SCIENTISTS CALL FOR IMPROVED SCIENCE IN FIRE MANAGEMENT
By Bryan Bird, New West Unfiltered 12-06-07
“Management policies and plans may have long-lasting impacts on this nation’s forests and their native biodiversity. Since activities related to fire and fuels management may be factors in the decline of some species, we believe that one of the great strengths of the 2001 Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy is its prescription that each Fire Management Plan incorporate sound scientific principles that rely on the best available science,” wrote the 12 scientists. “We ask that you consider scientific information and principles directly applicable to fire ecology, fire management and biological conservation in the U.S. Forest Service's Fire Management Plans in the Southwestern Region.”
In response to the 1995 Federal Fire Policy and its revision in 2001, the national forests in the Southwestern Region developed Fire Management Plans. FMPs provide the underlying direction for fire management activities including fire suppression, prescribed burning, fuels reduction, post-fire rehabilitation and wildland fire use. In addition, the plans detail organizational and budgetary needs to implement an effective fire management program. But the FMPs in the Southwestern Region have not undergone any scientific review nor received normal approvals from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
“Our goal is to ensure that federal fire management policy and plans support and maintain the viability of native plant and animal species. We believe that the use of the best available science and consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should be requisites for Fire Management Plans,” wrote the scientists.
Unlike the Department of Interior in the Southwest, the U.S. Forest Service has not completed an environmental analysis on any of its fire management plans nor requested formal consultation from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Because of the potential negative impacts of fire suppression and the exclusion of fire as well as the potential benefits of allowing some fire back onto the landscape, the scientists are calling on the U.S. Forest Service to incorporate the best available science.
“It is time for the forest service to overhaul fire management and consider the benefits of fire in the forests of the Southwest as well as the potential negative impacts of putting it out at all cost,” said Bryan Bird, Public Lands Director at Forest Guardians. “The Forest Service spends millions of dollars snuffing fires that might actually being doing some good but we won’t know until the latest science is considered.”
http://www.fguardians.org/support_docs/letter_scientists_fire_biodiversity_11-29-07.pdf [End of article]
Corbin Newman, Regional Forester
C/o Lucia Turner, Acting Regional Forester
U.S. Forest Service, Region 3
33 Broadway, SE
Albuquerque, NM 87102
Abigail Kimbell, Chief
Forest Service
U. S. Department of Agriculture
Sidney R. Yates Federal Building
201 14th Street, SW
Washington, DC 20250
November 29, 2007
Re: Fire Management Plans and Environmental Analysis
Dear Mr. Newman and Ms. Kimbell,
We are writing as scientists with expertise in a variety of disciplines that are concerned with biological diversity, threatened and endangered species, fire ecology, and fire management effects on biodiversity. Our goal is to ensure that federal fire management policy and plans support and maintain the viability of native plant and animal species. We believe that the use of the best available science and consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should be requisites for Fire Management Plans.
The current Fire Management Plans for forests in the Southwest Region (New Mexico and Arizona) must be opened up to scientific review and public comment in order to ensure that fire policies are based on the best available science and will adequately safeguard native biodiversity. These plans never underwent independent scientific review and, as a result, many forests continue to suppress fires without regard to natural fire ecology. For instance, in response to a federal court order in 2005, the Forest Service has conducted an environmental analysis and environmental assessment to determine whether the continued nationwide aerial application of fire retardant to fight fires would result in any significant environmental impacts within the meaning of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969.
At least two recent published articles have tied rising temperatures to longer and hotter summer wildfire seasons. In August, U.S. Geological Survey scientists found increased tree mortality and wildfire risk in California's Sierra Nevada were tied to rising temperatures. And last year, an article published in the journal Science found that climate change is responsible for creating warmer springs, exacerbating large wildfires and making forest management techniques such as thinning and fire suppression less effective. The Science article concluded that annual changes in wildfire frequency are "strongly linked" to earlier spring snowmelts and hotter temperatures during the summer that lead to a longer dry season.
In August, a GAO report to Congress highlighted the failure of federal land management agencies to prioritize climate change in their strategic plans. The report concluded federal land and water resources are vulnerable to a wide range of effects from climate change, including changes in the timing of natural events such as wildfire, noting wildland fire size and severity are likely to further increase with climate change. In response, Forest Service Chief Abigail Kimbell acknowledged that only 12 of the 155 national forest plans address climate change.
Many populations of native species have declined and some now occur as isolated remnants of what once were larger and more complex systems. Management policies and plans may have long-lasting impacts on this nation’s forests and their native biodiversity. Since activities related to fire and fuels management may be factors in the decline of some species, we believe that one of the great strengths of the 2001 Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy is its prescription that each Fire Management Plan incorporate sound scientific principles that rely on the best available science. We ask that you consider scientific information and principles directly applicable to fire ecology, fire management and biological conservation in the U.S. Forest Service's Fire Management Plans in the Southwestern Region.
