From The New West Blog

Defending Homes from Wildfire Costs Montana Millions

Comment By Dave Skinner, 8-22-08

Why did I just know that this would get play. Anything to turn building or owning a home in the woods into a "bad thing." Right, we have this amenity economy that's attracting all these in migrants, especially now that we killed our basic economy of forestry and are now working hard on the aggies, and killing forestry sure seems to be killing the forests through mega fire...oh, the fires (which are ALWAYS natural and desirable, no matter the size, timing, duration or what gets burnt) can still burn and it would be so much CHEAPER if there were no homes in the way of a real doozy....
Wow, now THAT makes sense.
HWE's causal relationshipmaking has always struck me as biased and faulty. This is just more of the same. Thanks for the link, tho, New West, it's always fun to read fiction.

Comment By Jedediah Redman, 8-22-08

I'm all in favor of taxpayers paying for the prevention of unexpected flood damage to homes built on flood plains and unexpected fire damage to home built in the forest.

Comment By bear bait, 8-23-08

Hold it people!!!! The Piss Fir Willies might be on to something. And the ivory tower thinkers, too. If you burn the forest to a crisp, to mineral earth, and keep it that way, there is no threat to homes. So let the USFS have their way with oxidizing the whole of the vegetation, and then it will be safe to build millions of homes in the newly cleared landscape. That is the Wildland Fire Use plan, right? Burn it now, in a pre-emptive "fire use" benign neglect management program, and then the issue of homes is moot.

That is a much maligned American strattergy, that this country has employed in the past. "Burn 'em out, Ringo Kid. It will be like shooting rats when they leave the barn." Or was that Viet Nam, where is was destroy the village to save the village....from communism...."I love the smell of napalm in the morning." Napalm is still used to set slash burns with a helitorch. Aluminum oxide and gasoline makes a wonderful gel that can drip intact while aflame. It makes it look like the helicopter is shitting fire. Habeneros on your Wheaties...

The first thing we have to do if we don't want homes within 30 miles of public forests is to quit breeding. No more kids. And then do something about immigration because 3/4 of any US population increase has been due to immigration. We can abort enough to stay even, but those damned immigrants still come here, and have babies. The next thing is to tax the money makers, the rain makers, to mineral earth. Take all that extra money, the obscene money, and let Obama spend it on people who generationally won't work, can't work, run from work, run from education, and manage to eat themselves, at government expense, into health care problem disasters. That is where to spend all the extra obscene money the entrepreneurs keep piling up. Of course, they might just desert this place, and go where they can keep a buck to live and work, and that would solve that ugly problem of people not working. No jobs, and less money to dole. OH, and we can make them healthy by requiring all Ag be Organic. That way the farmers can't make money, either, and we have half the food we need. That will solve the health problems of overeating.

With no big piles of money wanting to park itself in amenity property, the whole home building within 30 miles of the forests will go away on its own. And Montana can go back to being a backwater natural resource extraction poor blob of nothingness. A nice place to raise your children in clean air and generational poverty. There is a difference, you know, to having a few million in a cabin that is used seasonally, than having to make it year around in a manufactured home in the knapweed, and commuting to your job at the convenience market/gas station on the freeway. But that is not the problem. It is those damned houses the millionaires keep wanting to build, and all that money they spend like water to make sure the recycled wood and native stone is compatible with the landscape. Or like the architect would have it. All closer than 30 miles of forests.

The old hooktender told me I could wish into one hand, and poop into the other, and I would know which would fill first blindfolded. And that is just what this study is about.

Comment By Hal Herring, 8-23-08

ugh, gee, I thought the study was about people who build their homes in a forest that burns evey fifty years, and then other people have to pay and risk their safety to protect the homes when the forest burns like it has for 10,000 years....and the insurance stuff, where I live in town but have to pay extra preimium costs because some people live in very risky places and when they get burned out, the company has to pay which increases costs across the board...gee I am so naive. I never realized it was all a big conspiracy to keep people from developing the forests....I thought we just wanted to kow what the implications of the development might be, since it seemed like an obvious question, esp. when I was in the Bitterroot in summer of 2000.

But now I know. Any study that questions the benefits of logging or development in the forest or filling in wetlands or, or, or, fire supppression or or or, is BAAAAAAD. Junk Science!!!! Ah, ah, I'll tell you perfesssor, I'll put a boot in yo ass, see how much thinkin you can do then!!!! College boy! You ask too many kweschuns, nancy-boy. Economics, my behungus. I'll show you econoomics!

