Bush Signs Forest Bill

This is a good thing. When I lived in New Mexico, the fire victims I spoke to wished that someone had done this before the fires spread.

Yes, even in high desert areas the forest needs some thinning, and forest "floors" need clearing.

 

I've asked about this before. I know that Forrest thinning is not a be-all to end-all for sure. I live in Southern California and we've recently had horrible forrest fires. They jumped a large multi lane interstate. I don't think a little thinning would prevent that.

I don't know if it would help in other cases though. I'm skeptical but not decdied 100% either way. With Bush's enviromental record such as changing the classification on mercury and allowing companies that produce too much mercury continue to do so by buying credits from other companies, I have a hard time believing this is for the better.

 

Plan;

Give money back to campaign contributors from logging industry so they keep contributing.

Problem;

Logs protected by law. Err, I mean trees....trees protected by law.
And people like lo...er, trees.

Solution;

Give campaign contributors right to cut down logs with a "Healthy Forest Restoration Act" and say it will "prevent forest fires." Does not matter if it is true, just keep saying it.

 

This an 8% solution.

92% of the forests that are adjacent to communities and thus a fire risk to them are privately held.

 

Standard disclaimer: My opinions, not that of the fed government or any agency.
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This is better than the original bill because there were some decent compromises, most notably, at least 50% of the work has to be done in the urban interface. There are still some major problems...

1. The bill is too reliant on the good science done in the SW on Ponderosa Pine ecosystems. The assumptions in the bill apply those dynamics to all other ecosystems from chapparal to Lodgepole Pine to Douglas Fir to mixed conifer high elevation forests. Each one has a different fire regime and is adapted to fire in different ways.

For instance, the recent California fires burned primarily (only 5% of the SoCal fires were in timber) in chapparal and brush, which burns every 18-25 years or so. The burn was not out of the realm of historical events... prior to the 1920's, it was not unusual for one fire to take out 500,000 acres in that area. In high winds, thinning brush is not going to make much difference as the primary mover across non-continuous fuels is spotting of embers that can be lifted a mile or more. The only defense in SoCal is not thinning, but defensible space and firewise concepts around developments. With Santa Ana winds and more sources of human ignition, that country is going to burn regardless of what we do. It may not be for another 25 years or more, but it will burn again. (Not to mention that there is absolutely no interest by any company in cutting brush.)

Another example is Lodgepole Pine. Fire in this ecosystem is a stand replacement event every 80-120 years. The stands are even age and are set up to regenerate after a fire. This is what happened in Yellowstone in 1988. If you look at it now, the trees coming back are the same age and height and they are all over the place. Sometime around 2100, they'll burn big again and a new generation will come in.

Ponderosa Pine (which are throughout the west in varying degrees--the largest chunk in the world is in Arizona, but the range extends to Canada and the Pacific) do not like high intensity fires and are not adapted to such. They are instead adapted to frequent low intensity fires that clear out the saplings, regenerate the grasses, and allow the tree to grow old and big. Problem is we've gone from 75-100 trees per acre to over 1500 in some places. This stunts the trees, allowing more fuel to be in reach of a surface fire, creating a continuous canopy, and making the transition to a crown fire much easier. Ponderosas can't survive crown fires and if they get "nuked" it may take milleniums for them to reforest an area naturally.

The prime driver in the changing face of Ponderosa Pine forests are a century of fire protection, where we put out everything in order to save the commercial value of the trees, and grazing, which diminished the grasses so that low intensity fire could not carry through the stands and pine seedlings had no immediate competition on the bare ground.

2. The idea that the issues of forest fires can be solved within a political timeframe is absurd. It took most of the Ponderosa Pine forests 120+ years to get to this point and it will take at least a quarter of a century just to deal with the urban interface problems. (Incidentally, most of the interface issues are on state and private lands, of which this bill provides litttle assistance.) Most professionals think this is the way to go because if you have the communities protected through fuels treatments, defensible space, etc. you can then go to the "back 40" and treat those areas with much less cost because you are not as worried about your neighbors. This means, in a lot of cases, using fire to return the system to something approximating what we know about the original balance.

