Wildfire Mitigation

The Newsletter of Forest Service Employees For Environmental Ethics Summer 2021 Wildfire Mitigation Inside 30X30 / HAALAND MAKES HISTORY / OAK FLAT NEWS / EXCESSIVE POST-FIRE LOGGING / CONSERVATION LEGISLATION Close the Trail — It's too Dangerous ollowing last year’s fires, the U.S. Forest finds its origins in a very rational bureaucratic Service has closed large swathes of incentive. The Forest Service makes money F our National Forests to public entry. Its when it cuts trees, whether dead or alive. During justification? “Public safety.” According to the the logging boom years, before citizen groups Forest Service, burned forests are too dangerous enforced environmental laws, the Forest Service to visit. made most of its money cutting live trees. When So, how dangerous are a forest’s trees, that revenue stream dried up, the Forest Service compared to other backcountry risks? Not shifted gears to cutting dead trees. Congress very. Falling down while hiking, especially on incentivized dead tree cutting by passing a law mountains, is the leading cause of backcountry that lets the Forest Service keep for itself all of the deaths, accounting for about 40 percent of money earned from selling these trees — none fatalities. Avalanches (15%), drowning (10%), heart gets returned to the U.S. Treasury. attack (10%), and getting lost (6%) round out the top However, it didn’t take long for environmental five. Being hit by a falling tree? 1 percent — the groups to point out that dead trees are the most same as deaths by bear attack. ecologically valuable, especially the large dead The Forest Service does not close mountains trees desired by timber companies. Called “snags” to climbing or skiing, it does not ban swimming, because of their angular profile, dead trees are nor does it require every visitor to carry a GPS critical habitat for woodpeckers, squirrels, fishers, unit to avoid getting lost. The Forest Service does and bats. Snags shade the forest floor below, not even kill bears — thanks Smokey. But after protecting new seedlings from sun scald and a forest fire, the Forest Service shifts into hyper- desiccation. The Forest Service needed a trump safety overdrive, closing burned forests by the card to deflect these criticisms of its lucrative hundreds of thousands of acres to all visitors, and salvage logging program. cutting down as many dead, dying, or maybe- going-to-die-in-five-years trees as it can get its “Public Safety” is the agency’s new raison hands on. Not even wilderness, which is supposed d’être for logging and the money it brings. The to be “wild” — not “safe” — gets a pass from the fact that logging these dead trees is itself one of Forest Service’s nanny state. As I write today, America’s most dangerous professions appears lost Forest Service closures, enforced by criminal on the Forest Service. For the time being, until the prosecution, are in effect for all or portions of Forest Service regains its sanity, the public will be the Mark O. Hatfield, Roaring River, Clackamas, locked out of its public lands. How crazy is that? Lower White River, Opal Creek, Mt. Jefferson, Red Sincerely, Buttes, Siskiyou, San Gabriel, and other wilderness areas — all for fires extinguished last year or longer ago. What appears to be an irrational fear of trees Andy Stahl Inside 3 | Featured Forest 4 | In Depth 7 | Briefly 9 | Dispatch Little Missouri National Will wildfire mitigation Oak Flat · 30x30 / Haaland Makes History Grassland, the largest efforts save homes and Wildfire Caucus / Civilian / Skirting the Law in Forest Service grassland improve forest health? Climate Corps / Outdoor the Willamette / Road Restoration Partnership Threatens Vital Research Act / Roadless Area Conservation Act 2 | Forest News - Summer 2021 Cover photo: Prescribed fire is used to maintain forest health in a frequent-fire forest. The Little Missouri River flows through badlands in Theodore Roosevelt National Park and Little Missouri National Grassland. The grassland, the largest in the country, encompasses the national park (photo by Mark Hoffman, National Park Service). Featured Forest orth Dakota had a National A great deal of the Grassland remains Little Forest for eight years and in a natural, unaltered condition. N eight months, but the Dakota Prairie dogs, elk, pronghorn, deer, Missouri National Forest was disbanded by bighorn sheep, coyotes, jackrabbits, National President Woodrow Wilson in 1917. While eagles, falcons, pheasants, grouse, and North Dakota no longer has a National wild turkeys live on the Grassland. Grassland Forest, it can claim the largest National The greatest threat to this wildlife Grassland in the country. Created in and the environment that supports it 1960, the 1,028,051-acre Little Missouri is past, present and future oil and gas National Grassland stretches from the exploration and extraction, which have Montana state line to the Fort Berthold already produced hundreds of oil wells Reservation of the Three Affiliated Tribes across parts of the Grassland. (Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara). Outdoor recreation opportunities The Little Missouri National include hiking, canoeing, fishing, and Grassland is a mixed-grass prairie hunting. Throughout the Grassland are featuring the rugged terrain of badlands archaeological sites related to Native eroded by wind and water. White Butte, Americans and pioneers. The Grassland North Dakota's highest point, lies in the features include aquatic fossils, dinosaur southeastern corner of the Grassland. skeletons, and petrified wood. The Also within the Grassland are Theodore National Grasslands Visitor Center in Roosevelt National Park and significant Wall, South Dakota, features exhibits on inholdings of private and state-owned the history and plant and animal life of land, much of it leased by ranchers for the grasslands. grazing cattle. Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics | 3 In Depth The 2020 Almeda fire in southern Oregon Wildfire Mitigation decimated residential neighborhoods. he 2020 wildfire season Biden’s budget request calls for 2008 report by Reinhardt, Keane, set a record for acres spending $1.7 billion “for high- Calkin, and Cohen cautions against T burned in the U.S. since priority hazardous fuels and forest acting on misconceptions about 1983, and fire season started early resilience projects,” an increase fuel treatments and their use as “a for 2021 with drought conditions of $476 million. If we learned panacea for fire hazard reduction. continuing across most of the nothing else from last year’s ... Given the right conditions, country. At this writing, the U.S. fires, it’s that weather-driven fires wildlands will inevitably burn.” Drought Monitor shows much of are unstoppable, which raises As the 2020 fires demonstrated, the West experiencing extreme questions. Will this increased those conditions — high temps, and exceptional drought along spending on fire mitigation benefit low humidity, high wind — have with temperatures of 4-15 degrees our forests? Will it benefit at-risk become more common across the above normal. In addition to communities? West, producing ever larger fires ramping up firefighting resources, Most of our readers are likely that account for the vast majority the Forest Service, other federal familiar with the root problem. of acres burned each year. When agencies, state agencies, and local A century of fire suppression fire conditions prevail, high winds governments are responding to produced dense, overgrown carry embers for miles, jumping the wildfire threat with increased forests that have proven more rivers, lakes, and fire lines. spending for mitigation projects. susceptible to pests, disease, Reinhardt et al. also note that California allocated more drought, and catastrophic wildfire. these fires burn through areas that than $500 million on wildfire The commonsense solution would have been thinned. In fact, without prevention efforts just for seem to be simply thinning the follow-up treatments, thinning springtime projects. Congress forests to reduce wildfire risks, can increase the intensity of large is getting involved with various but fire ecologists say the issue is fires. The lower density of trees pieces of legislation, and President more complicated than that. A allows winds to blow with less 4 | Forest News - Summer 2021 obstruction, and more sunlight on the forest floor dries the ground and encourages flammable shrubs and invasive plants to grow and spread more rapidly. Maintaining the desired conditions requires ongoing, labor-intensive management and, according to a 1994 report by W.L. Baker, may take up to seven treatments before conditions resemble pre-fire- suppression forests. John Muir Project Director Chad Hanson, a forest ecologist, said a growing body of research suggests that removing trees doesn’t protect forests from wildfire but may contribute to more intense wildfires. He and his fellow researchers have conducted multiple studies that support his opposition to logging and mechanical thinning of forests. A The Camp Fire in California, which destroyed the town of Paradise, burned more 2016 report that he co-authored intensely in a previously logged area (foreground) than in an adjacent section of concludes, “Forests with the highest unlogged forest where mature trees survived the blaze (photo by Chad Hanson). levels of protection from logging fire-prone forests to conditions that done,” Finney remarked. “We tend to burn least severely.” mimic the forest structure prior get all wrapped around the axle Mark Finney, a Forest Service to fire suppression policies. For because we’re not considering the research forester, studies the millennia, he points out, Native maintenance. The only way to physical processes of fire spread. American communities in fire- maintain a forest in a low-hazard He led a team that studied the condition is through repeated Hayman fire, which was then prone regions used fires to manage the largest Colorado wildfire on the landscape, shaping forests and burning ... but you can’t introduce record. Finney’s team determined, grasslands in ways that minimized fire without some mechanical ‘‘Fuel breaks and treatments were the community risk from fires treatment first.

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