Being stoooppid is relaxin.

Idiocracy is not just a movie comedy about the future, baby. Just look out the window!

Comment By bear bait, 8-23-08

I have earthquake insurance, at a cost well and above fire insurance. Who is in that pool? Fire insurance in Boondoggle Canyon is going to be different than fire insurance in a cement condo with sprinklers in Metropolis City.

The joke about this fire suppression is that fire is going to burn where it wants, where the fuel is, according to a random set of events on an hourly basis. No matter where you locate non-vertical flammable housing, some fire will get there sooner or later unless there is some suppression effort. The issue has been and will be "defensible space." Will you, will the zoning rule permit you, will common sense allow you to disregard aesthetics and construct a defensible space? And if not, then who would sell you insurance? I have had fishing boats, and if they were not maintained, up to snuff, you could not buy insurance. The insurance in a town with a fire department, fire mains located at set intervals, paved wide streets, alarm systems, all lower insurance rates. If Joe McCool's house up BummerLamb Canyon burns because it is build in a chimney, with not attempt or effort at defensible space, it is not going to affect your insurance in town...If Joe has insurance, he is paying through the nose.

But the issue of homes and fires is overstated. If the government, as it now does, gives no (zero) value to timber, plants, animals, watersheds, clean water, and the county has a home on the tax rolls at an appraised price, the cost/benefit ratio is high to save a home and nothing to save a forest. And that is how it now works. Sort of. Actually, the USFS is rated on their cost per acre of suppression. If they burn 100,000 acres in a WFU with a "watch" crew of a half dozen, they end up spending a dollar an acre on fighting that fire. That it incinerated a few million dollars worth of timber, ruined some soil for a century and thousands of tons of it left forever in the plume, fouled a couple of lakes and streams, is not accounted for. Only their low cost of suppression. And when they have to spend money to protect Joe McCool's mal-placed home from the fire, they whine. About the money they had to spend. Not about all the money they did not spend to suppress the fire when it was one lightening strike, before it oxidized millions of dollars of public resources, and cause air and water pollution far in advance of what humans create in the same time, and for what? To save money? Government money saving. Oxymoronic at its least, and unadulterated stoooopidity at the best.

Saving a double wide 1974 Marlette as opposed to saving a section of mature timber is a no brainer: save the timber. But that is not how government works. They spend a half million dollars to save a trailer than can be replaced for $5000. People will give those old trailer homes to you if you haul them away. But the stamp collectors have to save the home. Their Green Stamp book won't get filled saving trees and wildlife and streams. Fire makes them better. Or that is what the learned ones are telling us. Fire is a good thing. I think fire is a good thing if it is burning your property but a terrible thing when it burns mine. I can think that. Does not make it right. And WFU, wildland fire use, is not right. And when the fire decides to "blow up", and make a run on town, who's fault is that, really? Weather? or damned poor judgement?

Forests have now been neglected by the government for all too long. It is time that a new regime, one not based on destruction but in restoration, takes its place. And that means that logging will happen, and trails will be maintained and new ones built. It is about care and nurture, terms alien to lawyers.

Comment By Jedediah Redman, 8-23-08

Barebate is as bright as most libertarians.
We should be thrilled when he deigns to share his collection of bumper sticker cliche solutions with us...

Comment By Hal Herring, 8-23-08

Thank you, bearbait.

Joe Blow may be paying through the nose for his insurance, but he is still subsidized by the fire department and the FS and and the people who will have to try and rescue his ill-planned home. And emergency providers know this: when the drunken moron falls off the roof and into the manure pond, some EMT is going to jump in there, no matter how dangerous or nasty it is, and try to save him. Firefighters try to save homes, try to save people. So that may not be something that can be fixed. I don't believe you are correct that paying for Joe Blow's burnt up Mcmansion does not affect the price of insurance across the board. That is not true of floodplain developments and coastal developments, and it defies reason to think it is true of fire. It may be, but I'd have to see that proved.

And I'm extremely puzzled at this point. When I worked in the woods, girdling mistletoed doug fir and thinning lodgepoles and slashing, or logging out doghair thickets, I was always told that fire suppression was responsible for many of the ills that we were trying to fix- doug fir invading Pondy lands, mistletoe infections, etc. Juniper invasion of grasslands, etc. Always told that fire suppression led to fuel buildup that caused catastrophic fires versus the ones that made all those black marks on all those thousands of giant yellow Pondys that are one of the most beautiful trees on earth and one of the more valuable. Now are you trying to say that we need to bring back fire suppression?

