Where There’s Smoke, There’s Liars Utah has been
ablaze with wildfires this summer. Drought and 90 years of fire suppression have
only intensified the dry conditions of our thirsty forests and when fires start
they burn fast and hot. Western lawmakers and the media continue to feed the
flames of hysteria and misinformation that surround one of nature’s best
cleansing tools. Their desire is to place blame anywhere, as long as it is away
from those who manage and profit from our forests. Most commonly, it falls on
those who question current forest management. This is because environmental
organizations, like the Utah Environmental Congress (UEC), want forest
management policies based on science, not politics. To be able to recognize the
truth in all the smoke, we all need to be more educated about wildfire; not only
the causes and consequences of fire but what management practices are best for
our forests and that also serve to safeguard our communities.
In reality, environmental groups such as the UEC, do not challenge Forest Service projects that merely seek to reduce flammable undergrowth in areas near homes. A study in 2001 by the U.S. General Accounting Office, commissioned by lawmakers wanting to establish statistical backing to lay blame on environmentalists, found that only 1% of the fire-related projects that the Forest Service had proposed during the study period were challenged nationwide. The problem is the Forest Service rarely focuses on thinning underbrush because there is no money to be made from removing shrubs, saplings and weeds.
The majority of projects we see center around the removal of economically valuable, mature and old-growth trees in roadless areas, far from wildland/urban communities. These types of “thinning projects” actually go against the Forest Service’s own scientific research. The National Fire Plan, established by Congress to guide Forest Service fire policy, has warned that fire policies should “not rely on commercial logging or new road building because the removal of large, merchantable trees does not reduce risk, but increases it.” Commercial logging removes the trunk, the most flame retardant part of the tree. What’s left are the most flammable portions of the tree, the limbs and needles, or slash. Also small diameter trees (3”) are left behind, which are the primary carriers of fire. Young trees have yet to grow the tall, thick barked and flame retardant trunk. Removing the large trees also opens up the forest canopy, exposing the forest floor to more sun and wind, and in turn, increasing the temperature on the ground, drying up the slash left behind. This results in faster rates of fire spread, hotter burns and erratic shifts in speed and direction of fires. Increased sunlight reaching the forest floor also causes more rapid growth of flammable brush and weeds.
“Thinning” projects are also misleadingly promoted as increasing public safety and protecting property. For example, backcountry “thinning” is frequently justified as a method of protecting people’s homes. Yet the Forest Service’s own Fire Science Lab has said “the likelihood that a home will ignite from wildfire is almost entirely determined by the landscape within 40 meters of the building and by the materials and design of the building.” Protection comes by focusing on the immediate surroundings, not by logging deep within the forest. Fire researchers say “a home’s survival rate is increased 85-95% if the home has a non-flammable roof and combustible material has been cleared within 30 feet of the home.”
Forest Service projects do not only focus on “preventive” fire measures, but also try to reap the rewards of wildfire after-effects. “Salvage” logging removes the dead trees from a fire-swept area, causing huge setbacks in regeneration and increasing the risk of yet another wildfire. The Forest Service targets the removal of all large burned trees, leaving behind the small fire-killed trees and flammable debris. This practice also conflicts with the Forest Service’s own scientific research. This research recommends that leaving large dead trees in the forest after a burn prevents future severe burns by letting the large logs soak up and store huge amounts of water, becoming increasingly moist as they decay. But current Forest Service management ignores or denies its own research, as is shown in its action with the Bitterroot National Forest fire. This project to “restore” the forest after the fire has resulted in one of the largest timber sales in history.
The other main contributors to large-scale, severe-burning fires include livestock grazing, roads and people. Livestock eat the native plants that feed small, healthy ground fires, and don’t eat the shrubs and weeds that are highly flammable that spring up in place of the native vegetation. Roads fragment and weaken forests by opening areas to increased access. A greater road density leads to an increase in people, and more people bring more fires. Road densities are incredibly high; currently there are about400,000 miles of roads in National Forests across the country, enough to circle the world 16 times. Most all of the large-scale fires we have seen this summer have been in roaded and logged areas. Over the past ten years, people have started nearly 80% of all wildfires, usually on or adjacent to a road.
When the fire season begins to wind down, and the accusations heat up, we need to consider not only the facts we know about wildfires but also the motives behind the allegations and policies that will most surely come from our lawmakers and Forest Service officials. A former timber industry lobbyist, Mark Rey, currently runs the Forest Service. The logging industry and its political allies see wildfire as an excuse to conduct wholesale logging in remote and roadless areas in our National Forests. Research that shows the effects of logging, grazing and road building is continually ignored or discredited. One report, embraced by groups inside and outside of the Forest Service because of its rigorous scientific foundations and technical research was recently labeled “questionable” by the current Chief of the Forest Service, Dale Bosworth. It was identified as such because the report concluded that the effects of logging are more persistent and ecologically damaging than fire. It agreed with another Forest Service report that assessed that the most effective way to restore fire-damaged forest soils is to leave areas undisturbed until recovery has occurred.
Yet, despite all the research that is out there, the environmental community continues to take the heat for blatant Forest Service mismanagement. The general public does not understand that environmentalists are not opposed to the true “thinning” of forested areas to prevent large, hot fires near homes. We are opposed to logging projects that are nowhere near homes, in roadless areas, but are promoted under the guise of fire prevention. Vast amounts of research support the fact that the removal of the small trees and shrubs, not large old-growth trees, decreases fire risk and leads to healthier forests. Thinning and prescribed burning, when done correctly, can help restore natural conditions to our forests, and should be conducted in places where houses adjoin forests.
The landscape of Utah may change some due to the fires it has and will see this summer. But the change is nothing compared to the transformation it has undergone since the beginning of this century. Selective logging of old, fire resistant trees, road building, fire suppression and livestock grazing have dramatically altered our National Forest ecosystems for the worse. The drought we are currently experiencing only compounds these stresses on National Forests. The answer lies in the Forest Service using its own scientific fire information to protect homes and for western lawmakers to quit pandering to their timber industry contributors and inciting mass public hysteria. The answers to solve this problem have been scientifically researched and well documented by the Forest Service– and a good beginning would be to not blame the environmental community for wanting to protect our National Forests from negligent and harmful logging that actually increases fire risk.
