‘Self-serving garbage.’ Wildfire experts escalate fight over saving California forests

[BigHornRam]

Yes, but I think the point he may have been driving at was that monoculture prescriptions are not necessarily the best answer. Esp in terms of wildlife, diversity is important.

That's why you hire trained forest managers, that understand all the different forest habitats and their requirements to implement healthy forest management plans, and not a UC Davis PhD enviromentalist.

Here's a good book. Read it twice. They were talking about what California and the rest of the west needed to do with our federal forests over 20 years ago. Very little of what they recommended has been done unfortunately.

Mimicking Nature's Fire: Restoring Fire-Prone Forests In The West https://g.co/kgs/ScZ2HH

 

[JLS]

(ellipsis here)

,,,

 

[TheTone]

Examples?

Scott complex, Benton rock, bedrock canyon vs sand mtn or pretty much any fire in the north fork of the clearwater

I’m cherry picking some, Dixie fire and Craig mtn fires were probably the biggest but Craig mtn has been heavily logged and burned of late and yet it continues to burn, maybe that’s just the nature of dry canyon country and people should accept it? I just don’t think we can log our way out of fires being on the landscape

 

[Ben Lamb]

Fair enough. I should have known better. I blame the mistake on the fingers, they prefer to misspell words, even misspelled words.

This is how they win. They sue on a tiny piece of esoterica rather than the merits of a plan.

Apologies for making light of your inability to be Kool

Or is that smoke kools?

"WHO BE PUTTIN THEIR KOOLS OUT ON MY FLOOR! "

B. Ray Valentine.

 

[BigHornRam]

This one "catastrophic"?

https://data.rgj.com/fires/incident/7796/bedrock-fire/

Fire Behavior Remains Minimal With Creeping And Smoldering Within Containment Lines.No Road Closures Are In Place And Work Continues To Remove Remaining Road Closure Signs.Crews Will Continue To Patrol And Monitor The Fire As Conditions Warrant. 100% Contained Does Not Mean The Fire Is Out.Expected Weather In The Area Is Trending Toward A Return To Drier And Hotter.Rehab Is Completed In And Around The Fire Area.

 

[Irrelevant]

That's why you hire trained forest managers, that understand all the different forest habitats and their requirements to implement healthy forest management plans, and not a UC Davis PhD enviromentalist.

Here's a good book. Read it twice. They were talking about what California and the rest of the west needed to do with our federal forests over 20 years ago. Very little of what they recommended has been done unfortunately.

Mimicking Nature's Fire: Restoring Fire-Prone Forests In The West https://g.co/kgs/ScZ2HH

I'm 6 books backlogged, at my Neanderthal reading level that's like a decade. Cliff notes?

 

[TheTone]

This one "catastrophic"?

https://data.rgj.com/fires/incident/7796/bedrock-fire/

Fire Behavior Remains Minimal With Creeping And Smoldering Within Containment Lines.No Road Closures Are In Place And Work Continues To Remove Remaining Road Closure Signs.Crews Will Continue To Patrol And Monitor The Fire As Conditions Warrant. 100% Contained Does Not Mean The Fire Is Out.Expected Weather In The Area Is Trending Toward A Return To Drier And Hotter.Rehab Is Completed In And Around The Fire Area.

I drove past it the other day, the timbered canyons it burned are scorched and yet landowners had been cutting timber in it for years. I talked to a guy the other day that has hunting access in it, he is hunting elsewhere due to the moonscape of it. The main thing that stopped that fire was disked up fields

 

[BucksnDucks]

My favorite part of the article is “We go to court to stand up for science,” Hanson said. Immediately followed by a rebuke from actual fire scientists.
I think from now on any debate of disagreement I find myself in I'm just going to say "follow the science".

 

[BucksnDucks]

That's why you hire trained forest managers, that understand all the different forest habitats and their requirements to implement healthy forest management plans, and not a UC Davis PhD enviromentalist.

Here's a good book. Read it twice. They were talking about what California and the rest of the west needed to do with our federal forests over 20 years ago. Very little of what they recommended has been done unfortunately.

Mimicking Nature's Fire: Restoring Fire-Prone Forests In The West https://g.co/kgs/ScZ2HH

Yes. I've lived in Northern Ca fifty years and have seen this first hand. I don't think anyone that has paid attention over the last few decades is surprised by what has happened to the forests. I have not read the book mentioned but have talked with USFS firefighters and forest managers as far back as mid 90s and they saw the trouble ahead.