That we can bring back fire suppression and then go in and thin everything, mechanically, and create a healthier forest?

Because that's what it sounds like, and I don't know any real foresters who believe that. What's the plan?

Comment By bear bait, 8-23-08

Man arrived on this continent BEFORE temperate zone forests, at the end of the last ICE AGE, when most of the landscape was covered with perpetual snow and ice. And when temperatures moderated, and vegetation began to grow on the once ice covered land, man was here to manipulate the vegetation to his benefit. The fire science people have all this evidence of fire and landscapes kept cleaned by fire, all in areas that have incidence and location of lightening that cannot statistically support "natural" ignition as a plausible source of fire. Man has been here lighting fires at provident times, for millennia. Anthropogenic fire is what got us here, and has been missing since Europeans came with metes and bounds, and lawyers to enforce those boundaries. Depending upon lightening to do that job, in an era of huge fuel buildups, is a lame way to accomplish a needed goal of forest restoration. Letting fires burn at the highest tinder times of the year does not make sense, and did not make sense to people 500 years ago or 5000 years ago. Why we think we have improved in that area is to entertain environmental narcissism of the highest order. "Wildland Fire Use" is patently insane as now practiced. It is a very poor, bad in fact, use of a good intentions.

So, the path to restoration has to be reduction in fuel, and that means that trees have to be cut to fuel biomass generators, stud mills, even dimension and board sawmills. The understories have to be cut out and removed, and the large trees, and the ancient trees are to be left, but left so that crowns have good separation, and fires find it difficult to run across the crowns. And after that, slash and underbrush is burned, allowed to regrow, and burned again. And to do that, air quality standards have to reflect the idea that smoke is going to be in the air, in finite amounts, whether it is a planned burn, or wildland fire of any ignition source. No matter who or what fires the forest, smoke is a byproduct of good burns and bad burns. If impediments to burning are national air cleanliness standards, then wildfires have to be suppressed at their beginning, also. As it now stands, the air pollution impacts of WFU are not recorded, accounted for, examined by the NEPA process as required by law. If a purposefully set fire can be challenged on an air quality basis, then WFU too, can be challenged, and I will bet will be. I think that lawsuit is being considered as I write by a wealthy family whose private ranch was just burned through by a WFU fire that "got away." Trespass by fire. If smoke from ag can be disallowed by law, then smoke from wildfire unfought will also be challenged.

I am not in any way against judicious use of fire to cleanse the forest. I would argue for it at every juncture if it were planned for the time of year when rampant fire storms were not plausible. I would argue for end of season set fire, that would see a predicted winter storm oncoming to put it out in short order or at least dampen it so that it did creep and smolder and reduce fuels without the sure possibility of firestorm on the next wind. I would argue for spring burns on wet soils, and suppression when weather warms and fuels dry out to a dangerous state. If pre-Columbian Americans were capable of creating and maintaining the magnificent forests found by European explorers, without satellite weather prediction and monitoring, and without fuel moister meters, hand held wind speed and direction equipment, then certainly can we do that job today, with greater efficacy and efficiency. Or so I would think. We can get there from here, but it will involve cutting and removing biomass, trees and logs, and building some roads and setting fires, and more fires. It will be a long and arduous journey with bumps in the road, and failures, and some downright beautiful results that will make even the most hardened hearts sing. But to do nothing but sit back and watch it all burn is just not who we are, as a species, and what we do. If instant measurable gratification is what you must have, then we all are going to be disappointed. It will take a long, long time to get there from here. After all, the original masters were long ago removed or killed, and nothing has been done on a landscape basis for close to two hundred years. Someone's ancestors once managed to make a pretty important landscape out of vast areas, and we can do it once again. And should.

Comment By Jedediah Redman, 8-24-08

Trying to shift blame to aborigines is a not too unusual libertarian dodge in any argument; but our culture has been singularly unaffected by aboriginal traits or societal habits.
To say our present conundrums are anything but northern European in origin is casuistry.
Capitalism is based on opposing and defeating nature and other men.
It is surprising to discover that Libertarians approve of tree farms as opposed to natural forests...