Sincerely,
The undersigned scientists
Thomas Antonio, PhD
College of Santa Fe
Ana Davidson, PhD
National University of Mexico D
ominick A. DellaSala, PhD
National Center for Conservation Science & Policy
Robert W. Dickerman, PhD
Museum of Southwestern Biology
T. Patrick Culbert, PhD
University of Arizona
Vincent P. Gutschick, PhD
New Mexico State University
Tim Lowrey PhD
Botany- U.C. Berkeley
Brian Miller, PhD
Wind River Ranch Foundation
David R. Parsons
The Rewilding Institute
Jerusha Reynolds, PhD
University of New Mexico
Gary W. Roemer, PhD
New Mexico State University
Howard L. Snell, PhD
University of New Mexico
Linda Wiener, PhD
St. John's College
In the time I have spent walking up and down the canyons and draws of the West, the appreciation for micro sites brought about by elevation change, slope and aspect, prior cultural burning, and many other special features, I have a problem seeing broadcast wildfire in the droughty time of the year as being a positve impact on forests, especially forests absent the cultural burning that created their diversity in the centuries past. That kind of fire burns the wet sites as well as the dry, and burns biological connectivity that results in insular habitats that might not be recoverable, ever.
I, too, would like to see a broader inquiry into burning, one that included historical cultural fire, the cause and effect by historical implication. All that I am reading seems to indicate that forests are more a creation of human endeavors over time than the random culmination of happenstance by Mother Nature or the Creator. Darwin studied an environment without a human influence. It is time for a long term human influence study to be included in addressing fire regimes and plans for current fire management parameters. A plea for science, and science only, in addressing the fire reality, is a plan for failure, if only because historical data will show that the human influence goes back further than birth of science. Science can explain the impacts of human or cultural fire, but it cannot change the course of past history, neither the good nor the bad, of millennia of human set fire on the landscape.
It is not the proactive suppression of fire at work in today's forests, but the century or more of prohibited cultural fire, and the almost complete extirpation of the setters of those fires that are resulting in more and larger fires. The forests evolved with human set fire and drought. Having far fewer, more widely spaced trees allowed for drought and for light intensity, fast fine fuel consuming fires, and was brought about by frequent human set fire. The tinder box of modern creation mostly suffers from a lack of interest or impetus to allocate the money needed to manage the public forests of the more sparsely populated West. In our Congress, there is much more representation from the East, the South, and the MidWest, who have the votes to keep tax monies closer to their interests than the West's. Letting fires burn, uncontrolled, is an economic decision not made in my backyard, but in theirs. And it is my backyard that suffers from wildland fire incursions onto private property with great cost and loss. The chairman of the House committee with the power over public lands is from West Virginia, his constituents more interested in coal mine safety and reclaimation than Arizona public land fire issues. A committee chairman determines what bills have hearings and what bills never see the light of a hearing or a vote. Who would know better how to operate in that arena than the Chief of the USFS, and Kimble does not have a snow ball's chance in Yuma of getting more money out of the budget process.
Fire policy has to work inside a process arrived at through a public conversation, at the least. This deal of having no accountability for asset or resource loss, in dollars, but keeping track of dollars spent to put out fire does not make sense, nor is it responsible to the public. Dollars spent at war are being counted, and estimates of the dollar value of destruction are kept. We should be doing that for wildland fire. What are the tangible and intangible values of no fire, suppressed fire, and unsuppressed fire? If you can assign a dollar figure to a poached animal, or stolen timber, then what value has that animal or that timber before unrestrained wildfire and what value have you after the fire? Those resources have finite values in the private sector, and I don't see how they disappear on the public estate.
A cost analysis of resumed cultural burning, as opposed to no cultural burning, needs to be looked at. If we remove fuels and burn, are we doing the forest more good than simply allowing any and all fire to run rampant? Where does the private sector fit in this, knowing that fire knows no metes nor bounds, has no compunction to stop at private property lines? Where does the term "reasonable" fit into the discussion? Does the public have the right to assurance that a reasonable effort will be made to keep them whole? Are learned scientists, in their concern for the public forests, going to address the collateral damage untrammelled fire coming from public land has on private lands?
Bear bait (John Thomas of Oregon), you are speaking in your own language and demonstrating a complete lack of fire ecology and management understanding. Why would anyone in their right mind intentionally allow fire to burn uncontrollably into private lands? This is nonsense and just directs the dialog back into a place of hysteria. No good policy comes from a place of fear, note our current middle east policy.
Can you clarify the difference between this concept of "cultural" burning vs. prescribed fire or wildland fire use? Most prescribed burning has pre-burn fuels treatments and wildland fure use is only undertaken when a full assessment of the fuels and natural fire type are made first.