Per acre, prescribed fire is cheaper than any other means of fuel reduction. Of course, it gets expensive fast should the fire escape and threaten a community... which is why we should protect the communities first. In other words, it makes sense to work out from communities instead of towards communities, which is what got us in trouble a few times. The problem has been that residents and businesses didn't want agencies thinning near where they live because of the aesthetic values of living in the trees... Over the past few years, that attitude is beginning to change, though it is still prevalent.

So, there's bad fire and good fire. Where there is bad fire potential we need to do some type of thinning and reducing of the fuel loads. We also need to buy time with suppression of fires where they could have adverse impacts so that our fuel reduction strategies can be given the time to make a difference. Right now, we spend way more on suppression than fuels treatments. Over the next 25 years or so, I hope these start to come together and even out, but everyone I know agrees that we're in for some rough fire seasons over the next 10-15 years.

3. The idea that the NEPA requirements need to be refined is one I agree with, but whatever reforms are implemented need to stay true to the spirit of NEPA. What got us (land managers) into the pickle we're in is a number of unscrupulous folks tried to bend or skirt the original requirements. They would get sued and a new court order adding checks to the requirements so that abuse could not happen again would be implemented. After three decades of this, the NEPA rules are like th NCAA recruiting rules... so many plugs have been added to keep folks from abusing the system that it is now difficult to do some basic common-sense stuff. And even if everyone agrees it should be done, we still might get challeneged on it because it could set a precedent that someone else could abuse... and because those abuses have taken place in the past, it's hard to argue they won't in the future. We're our own worst enemy in this regard and in the past, we have caved too easily to political and economic pressure taht may have benefitted some folks in the short-term, but ended up hurting the greater good in the long-run. (Let me say for clarification, that forest policy over the last 80 years or so has been a multi-generational and multi-party failure. For either side to try to make hay on this is wrong IMHO.) I don't know enough about the new rules in the bill that was signed to comment on them, but I suspect there will be some stuff that guts the intent of NEPA and/or is counter-productive to long-term fire issues, which is a shame.

4. I'm worried that areas "needing thinning" will not be identified using the best science with potential fire behavior and risks in mind, but rather, be identified by the most valuable trees. It worries me that the timber industry fought hard for this bill because the trees that are most valuable to them are also the ones that are most fire resistant. The stuff that needs to be taken out is the new (100 years or younger) stuff that creates the ladder fuels necessary for crown fire transistion. I don't see the economics in that.

I know one of the ideas behind the bill is that if you give the timber companies valuable trees they can use the money they make to clear the smaller diameter trees and brush. This is sort of like robbing Peter to pay Paul though, because if you remove the large trees that are more fire resistant, you are committing to expensively treating that area for years because you will have to thin repeatedly as new trees come in. You would have to do this with machines or manually because to use fire would wipe everything out. If you leave the big ones, you can reintroduce the low intensity fires every 15 years or so and keep that chunk in balance for cheap.

The basic problem with any type of forest legislation is that it inevitably looks for short-term fixes to recent problems when we should be looking at the very long-term (100+ years out). The last President and Congress to really do this was when Teddy created the National Forest System, the National Refuge System, and strengthened the National Park system. I think we have enough science and enough practical experience to craft such legislation, but unfortunately the focus remains on the short-term. We'll have to see whether this piece of legislation does things that allow us to work towards the future, but I have my doubts.

In the meantime, predictions are for no relief for the drought in many parts of the West, including the SW. I'll most likely be busy from May through September of 2004.

 

WOLF: Chickens are a problem. The only way to save them is to eat them.
BUSH: Sounds good. I'll give you authority to eat the chickens, so that we can save the chickens.