Comment By Hells Anus, 8-24-08

The cost of this is just tiny compared to the cost of supposedly fighting the fires.I have not once ever seen a wildland fire fighter doing a damn thing when it comes to actually attempting to fight a blaze.The recent Mt.Sentinel fire in Missoula consisted of about 3 guys just standing on the fire line until nightfall came and with cool moist air and brought the blaze to a standstill.About 30 other degenerates who only work once a year or less (depending on fires or not) just stood there smoking cigarettes in the parking area of Dornblazer field looking important with their fed issue walkie-talkies.As always they were full-time wellfare recipients,ex-convicts,white-trash and others who depend on the average working tax payer during the time of year when their not sitting in a fire camp eating steak and lobster brought in by catering companies at the expense of a federal and state budgetWhat a F-----g joke!And Conrad Burns got serious heat for addressing the same truth!

Comment By Non-Native Trustafarian, 8-24-08

And its Bear Bait by a nose!Due to the fact those other 2 Queers couldn't seem to make any sense.No matter how educated they tried to sound.

Comment By bear bait, 8-24-08

If a "wildland use fire" kills a stand of 700 year old trees, as several have in California this year, is there a way to have again a stand of 700 year old trees without waiting for at least 700 years?

If trees that old are necessary, as we have been told many, many times, to be a part of the older fire resistant kind of forest that will harbor and provide for spotted owls, after the WFU incinerates the stand, all is lost. It is gone. And with it the chance that climate and geology won't allow that kind of forest to again occupy that place in the landscape. That was the argument against logging of old trees, and removing them with fire still removes them. We have to get there from here without that result, and WFU does not allow, nor does it encourage, sensible fire. Add to that the "back fires" and "burn outs" and it looks on the fire maps that maybe more of the lost vegetation is from burn outs and back fires that it is from the WFU. And that smells. That smells like increasing acreage to lower per acre costs of suppression on the cheap. That is not a forester fighting a fire, but an auditor fighting a budget item.

WFU is a bad, bad deal, and I am calling it a bad, bad deal. So if you think I am wrong, tell me where and how. With facts, science, and proven results, and the ability to use false positives and all the other stuff statisticians use to prove a theory. No emotions. No platitudes. Real stuff.

Comment By Jedediah Redman, 8-24-08

Nature pleasing to homo sapiens is barebate's ideal, I guess. I'm curious about what it might be like with as little input from homo sapiens as possible.

Comment By bear bait, 8-25-08

I see a lot of photos in summer of "historic cabin" wrapped in tinfoil as some WFU has its way with trees and duff. Or lookout towers, wilderness ranger stations, and all kinds of historic structures that have a federal, congressional, mandate to be preserved. You have to remember that the Antiquities Act protects anything over 50 years old on public forest land. Even on land that was private 50 years ago, and is now in the public lands fold. A few years back, some fellas were busted by the USFS Rent-a-cops for digging up bottles from old privy holes where the Klamath Indian logging camp was in what is now the Winema National Forest (all formerly Klamath lands until the elder Bennett, a Utah Senator, tried to "normalize" Indian America by forcing reservation sell offs, mostly to the Feds). There was a reason for the Act, in that the USFS was hard at destroying all the CCC built structures in what later became "Wilderness Areas" by legislation. Congress fixed the USFS penchant for wholesale destruction. And will again with this WFU deal of letting fires burn until they leave government land and start burning private and State protected lands and buildings. That is when the costs go up in fire fighting: After some idiot has let the fire grow to holocaust size, and then leaves the "reservation" to go to town....and then town is, of course, in their thinking, far too close to the Forest...Bah!!! That is crap!! Illogical crap. If we have to have an ever increasing buffer between public land and private land, the end is to have it all public land....Comrades.....and maybe that is the real intent after all. One world government, all land held in common. Like they can't make it work on what they have now, the Feds, so why would any thinking person believe that more would make it better or easier????

Many of the building having to be protected are public structures, in the forest, where they have been for a long time, and to be protected by law. Congressional law mandates their protection. And protecting the public and private property from wildfire from public lands is correct and right and necessary. Or, would you rather have a government that protects nothing? Every man and woman for him or her self....Darwinian selection of the fit, and doom to the unfit...selective government protection, like when the fire roars down the country towards the Brokaw ranch, all kinds of protection shows up and now!! That is what we want? The rich and famous get protection and the public asset is allowed to incinerate? Maybe that is how it is. But that is not how it should be...

Fighting fire or islamic zealots intent on killing all infidels, both cost money. Fighting genocidal maniacs across the world costs money. Should we do everything we can, without budget limitation, to end the slaughter in Dafur? Afghanistan? Iraq? Or do we cut and run...have the Timber Baron Foreign Policy? And the Timber Baron Forest policy, where who cares how much public land burns? The property owning, land managing public, has every right to expect government to protect them from fire from the public estate. If fire breaks out on private property, then the public has every right to expect that private landowners pay to protect their land and suppress the fires.