These forests were burning long before any humans (indigenous or European) were lighting them up. Do you really think these forests evolved only because of human influence?
Science evolves, and the latest evolution indicates that man was here before the forests. During the last Ice Age, man took advantage of much lower sea levels to cross the north Pacific on the Bering Land Bridge or land and ice bridge. And they came following large animals that provided a great amount of food when you could kill one. The forests that existed were way south of where they are today. To survive as things warmed up, the forests of the West migrated upslope and north. The forests migrated not unlike humans. And not unlike we might see them do in a time of climate change and warming if, in fact, that is our future.
So, Bryan, you are incorrect if you state that forests were here and burning before man. Man came when the landscape was perpetual snow fields and ice, thousands of feet thick. And Western forests evolved with man, as he set fires to secure his safety, provide for his livelihood, and to create conditions favorable to human life. Evidently they did it well, as most who came here to record what they found, thought they had found an Eden.
If you don't think unfought fire from Wilderness and Roadless Areas burns private land, you evidently did not see the fires in the Los Angeles and Cleveland National Forests as they burned hundreds of homes. I have no idea how many WFU fires have burned over private land, but I helped a friend get grass seed to fight erosion on his totally burned over ranch. If you don't try to control fires, you will on many occasions lose control of the fire. At that point you have no idea where it will end and what all will be burned. Making the decision not to fight fires in the hottest time of the year in a period of drought just does not seem to be good public policy.
Cultural fire is the First People burnings to control the environment. There a now literally thousands of citations of their burning, covering a period of several thousand years, just from evidence visible today, and that visibility being lost at a goodly rate. Burning determined to a great degree what you and I see in forests and grasslands today. Not random wildfire, but set fires over thousands of years.
This issue that will be our undoing is the cult of instant gratification that is our people today. Our immediate ancestors destroyed a fire regime that was thousands of years old. To regain that level of security and the prior vegetative responses will take a century or more. But to get there, you have to start somewhere. Planning to let the landscape burn is not how to get there. Spending the time and capital of our treasury to litigate an answer while Rome burns is not the answer, either. Until the new, emerging ideas of how to repair the damage are heard, we will only go backwards. We are going backwards right now. The very idea that we can designate a parcel of land as Wilderness, untouched by the hand of man, is holding on to the beliefs of racism that perpetuated the genocide over 500 years of the First Peoples. Those people were here, used that land, created meadows, prairies in the middle of it, and that is still denied.
I may not be entirely correct, but I know that I am not totally wrong. Letting fire have its head is abbrogation of government responsibility and dangerous to private property, and should not be allowed. That being said, I would guess that now that USFS fire management can be held criminally and civily liable for human deaths resulting from their decisions, there will be lots of new tacks and course corrections as we sail into another fire season.
Well John.
You've ceratainly articulated yourself far better in this last post.
But I still do not see your "disagreement." Except that you are concerned about wildfires moving on to private landsa and additional wilderness designations.
I thought I made it celar in the last post that no one I know would intentionally allow prescribed fire near communities, at least not without serious measures in place first to ensure structure survivability (see Jack Cohen work from USFS science lab on structure ignitions).
As far as I understand, the fires in California this fall were not prescribed nor were they wildland fire use. So, I guess I'm missing your intended point.
Those fires were arsons that were completely out of control because of drought and meterological conditions (Re: Santa Anas). People were in the way of natural phenomena. If we are going to live/build in fire-prone landsacapes of the west (the fireplain), we must re-learn to live with fire.
Also, as far as I know, those communities that burned in CA were not abuting roadless forests or wilderness or even national forest. From what I understand, much of the area burned in the 2007 (which in terms of structures lost, acreage, and lives lost, was smallcompared to 2003) was non-federal. So, your blame is misplaced, John.
I do not beleve anyone is advocating that we should let "fire have its head" under all circumstances, only those were it can be done safely, under favorable conditions, and where no undue resource damage would occur. You want to paint fire advocates as one-size fits all, simplists, but our perspectives are much more complex and well-thought-out than you give us credit for.
Adviocating for more use of judicious fire to meet management objectives and save significant tax-payer dollars on other types of expensive fuel treatments has nothing to do with designating "a parcel of land as Wilderness, untouched by the hand of man" as you seem to infer. That's ludicrous.
I think you are draping your real fears in the cloak of fire and forest management: Private property and additional wilderness designations. Or you simply miss the heyday of industry monopoly of public lands. What is it?
Oh and you completely failed to answer the questions I presented in my last post:
1.Why would anyone in their right mind intentionally allow fire to burn uncontrollably into private lands?
2. Can you clarify the difference between this concept of "cultural" burning vs. prescribed fire or wildland fire use? Other than the first was lit by native peoples and the second is lit by a diversity of people in land management positions.