 

[kwyeewyk]

I drove past it the other day, the timbered canyons it burned are scorched and yet landowners had been cutting timber in it for years. I talked to a guy the other day that has hunting access in it, he is hunting elsewhere due to the moonscape of it. The main thing that stopped that fire was disked up fields

Couple of thoughts, anecdotal observations can be dangerous, without looking at the actual ground truthed severity it can be easy to misjudge the actual severity from a distant look at the burn. My anecdotal observations this year were that, at least here in WA, we had some well timed rain in August that kept things from blowing up.

Also, as the article states, the goal isn't to stop fire on the landscape but to change the behavior, and the empirical data shows that the prescribed treatments recommended by the majority of fire ecologists have the highest probability of changing fire behavior in the way we want, all variables considered. There is extensive research and monitoring ongoing that might change the recommendations over time, but as of now it's best science.

 

[BigHornRam]

Just got back from hiking with the dogs in a low elevation pine/fir forest that burned in the 2000 Bitterroot fires. It's called Sawdust gulch so yes it's been logged in the past. Fire intensity couldn't have been too bad when it passed through this area with minimal crown fire.


Shaded slope, a majority of the fir survived. Looking 180 degrees at this more open, dry, mostly pine slope, some of trees died but they were well spaced before and after the fire. This would be fantastic bighorn and mule deer winter habitat if it wasn't for the knapweed. It's still very good.

This nice healthy fir survived the fire no problem.

Nice hillside of pine.


This couple acre spot burned more intense, allowing the fir, aspen, and willow to take advantage of the increased sunlight. Diversity. That's, what we want right?

All in all this fire here did way more good than harm, and is what we need to shoot for from a forest management prospective. Historically this area probably was on a 30 year fire frequency cycle, so it is due for another burn in about 10 years.

 

[BigHornRam]

I'm 6 books backlogged, at my Neanderthal reading level that's like a decade. Cliff notes?

Read it front to back twice. It's worth the effort if you are truly interested.

 

[Hunting Wife]

Great article. Thanks for posting. A few thoughts after reading it, perhaps rambling but

1. Anyone that advocates that forests should be left alone to “manage themselves” isn’t living in reality. We removed that capacity from pretty much all landscapes in the lower 48 a century of more ago.

2. I struggle to understand people who cling to the idea that climax communities (I.e. “old growth”) are somehow a goal or a state that we need to manage for. Ecosystems move through a variety of successional stages. That is natural, normal and healthy. Disturbance is necessary. Climax communities in general are less productive, less diverse, and provide poorer habitat than most earlier successional stages. They are not preferred habitat for most critters and they were not historically the most prevalent stage. There’s a reason you don’t see tons of elk and deer in old growth.

3. There is no one-size-fits-all management strategy that will solve the problems of forest management across the SW, PNW, Rocky Mountains. It will take a combination of strategies to get us back on track.

4. Prescribed fire most closely mimics natural processes, yet people still try to find every excuse not to allow it. Avoiding fire is what got us into this mess…I think fire will need to be included in any long-term successful forest management. And selective logging/thinning/whatever you call it also has a place.

 

[kwyeewyk]

1. Anyone that advocates that forests should be left alone to “manage themselves” isn’t living in reality. We removed that capacity from pretty much all landscapes in the lower 48 a century of more ago.

Well put for all of it, was thinking similarly about your first point, reminds me of some of the discussions on other threads about YNP and the false idea that it is free of human intervention. The idea that we can just walk away leave forests and other landscapes untouched without addressing exponential population growth and all the other resource needs our society demands and is not willing to give up is a joke.

In my opinion with some foresight forests are way easier to manage and much more capable of sustainable production (logging) than sagebrush or other arid systems that can be nearly impossible to recover once they reach an altered state of invasive species and frequent fire.