In Oregon, the Dept of Forestry ONLY fights wildland fire. Structure protection is the bailiwick of the Governor, and only he can declare the emergency that marshals pre-determined and organized structure protection units from local city and rural fire departments across the state. Most of the time they are fighting to protect homes from fires that originated on public lands, many of which had WFU designation until they grew too large or just plain blew up into conflagrations. Just another gift from the USFS that comes with costs down the road. Saves them money and costs the rest fortunes. Bad policy being fought with good policy and other public money and tax appropriations for fire protection. A surcharge on owning wildlands paid to fight fire.

All that I want is for the USFS to put their Wildland Fire Use planning and program through the NEPA process, with full public input. Just like they have to do when they build a new toilet in a campground or install new culverts or try to sell some timber.

Comment By bear bait, 8-25-08

J. Redman: what we have now in forest management IS what you propose. No human inputs. Natural. But new. New to here in the last 200 years of all the time since the last Ice Age....and guess what? It isn't working for the plants, the trees, the critters or the humans. We have had time enough with that model to now know it does not work IF what we want is to have a place that looks like a place that was deigned to be preserved. Hasn't worked. The end of logging to save spotted owls has now seemed to have accelerated their demise, mostly by having their habitat usurped by Barred owls of a more aggressive nature. And allowing it all to burn is not quite what seems to please some people. Preservation does not mean change. And all that seems to have happened is change. And a lot of it not pleasing to the human aesthetic. The "cost" is not accounted for. There is no "cost" for lost resources in the public domain. The "cost" issue is budget item on the Federal Register. It is the amount of appropriated funds needed to cover the bills. Missing assets have no "cost." Anyway, the USFS budget is mostly about cops, security (terrorist proof offices and hdqs.), and law enforcement. Ooops. We just burned the shit out of this forest, and now you can't use it because of all the danger and lost trails, dry ravel landslides, erosion, windfalls. Sorry, but this campground is closed, and that one, ad infinatum....and the sorry deal about it all, is that the US Govt whines about a billion dollars to suppress fire but not when a billion here and a billion there goes down the drain in "helping" people who don't, won't, can't help themselves. Welfare scams, contracting scams, pork barrel crap to senior Senators and Representatives home districts. Davis-Bacon wages...there a lots of solid billions that circle the potty once or twice and then disappear down that watery whirlpool, and nobody cares. That is what is discouraging about this government led by either party.

Comment By Craig Moore, 8-26-08

What makes more sense, spending billions rebuilding New Orleans to face the next unstoppable hurricane, or spending a few million on smart forestry and fire management that has a real chance to protect Montana homes? The cost-benefit dynamic seems to favor Montana.

Comment By Matthew Koehler, 8-26-08

We've heard a lot of rhetoric above about the need to do more logging in the forest to protect homes. Craig's most recent comment is just the latest. For those who truly want a "real chance to protect Montana homes" I suggest you abide by the recommendations of the US Forest Service's leading home protection expert, Jack Cohen.

According to Cohen and his extensive research at some of the most (in)famous fires in recent years (Haymen, Missionary Ridge, Bitterroot, Rodeo-Chedeski, Summerhaven, et al) without a doubt the most important work needs to be done at the home and its immediate surroundings.

I saw Cohen speak a few weeks ago at a Rattlesnake Valley (Missoula) wildfire protection meeting. His powerpoint presentation, which is based on his extensive research, offered a few sobering facts and even more sobering images.

One such fact, based on his CSI-type research, was this statement from Cohen: "So you might be asking yourself, 'What's going on here? I thought high-intensity fires with big flames burned down homes and communities.' Well, from the research and investigations I've done that is not happening."

Time and again, Cohen pointed to the simple things that burned down homes, such as needles piled up on the roof, a broom placed next to the house, flammable patio furniture, etc. Time and again, Cohen showed vivid photos or video, which clearly showed homes burning down with green trees and vegetation all around the neighborhood.

Cohen's message is that we need "Ignition Resistant Homes" and that homeowners bear the responsibility of making sure that they are prepared for wildfire and take the simple steps to make sure their homes are "ignition resistant."

I'm sure some people will strongly resist this common sense action and will post comments attacking myself or Mr. Cohen. However, more than likely this will just illustrate what some people's real motives are.

