, due by Friday, recommends preserving the best of its favored old-forest habitat across federal, state and private property lines and killing barred owls that compete with it for territory.

Those actions can steer spotted owls back from the brink of extinction, the plan says, but it could take 30 years and cost $147 million.

Whether conserving habitat and reducing competitors will save the spotted owl, however, is an unanswerable question.

“We do our best and hope for the best,” says Eric Forsman, a U.S. Forest Service wildlife biologist considered among the nation’s leading experts on spotted owls. “There’s a lot we don’t have control over.”

The owl was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1990, touching off the Northwest “timber wars” and clamping down on federal forest harvests. The first recovery plan surfaced in 1992, but disappeared in a flurry of lawsuits and policy rhetoric that has marked the issue ever since.

The new plan is a revision of a 2008 document so marred by political interference that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which wrote it, agreed it was scientifically indefensible and asked a federal judge to send it back.

The revised version has been stalled since 2010 by threats of lawsuits. It applies across the spotted owl’s range in Oregon, Washington and Northern California; fish and wildlife’s Portland office coordinated the work. The plan does not regulate logging or habitat practices, but agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management must consult the plan as they manage forests.

Initial reaction to the plan is mixed.

Forsman and fellow owl scientist Bob Anthony, a retired fish and wildlife professor at Oregon State University, say success is uncertain because of the barred owl, which migrated from the east and was first documented in the Northwest in the 1970s. It’s larger, more aggressive, favors the same habitat and is a less picky eater than the spotted owl.

“Given that the barred owl is part of the equation,” Forsman said, “it’s no longer clear that protecting habitat is going to do the job.”

Controlled removal of barred owls to determine if spotted owls reclaim territory would be a worthwhile experiment, he said, but isn’t financially or logistically sustainable.

“The best we can do is manage a considerable amount of habitat for spotted owls and let the chips fall where they may,” he said. “It’s way too early to give up at this point and say there’s nothing we can do for spotted owls.”

Anthony said competition between owls makes it crucial to conserve as much suitable habitat as possible. “The key issue is how much habitat can be preserved, and what will be socially and politically acceptable to the residents of the Pacific Northwest,” he said.

Others believe the recovery plan is a good step.

“A really excellent effort to incorporate the best science available,” said Paula Swedeen, director of ecosystem service programs for the Pacific Forest Trust, which works with forest owners on a variety of sustainability projects. “This plan says there is high-quality habitat everywhere that needs to be preserved to give the owl the best chance possible.”

Dominick DellaSala, president and chief scientist of the Geos Institute in Ashland, welcomed the plan’s increased emphasis on owl protection on private and state forests, which he said have become a “black hole” for the owl.

“Because of heavy cutting, it was putting more protection onus on federal land,” he said. “They (non-federal lands) need to do their part,” he said.

But he said a better solution is taking old forests “off the chopping block” completely He said the timber industry in Washington and Northern California have “moved on” from dependence on old-growth logs harvested on federal land, but Oregon lags behind.

“Why pick at this scab of logging the old forest?” he asked. Thinning older forests would provide logs needed by mills, he said.

A spokesman for the Oregon Forest Industries Council said key pieces of the plan are incomplete. “We don’t know what’s in it, it’s very vague,” said Ray Wilkeson. “It’s like an empty shell.”

He said it’s unclear how federal officials will use computer modeling to determine the owl’s habitat requirements. A modeling tool developed for the recovery plan combines information from 4,000 spotted owl sites and 20 years of demographic data to depict where owls nest and roost now and where they are likely to do so in the future. The model allows researchers to plug in variables such as the presence of barred owls and the impact of climate change.

Guest Post from Foto

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Thanks to Foto for this post and these photos.

Two years after the Park Service burned up 16,000 acres (trying to burn only 95 acres during near-record heat) of Yosemite National Park and spending $17,000,000, this is what has grown back. What used to be majestic old growth pines that has survived countless pre-historic fires, is now lupines and deerbrush, with no conifers and few oaks. These pictures shows that deerbrush will dominate the next several decades, if not an entire century. There simply is no seed source for pines to get re-established. The Park Service fire folks still arrogantly cling to the idea that prescribed fires during the heat of the summer is the way to go.

The Forest Service fire folks seem to also think they can “re-introduce” fire into fuels-choked forests without pre-treating fuels with thinning and selective logging. The Yosemite picture shows the future of our ponderosa pine forests, if we exclude commercial fuels projects. How long can we continue to embrace whatever grows back from catastrophic wildfires?


Note from Sharon- I think most people agree that trees sequester more carbon that shrubs.. therefore conceivably the sooner you start ’em growing again, the better for the environment. Just another example of how climate change forces us to question that concept “”natural” is best.”

Where Have All the Seedlings Gone? Gone to Crown Fires, Every One

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Check this out from the Summit County Citizens Voice here..

Perhaps we’re back to tree planting, just about 30 years after the last surge (the circle of life). We could start those nurseries running, get the tree-coolers back online.. and go for it…

I was looking for good tree quotes for a retirement party and found this today..

Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets. To plant a pine, one need only own a shovel.

Aldo Leopold. But I digress…

SUMMIT COUNTY — Wildfires that have burned across almost 750,000 acres in Arizona are doing more than turning forests into charred stumps.

Researchers with Northern Arizona University say the fires, burning in unnaturally dense stands of ponderosa pine, are turning the forests from carbon sinks into net carbon producers — and, the fires have burned so hot that they aren’t finding many signs of regeneration.

Mike Stoddard, a forest ecologist with NAU’s Ecological Restoration Institute, has been looking for a sign, any sign, of ponderosa pine seedlings 15 years after the 1996 Hochderffer Fire, a crown fire that burned hot through 16,000 acres west of the San Francisco Peaks, near Flagstaff.

