Posted on 08/23/2002 9:05:36 AM PDT by logician2u
President Bush has proposed a "healthy forests initiative" that calls for treating fuels on 2.5 million acres of federal lands for ten years and for expediting the fuels treatment process by exempting it from environmental oversight. While well intentioned, this plan treats the wrong acres and fails to correct the real problems with federal land management.
The Forest Service estimates that 70 million acres of federal land need immediate treatment and 140 million acres will soon need treatment. At the rate of 2.5 million acres a year, which federal agencies have yet to accomplish, it will take more than 80 years to treat all areas. The total cost of treating all these acres could exceed $100 billion.
The administration's "Healthy Forests Policy Book" uses the Squires Peak Fire in Oregon to show that leaving just a few acres untreated can lead to uncontrollable wildfires. Thus, a ten-year program of treating 2.5 million acres a year will fall 88 percent short of protecting communities.
Forest Service fire researcher Jack Cohen has found that homes and other structures will be safe from fire if their roof and landscaping within 150 feet of the structures are fireproofed. Forest Service General Technical Report RMRS-87 says there are 1.9 million high-risk acres in the wildland-urban interface, of which 1.5 million are private. Treating these acres, not the 210 million federal acres, will protect homes. Fire breaks along federal land boundaries, not treatments of lands within those boundaries, will protect other private property.
Once private lands are protected, the Forest Service can let most fires on federal lands burn. Fire ecologists agree that letting fires burn is the best and most efficient method of restoring forest health. But under current policies, the Forest Service is suppressing 99.7 percent of all fires.
The Forest Service budgetary process rewards forest managers for losing money on environmentally destructive timber sales and penalizes them for making money or doing environmentally beneficial activities. Until those incentives are changed, giving the Forest Service more power to sell or thin trees without environmental oversight will only create more problems than it solves.
There are two reasons for the size and extent of fires this year. First, the West in 2002 is experiencing one of the worst droughts in history. Second, the Forest Service is now attacking fires primarily through indirect means -- backfires -- rather than direct means. This greatly increases the size of the burned areas. Neither of these reasons has anything to do with fuels.
For example, a quarter to a third of the acres burned in the Biscuit Fire, which President Bush viewed today, were backfires lit by the Forest Service. By blaming fires on fuels, the Forest Service has deceived the president into giving it more money and power.
Decades of fire data and individual fire reports offer no evidence that excess fuels are causing fires to be worse today than in the past.
* The average number of acres burned in the last five years is no more than the average in the first five years of the 1960s.
* The average number of firefighters killed by fire has declined since the 1950s.
* From 1970 through 1999, fire suppression costs grew no faster than the rate of inflation.
There is no doubt that Forest Service fire suppression has had pronounced environmental impacts on ecosystems. Forests have replaced grasslands, forests dominated by one species of tree have replaced forests dominated by another species. In most of the West, however, these effects do not necessarily translate to excess fuels problems. Reports on individual fires agree that drought, not excess fuels, is the major fire problem facing fire managers.
Congress has effectively given the Forest Service a blank check to put out fires, and this greatly distorts the incentives facing the agency. The blank check has led to too much fire suppression and too much money spent on suppression. These problems will not be solved by extending the blank check to other areas such as fuels treatments.
Randal O'Toole has been a persistent critic of the USFS for many years. His research is top-notch, as anyone who visits his site, The Thoreau Institute, will appreciate.
Healthy Forest : An Initiative for Wildfire Prevention and Stronger Communities Executive Summary
The American people, their property, and our environment, particularly the forests and rangelands of the West, are threatened by catastrophic fires and environmental degradation. Hundreds of millions of trees and invaluable habitat are destroyed each year by these severe wildfires. These unnaturally extreme fires are caused by a crisis of deteriorating forest and rangeland health, the result of a century of well-intentioned but misguided land management. Renewed efforts to restore our public lands to healthy conditions are needed.
This fire season is already one of the worst in modern history.
Catastrophic fires are caused by deteriorating forest and rangeland health.