If you truly want to protect homes and communities from wildfire, the simple steps are pretty clear.

Comment By Craig Moore, 8-26-08

Matt, you wrote: "We've heard a lot of rhetoric above about the need to do more logging in the forest to protect homes. Craig's most recent comment is just the latest."

Actually, I never said anything about logging or was even thinking about it. My thoughts are focused on Gustav as some of the models are showing that it may take a worrisome track into the Gulf and towards New Orleans. It strikes me as odd that those that are most vocal about man's inability to alter nature's fury don't have more to say about hurricanes and cities like New Orleans. Where is the most low hanging fruit to address in changing our practices? Where is the cost-benefit dynamic highest through intervention?

Comment By Matthew Koehler, 8-26-08

Craig, Are you saying the WildWest Institute should issue a press statement about Gustav and New Orleans? Out of curiosity, what would that look like exactly?

And as far as "low hanging fruit to address in changing our practices" I believe that Mr. Cohen's research/investigations has identified quite a wealth of "low hanging fruit" as far as protecting homes from wildfire, as well as increasing firefighter safety and lowering fire suppression costs is concerned.

Comment By bear bait, 8-26-08

Craig: you would be correct IF the USFS kept financial score of assets saved. The Coast Guard does that. They can tell you to the penny who much property they saved with SAR efforts, marine safety inspections, the like. But the USFS has NO, ZERO, number for property saved or timber value or "priceless" (I guess that means that it has no value in their view) habitat and landscapes saved.

So in New Orleans, you can give a value to every domicile, business, piece of infrastructure, schools, what have you, and come up with a cost/benefit number. But not, never, in the USFS fire fighting arena. That is a cost, and that cost will have to be borne by the agency from the finite number their budget is assigned in terms of dollars. They are fighting fire now, using trail, recreation, fuels reduction money in their budget. Congress is the largest collection of horse's asses in this country, and the USFS budget is their portrait. If stupidity could be put on a balance sheet, a ledger, the premier example of that art would be the USFS budget as it now stands. More than half of those Congresspersons who will not give the USFS an adequate budget are right now in Denver swooning over "change." Don't bet on that happening.

As for Montana, the plan is to burn all of the USFS lands, once or more, because "it is natural." Evidently, the famous U of Montana system has no access to the ethnobotanists and forest historians and fire ecologists who have written extensively about pre-Columbian fire regimes, set fire, in the creation of the "old growth" ecosystems that are so hallowed in the halls and so the target of purposeful incineration and conflagration. That none protest incineration of the very forests they purport to value seems so strange to me.

Only minutes ago I read in the Portland Oregonian a letter to the editor that the Pape' family has no right to sue the USFS because USFS was saving the taxpayers money in not fighting the fire in a wilderness, expressed as Wildland Fire Use, a management decision that has yet to undergo scrutiny in the NEPA process. The opining forester then went on to compare WFU burning your property as the same as wind blowing down trees or the shingles off your roof at the coast. I am scratching my head over that analogy, in that you can snuff a fire when it is small, but I know of none who can control wind. There is a difference.

The opining forester maintains that the Pape' family should have managed the fuels on their property because it is forest land and fires burn in forests. So a disaster strikes, and the opining forester says they should not expect to be bailed out by the rest of us for such predictable damage.

With that in mind, I then suggest we remove ALL dams in the US. All levees. Floods happen. Droughts are to be expected. Don't expect the rest of us to bail out those who live by streams and rivers, along the lowlands of the East Coast. Floods and hurricanes are to be expected, and the rest of us should not be expected to bail out those who live below dams, behind levees, on the coasts. Because that is the USFS fire response, in theory, and now in practice. Sorry. Fire is natural and we can't waste time and effort to put them out. Live where a fire can't burn you out. And the Congress is not funding the effort to fight fire, so you know that is now national policy.

Has anyone asked what the Obama outlook for forests might be? Or are we just waiting for his minders at the NGOs to tell him, along with a check from their political arm?

Comment By Craig Moore, 8-26-08

Matt, you seem to be passing a pine cone coming out backwards. A bit out of sorts. Maybe someone else will oblige your desire for an unnecessary fight. If you found the shoes a perfect fit, be my guest.

Comment By Matthew Koehler, 8-26-08

Craig, you really lost me on that last one. Are you describing a fantasy of yours or what? Regardless, I thought this article was about "protecting homes from wildfire and how costs can be reduced." If you believe my comments pointing to the research and detailed investigations of the US Forest Service's leading expert on the issue of home protection is nothing more than my "desire for an unnecessary fight" so be it. My comments seem a little more "on topic" than you writing about a storm headed towards New Orleans or a pine cone coming out of my butt.