 

[Benfromalbuquerque]

Stephen Pyne’s books. Guy was a hotshot 40-some years ago and writes unapologetically about history. “Year of the Fires” is a good read about a nascent USDA Forest Service 111 years ago and reactionary policies that came out of the 1910 fires. Also, anyone who ever held a pulaski tool will know if they didn’t already where that originated. https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-670-89990-6

 

[SO7mm]

Great article from Ryan Sabalow and Dale Kasler at the SacBee highlighting some of the roadblocks land managers are hitting when it comes to managing forests. Hopefully this article starts to open some more eyes and put pressure on the fringe to get out of the way.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article254957722.html?fbclid=IwAR2PKLG2wjqWb5eIBOQ3g7H4cS4BudRPn3DDhook9rsV5wthjIhYO2wqFdY

That's a good read and a reason for hope. Sabalow also put out a good article on wild horses in Devil's Garden this year.

 

[SAJ-99]

2. I struggle to understand people who cling to the idea that climax communities (I.e. “old growth”) are somehow a goal or a state that we need to manage for. Ecosystems move through a variety of successional stages. That is natural, normal and healthy. Disturbance is necessary. Climax communities in general are less productive, less diverse, and provide poorer habitat than most earlier successional stages. They are not preferred habitat for most critters and they were not historically the most prevalent stage. There’s a reason you don’t see tons of elk and deer in old growth.

Good points. But #2 is relative and not just about deer and elk. Tell a tree-cavity nesting bird that old-growth forests are not useful. We need different types of forests, in different stages of growth, while also allowing some harvest of timber for civilization to continue. It's harder to do when the total amount of forest continues to decline and development increases. When someone buys/builds a home, they expect the environment (visual, at least) to stay the same. I seriously doubt they are going to take kindly to some forest manager coming in and saying "we're thinning some trees" or "we're lighten this stuff on fire". I'm not sure how we develop a solution, but I doubt that law suits are going to get us anywhere.

 

[Hunting Wife]

Good points. But #2 is relative and not just about deer and elk. Tell a tree-cavity nesting bird that old-growth forests are not useful. We need different types of forests, in different stages of growth, while also allowing some harvest of timber for civilization to continue. It's harder to do when the total amount of forest continues to decline and development increases. When someone buys/builds a home, they expect the environment (visual, at least) to stay the same. I seriously doubt they are going to take kindly to some forest manager coming in and saying "we're thinning some trees" or "we're lighten this stuff on fire". I'm not sure how we develop a solution, but I doubt that law suits are going to get us anywhere.

I didn’t say climax communities aren’t useful, but there’s a reason that very few species are climax-community obligates. It was never the dominant habitat on the landscape. That idea is a completely human construct. Management for a mosaic of habitats and stages is absolutely necessary.

I honestly think the lawsuits and resistance to management of wild lands is due primarily to the growing disconnect between people and nature. And it just keeps picking up speed…I don’t know how we fix that.

 

[Hydrophilic]

There are areas where old growth was much more common and dominant than it is now, and where fires were less prevalent. Portions of the PNW are a good example. I see plenty of huge old growth stumps with springboard notches on spawning surveys and fishing trips up and down the Oregon coast, and they still make me a bit stomach sick. See attached pic, that particular stump was one of many which resulted from an earthquake several hundred years ago, prior to European settlement, which dropped the terrain into a tidal flat and ultimately caused the trees to die. Old growth forests support quite a bit of biodiversity. In fact, I was recently kept company while seasick at Buoy 10 salmon fishery by marbled murrelets, look up the life history of those birds and try not to be impressed. A good book is ‘The Hidden Forest’ by J Loama, it focuses on the Oregon State University research team at the HJ Andrews experimental forest. Another newer textbook out is ‘Ecological Forest Management’ by Jerry Franklin, UW faculty.

That being said, much of our landscape, overall, was managed with intentional burns and plantings. When John Muir arrived in the Sierras he didn’t realize he was looking at someone’s garden. And that’s exactly what much of our landscape was - someone’s garden. In the Willamette valley a person would see fields of purple. So much purple it confused the early explorers who thought they were looking at water. This was camas, a staple flower/bulb for many indigenous people, managed with burns. Other tribes did prescribed burns to manage for giant milkweed patches which provided cordage. At campsites, nearby hillsides would be burned and wild orchards would be tended....huckleberry, chokecherry, salmonberry, etc. One thing preservationists got wrong, and still get wrong, is you can’t simply set aside most landscapes and have them preserve themselves. Same thing with some environmentalists who want to lock up large swaths of land and exclude humans. Many ecosystems need active, cognizant management, and this is something sorely missing from our landscapes today. Everyone likes to hunt, hike, camp, fish but then go home. Who is developing a meaningful, reciprocal relationship with the land and taking care of the garden?