America's public lands have undergone radical changes during the last century due to the suppression of fires and a lack of active forest and rangeland management. Frequent, low-intensity fires play an important role in healthy forest and rangeland ecosystems, maintaining natural plant conditions and reducing the buildup of fuels. Natural, low-intensity fires burn smaller trees and undergrowth while leaving large trees generally intact. Natural fires also maintain natural plant succession cycles, preventing the spread of invasive plant species in forests and rangelands. This produces forests that are open and resistant to disease, drought, and severe wildfires.
Today, the forests and rangelands of the West have become unnaturally dense, and ecosystem health has suffered significantly. When coupled with seasonal droughts, these unhealthy forests, overloaded with fuels, are vulnerable to unnaturally severe wildfires. Currently, 190 million acres of public land are at increased risk of catastrophic wildfires.
Federal, state, tribal and local governments are making unprecedented efforts to reduce the buildup of fuels and restore forests and rangelands to healthy conditions. Yet, needless red tape and lawsuits delay effective implementation of forest health projects. This year's crisis compels more timely decisions, greater efficiency, and better results to reduce catastrophic wildfire threats to communities and the environment.
The Healthy Forests Initiative will implement core components of the National Fire Plan's 10-year Comprehensive Strategy and Implementation Plan. This historic plan, which was adopted this spring by federal agencies and western governors, in collaboration with county commissioners, state foresters, and tribal officials, calls for more active forest and rangeland management. It establishes a framework for protecting communities and the environment through local collaboration on thinning, planned burns and forest restoration projects.
Limited clear cutting is in fact good for wildlife, something ignored by the article. It creates browse and edge, which supports more wildlife of all types. Any hunter knows that.
Well, you know...if the Forest Service had not been prevented from thinning forests all these years via lawsuits by the envirowhackos, they could have kept it under control. Kind of like letting your housework go for years, then complaining about the time it takes clean up the mess...
Perhaps you can enlighten me.
And I don' recall clear-cutting as being one of the elements of Bush's plan. If it was, you know the enviro governor of Oregon and Ron Wyden wouldn't have been seen in the President's company.
Removing timber by helicopter is enormously expensive.
This one's a hoot - the purpose is to make the forest more sustainable and healthy, not to save someone's concrete summer bunker surrounded by a paved parking lot 300 ft in diameter.
"These are all valid points which need further discussion."
Sounds more like a vote in favor of someone who has been a "persistent critic of the USFS..." than a reasoned conclusion.
As a kid, I used to gather downed trees for firewood all the time in National Forests. I never though I was breaking the law.
The excesses of both the enviros and the forestry industry have caused some of us to reconsider whether the National Forests truly are a "land of many uses." A person has to have connections to get his use out of the forest, it seems.
Next, they'll want to ban fishing, I suppose. PETA thinks it's cruel.
My comment on limited clear-cutting wasn't specifically addressed to the Bush plan. By limited clear cutting I mean cutting blocks of several acres interspaced with forest. I doubt the politicians would call it that though, since "clear-cutting" brings to mind entirely removing huge swaths of trees for miles, which nobody is suggesting.
The solution is to treat private lands, not federal lands.
Private land (and State) land is treated by private and State entities. The bulk of the problems are on federal land. The bulk of the land (in the west) is federal land.
This year's fires are big because of drought and Forest Service firefighting strategies, not excess fuels.
The problem of excess fuels is the more significant factor. That was caused by inadequate forest management practices over the last hundred years.
There is no evidence that fuels are causing fires to be bigger, more deadly, or more expensive to suppress.
This sounds like it came from someone who has absolutely no understanding of fire science and behavior.
The real problem with fire is the Forest Service's blank check for fire suppression.
Ridiculous. A cart and horse argument. If his house was in the WUI and a fire was out of control downhill and upwind, I bet he'd want to supplement suppression funding.
The question, I think, is what is to be done once they start?
There's a lot of evidence to show that fires burned much of the west before the white man settled, yet the forests regrew. It's not that the Native Americans were into ecology as some might think, but they simply did not have the means of putting out fires.
There is some question whether we do today.
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