“These large fires are devastating our forests,” Stoddard said. “We’re concerned that ponderosa pine is not regenerating after these wildfire events.”

Crown fires burn into the canopies and treetops or crowns of the trees — massive, intense crown fires, such as the Wallow Fire in eastern Arizona, are not natural in the ponderosa pine forest. Naturally occurring ponderosa pine fires burn along the ground, or base, of the trees.

Scientists also are concerned about the invisible impacts of crown fires. The fires are contributing to global warming by upsetting the carbon balance while they are burning, and for years afterward, according to the NAU researchers.

In a study conducted from 2001 to 2007, forest ecologist Matthew Hurteau with NAU’s School of Earth Sciences and Environmental Sustainability found that the nation’s wildfire emissions were the equivalent of 4 percent to 6 percent of all emissions from burning coal, oil and natural gas. The percentage of lingering emissions is even greater.

“We’re looking to forests to take in carbon, thereby lowering the greenhouse gases. But at a site like the Hochderffer Fire, the grassy vegetation that’s growing in is not making up for the amount of carbon that’s being released from the dead trees,” he said.

Across Arizona Highway 180, the story is much the same. NAU forestry professor Tom Kolb is calculating the amount of carbon dioxide moving between the land and the air at the site of the Horseshoe Fire. This 8,000-acre crown fire also burned in 1996.

“The fire has had a long-term legacy effect on the capacity of this site to take in and store carbon dioxide,” Kolb said. “This site has gone from being a carbon sink, where carbon was being stored, to a carbon source, where carbon is being released.”

With carbon making up about half the dry weight of a tree, researchers say overstocked ponderosa pine thickets can store a lot of carbon, at least for a while.

“Storing carbon in lots of little trees in a dense forest is like investing your retirement funds in junk bonds. It’s risky,” Hurteau said. “Our research has shown that if we reduce the amount of trees per acre and return ground fire to the system to manage those surface fuels, the carbon left in the live trees is much more stable because it’s less vulnerable to crown fire.”

Carbon flux research south of Flagstaff where excess small diameter ponderosas have been removed shows the remaining trees have become more vigorous.

“They photosynthesize at a much greater rate than the trees in the un-thinned situation,” Kolb said. “The thinned forest has an equal to or slighter greater rate of carbon sequestration than an un-thinned forest.”

Wild Earth Guardians on Zone of Agreement

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Thanks to Matthew Koehler for this op-ed from the ABQ Journal.

Lack of Logging Isn’t To Blame in Massive Forest Fires
By Bryan Bird / Wild Places Program Director, WildEarth Guardians on Fri, Jun 24, 2011

As the country floods and burns, climate change is upon us. Smoke from the Wallow Fire in Arizona still lingers, and the predictable but misplaced finger-pointing has begun.

As the grandstanding goes on, however, innovative, collaborative efforts are quietly reshaping the federal forest policies that got us here in the first place and charting a sustainable future for the National Forest System.

Contrary to public perception, there have been few lawsuits challenging sensible fuel reduction on the national forests in the last decade. The GAO concluded in 2010 that about 2 percent of all hazardous fuel reduction decisions by the Forest Service nationwide were litigated. The handful challenged were because of unwarranted impacts to water, wildlife and other valuable resources the national forests generate for Americans.

Ignored in the national discourse: the U.S. Forest Service, loggers, the wood utilization industry and conservationists have been spending valuable time and resources in the woods finding a zone of agreement.

We need to go back more than a couple of decades to understand how the current wildfire situation arose.

During the last hundred years or so the lower elevation, dry pine forests of the west were severely logged over, leaving a nearly uniform mass of small trees. Domestic livestock grazing, which suppresses the grasses that normally carry low intensity fire fostered the proliferation of pine seedlings and aggravated conditions. On top of it all, humans became extremely effective at suppressing most wildfires, leaving the overgrowth unchecked.

Cutting itself out of business, the lumber industry is mostly gone and the market for lumber is at record low. Supposing we threw aside all environmental concerns and opened our public forestlands to logging on a historic scale, as some have suggested, there would be no use for the logs. In a free market system there has to be demand or no amount of deregulation is going to make a difference.

Throw in climate change and drought and you have all the ingredients for the Wallow Fire and others burning in the Southwest. The science is clear; big fire years track drought cycles, and climate change is exacerbating those conditions.

The fires are predictable, but can we do anything to mitigate their effect? Yes, we can.

Starting in 2001 with Sen. Jeff Bingaman’s Collaborative Forest Restoration Program in New Mexico, now expanded nationally, former adversaries began developing forest restoration projects that are environmentally sound and effective. In New Mexico alone, more than 30,000 acres have been treated and about 600 jobs created through the program.

More important, perhaps, are the program’s less quantifiable results, as an atmosphere of litigation and acrimony surrounding resources has given way to a spirit of cooperation.

Logging in the historic sense will leave the forests more vulnerable, not less. On federal, public forests, cost-effective fuel reduction is accomplished with other tools including: wildland fire use, prescribed fire, thinning and removal of livestock grazing pressure.

The Forest Service treated hazardous fuels on one and a half million acres with thinning or burning in 2010; many of these acres are strategically located around communities and proved critical in defending Arizona towns in the latest blaze.

Senators John Kyle of Arizona and Ron Wyden of Oregon told a senate committee recently that the Forest Service needs to pick up the pace of hazardous fuel treatments on the national forests. While that is true and the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program requires full funding, we live in time of shrinking budgets and the acute effects of climate change. Strategic use of resources will be critical.

In addition to forest fuel treatments, it is time to start taking personal responsibility, demanding appropriate county zoning and placing the enormous costs of fire fighting on the parties that encourage development in fire-prone forests.

That is the real work of preparing for wildfire in a climate-changed world.