DEFENDING UTAH’S NATIONAL        

                   FORESTS

              Know the facts on

    W I L D F I R E

Utah is ablaze with wildfires in the summer. Drought and 90 years of fire suppression have only intensified the dry conditions of our thirsty forests and fires burn fast and hot. Lawmakers and the media continue to feed the flame of hysteria and misinformation that surround one of nature’s best cleaning tools, wanting to place the 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 environmental management.  This is because environmental organizations, like the UEC, want forest management policies based on science, not politics. To be able to recognize truth in all the smoke, we all need to be more educated about wildfire; not only the causes and consequences but what management practices are best for our forests and also serve to safeguard our communities.  The facts may not be what you expect.

ECOSYSTEMS NEED FIRE

When most of America was wilderness, wildfires burned 10 times the land that is consumed today. Yet, research shows forests were much healthier and hardier then. Wildfire is a natural part of forest ecosystems and is in fact, as necessary as water or sun. Fires cleanse and regenerate forests, giving new life to soil, and providing a new canvas for biodiversity to paint a new picture. Most all forest ecosystem types evolved with fire, and some trees, like the lodgepole pine, depend on the heat of fire to open their seed cones. A study conducted in 1995 found that of 146 threatened and endangered species of plants around the country, 135 benefited from wildland fire.  

Yellowstone has become a shining example of how fire can restore forest health. After the wildfires in 1988, fire ecologists have come from around the country, declaring the park a forest re-made. The area is slowly becoming lush again, with new animal and plant species finding their special niches in areas changed by fire. According to one scientist, despite the national hysteria following the park’s “let it burn” policy, Yellowstone today shows no signs of devastation. A forest marked by fire becomes more efficient, safer and often more diverse. “Nature is always seeking balance. Fires make that happen.”

LOGGING IN THE NAME OF “FOREST HEALTH”

Yet, fire as a restorative force is counter-intuitive to most of us. Wildfire conjures up pictures of a denuded landscape with black twisted trees and ground littered with ash. With this mental image, administrative and Forest Service officials have tried to take political advantage by proposing to gut environmental regulations to allow increased logging on National Forests. They claim environmentalist stand as obstructionists to projects such as the “thinning” of flammable timber and undergrowth.  They promote misinformation to raise hysteria so they can log in the name of “forest health.”

PLACING THE BLAME…

In reality, environmental groups, such as the UEC, do not challenge Forest Service projects that merely seek to reduce flammable undergrowth, especially in areas near homes. We urge the Forest Service to conduct more of these projects. 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 less than 2% of the fire-related projects that the Forest Service had proposed during the study period were challenged. But Forest Service projects hardly ever focus on thinning underbrush. There is no money to be made from shrubs, saplings and weeds. The majority of the projects we see center around the removal of economically valuable, mature and old-growth trees.

….AND DISREGARDING THE RESEARCH

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 increase it.”  Commercial logging removes the trunk, the most flame retardant part of the tree. What is left is 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 all 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 that “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.”  

Damaging Forest Service projects do not only focus on “preventive” fire measures, but also try to reap the rewards of wildfire aftereffects. “Salvage” logging removes the dead trees from a fire-swept area, causing huge setbacks in regeneration and increases 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 scientific research of the Forest Service. The research recommends that leaving large dead trees in the forest after a burn prevents future sever 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 this evidence, as is shown in its action with the Bitteroot National Forest fire.  This project to “restore” the forest after the fire has resulted in the largest timber sale in history.

CAUSES OF WILDFIRE: COWS, ROADS & PEOPLE

The other main contributors to large-scale, severe-burning fires including grazing, roads and people. Grazing spreads non-native, flammable plants. Livestock eat native plants that feed the small, healthy ground fires, and don’t eat the flammable shrubs that spring up in place of the native vegetation.  Roads fragment forests and weaken ecosystems by opening areas up to people and flammable plants.  A higher road density leads to an increase in people, and more people bring more fires.  Road density is incredibly high in National Forests; currently there are 400,000 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 areas.  Over the past ten years, nearly 80% of all wildfires were started by people – usually on or adjacent to a road.   

We need to consider not only the facts we know about wildfires but also the motives behind the policies that come from our lawmakers and Forest Service officials. The Forest Service is run by a former timber industry lobbyist, Mark Rey, who will finagle any means possible to “get the cut out.” 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 roadbuilding is continually unheeded or shot down.  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 USFS, Dale Bosworth, in front of the Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health. 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.  

IT’S NOTHING NEW

The number of wildfires the nation is experiencing is also not that severe, when considered in the context of the past 80 years. According to an 80 year average from the National Interagency Fire Center, the average burned per year is over 14 million acres, and as of the middle of July, we had only burned a little over 3 million acres or around 20% of the average.  Early in the last century, wildfires burned cooler and covered large areas over a long period of time. As we have improved fire suppression, and as we have moved closer to forested areas, our tolerance of wildfires has greatly decreased.    

Yet, despite all the research that is out there, the environmental community continues to take the heat. The general public does not understand that environmentalists are not opposed to the “thinning” of forests to prevent large, hot fires near homes. We are opposed to the way in which such projects are done.  Vast amounts of research supports the fact that the removal of the small stuff, not the old-growth trees, decreases fire risk and leads to healthier forests.  Thinning and prescribed burning, when done right, can help bring back natural conditions to our forests, and should be encouraged in places where houses adjoin forests.

NATURE KNOWS

The landscape of Utah may change somewhat, 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. The drought we are experience only compounds these stresses on habitat. But amazingly enough, if we don’t interfere, nature will again try to restore itself. The forests of Utah know drought, they know fire, and they know how to recover and repaint a beautiful landscape.  We just need to give them the chance.