Comment By Matthew Koehler, 8-26-08

Hello Mr. Bear Bait (Who is really Jon Thomas of Oregon):

You state above that "As for Montana, the plan is to burn all of the USFS lands...."

I'm not familiar with such a "plan." Could you please provide any documentation to back up your notion that there is a "plan" in place in Montana to "burn all of the Forest Service lands?" Thanks.

Also, the following comment from Tom Tidwell, Regional Forester of USFS Region 1, was in a recent guest column he had in the Missoulian. Mr. Tidwell stated, "In recent years, wildland firefighters have caught 97 percent of the new starts before they could grow into large fires. Achieving that kind of success will be one of our objectives again this fire season."

Catching "97 percent of the new starts before they could grow into large fires" and "Achieving that kind of success will be one of our objectives again this fire season" doesn't strike me as a plan to "burn all of the Forest Service lands" in Montana.

Comment By steve kelly, 8-26-08

So, is there still any reason to have a Forest Service? Why pay for something (it burns with 'em, or without 'em, right?)we can get for free? State's rights and all that. No more subsidies for individuals or industry. That'll about cover it. Oh, I almost forgot: "Vote Freedom!"

Comment By bear bait, 8-26-08

Matt: read the Wildland Fire Use plan for Region 1....and examine the wfu experience of the last two years. Add up the acres. Divide the acres into the whole of the Region 1 ownership, and tell me how many years it is going to take to burn it all at the current rate of benign neglect due to fire being natural and wfu allowing fires to burn without any suppression efforts.....until, of course, they become conflagrations and begin their trek to town.

Of course, the wfu action is an in-house plan, no shared or vetted or examined by the public through the NEPA process. No EIS is filed, no pre-season objectives noted or announced. Logging goes through all sorts process, to remove trees. WFU goes through no process: just let the fire burn until weather or man HAS to TRY to suppress it. Which is always a lot harder when those fires are thousands of acres instead of a part of one acre.

Now if that is not a plan to burn it all, then what would you call it? Or, if the plan is not public, nor has to be, is there a plan at all, for any of it? WFU or suppression? Or is this all a budget item for the Govt. bean counters in D.C. who don't have a pony in the race, a tree in the forest?

Comment By Dave Skinner, 8-27-08

The thing here is there is a reason vacuum. The Forest Service has lost all its thinkers to retirement or apathy in the face of stupidity. It is not leading the parade any more. The grassroots public is not going to bother, not with the idiots in Congress; so what does that leave? The foundational hacks like Headwaters and Wildwest to set the terms of the discussion for those few of us remaining in the rational camp to refute. For free.
Thanks, Baitster.

Comment By Matthew Koehler, 8-28-08

Dave, You're correct. There is a reason vacuum here and you and Jon Thomas (aka Bear Bait) are illustrating the point perfectly. The discussion we are having here is how to properly and effectively protect homes from wildfire. Get that?

I have always provided the public and homeowners with the information that they need - and the simple steps they need to take - to effectively protect their homes from wildfire, help ensure firefighter safety and maybe even help reduce the over all cost of fighting these fires. Mr. Cohen's research and investigations provide cold, hard facts and his recommendations about preventing home ignitions are irrefutable. Another good source of information on the subject is http://www.firewise.org. Additionally, WildWest helped form FireSafe Montana and one of our employees currently serves as the president of that organization. Our organization has also raised money to hire local fuel reduction crews to do this type of "firewise" work around the homes of elderly and disabled members of the public.

What have you done lately, Dave, to help educate homeowners about the simple steps they need to take to protect their homes from wildfire and do their part to ensure firefighters can safely defend their homes if need be?

Comment By bear bait, 8-28-08

All the home protection squeals are from the wrong perspective. The buildings, all called homes for some reason, that are at risk are first and foremost USFS structures, many from the CCC days of long ago, historical lookouts, and back country ranger stations and way stations, plus a scattering of inholders, who are mostly in the hospitality business. The homes that go up in groups are usually fired by human set fires on private lands, or wrong headed wildland use fires gone astray.

And that is my issue: Wildland Fire Use, as now practiced and constructed, is a piss poor bang for the dollar for the American public. A preponderance of the big fires that take the big suppression dollars are WFU fires that defied domestication by our USFS, now a collective body of ignorance. That body of ignorance exists because the USFS underwent a three decade long purge of ability, skills, institutional memory, and replaced a vast human body of knowledge with social engineering slot fillers. GED educated rangers from Job Corps camps with ethnic or racial characteristics that filled the paint by the numbers diversity canvas, masters degrees ignored in promotion because the holder was a white male and anything other was preferred to fill that slot in numbers and pay grade. And after thirty years of landscape architect forest supervisors, and recreation degreed Regional Foresters (now the USFS Op. Officer), all filling those slots based on genital type or racial profile or at the least, not being a white male, has left the USFS without an institutional memory of how to get any job done except a power point on hiking opportunity, or some NGO supervised study on a particular plant or animal. And they are proud of themselves and are self congratulatory in their achievements, while the forests are diminished daily by conflagration, disease, and neglect. It is a diverse force of bureaucrats that have proven, on an annual basis, that they cannot get anything done, please a court, or protect the very assets in their charge. It is not a sexist, racist, discriminatory outfit in anyway, unless of course, you are a white male. Nevertheless, the Outfit no longer functions as much more than tiny government fortresses in small towns, not making a positive contribution to the local economy or society. Divisive might be the word.

Congress, it appears, has responded to this devolved agency, both in skills and personnel numbers, and sees no reason to bolster its till, or to further its aims at totally messing up the very environment and geography they were once tasked to protect and nurture. I don't think Congress had in mind the USFS-NGO plan to incinerate most of the forest and range lands. Can't wrap their minds around the concept. So, with a larger fire budget this year, the imbeciles in Fire Mgmt have managed to to turn a couple of dozen or more WFU fires into conflagrations that went to town, to others' properties, and now are costing tens of millions each to control and with some luck, and the onset of winter, suppress, leaving behind vast swaths of dead trees, and missing soil, and land devoid of the organic material to provide fertile soils. And they call that a successful action. Sort of like population control with an AK-47: not pretty, but effective, and the regrowth in years to come might not be what was desired. Random is random, a lottery if you will. One winner paid by all the losers, and Uncle takes his vigorish. WFU is a lottery, and lotteries have few winners, and many losers. Who has the winning number? And the Congress is apprised of this, one message at a time, from constituents, daily. They are not nice, polite missives of praise. They are angry, pissed off, notes of disgust by people who want this wanton destruction by intent to be stopped, and stopped now.

Homes in the forest and on the range have to be fire ready, and if you don't want to alter the aesthetic to accomplish that preparedness, then don't whine when you lose the cabin. On the other hand, if you have spent effort and treasure to remove brush and trees, and have sealed eaves, crawl space entries, grown green grass, have a metal roof, moved the cordwood far from the house, and you still get burned over because the fire that came from the Federally protected and neglected forests and range was a mega fire, the result of some one tree lightening strike that could have been extinguished by one hard working college girl or boy summer employee after a rigorous hike, for a couple of hundred bucks, because, it is high summer, with dry fuels, constant wind change, and the very time of the year when any fire can grow to a landscape changing event, then you, part of the taxpaying public, have every right to be pissed, and every right to expect more from the professionals. Only the professionals no longer have the moxie, the on-the-ground experience, the empirical knowledge of the area, because they are all new, and all short termers headed for promotion and transfer, and the year around people that used to multi-task from one job into fire and back to their regular job no longer are physically fit enough to do that, nor are they even employed because what they once did was part of the timber income stream. WFU is probably the most egregious cutting your nose off to save your face effort ever foisted on the American public. It is a policy driven by ignorance and malfeasance.

The BEST thing that Congress could do is go to the retired pool of former USFS professionals, people with forestry educations, and experience, and form an advisory board of former USFS folks to advise them on what really needs to happen to ensure we even have forests to protect in a decade, let alone kill this insane policy of letting fires run rampant in high fire season, and then whine about past practices. Bypass the Chief's office, and the sycophants. It is the fire TODAY that is the problem. It is the fire that is burning NOW that is costing money. And all too many of those were ALLOWED to become mega fires due to sophomoric and wistful thinking that a fire will stay on the ground, and wander over the hills and ridges forever as a benign presence. WRONG! and when things go henhouse, get jackass, there are MILES of fire front, and containment is hopeless. We know that yet the agencies still trod the WFU track to nowhere. They do that because the leaders, the top brass, demand that they do. Perhaps it is time to change leadership at the top. A wholesale house cleaning. Start over. Because what we got now is a disaster, fomenting disaster upon disaster, and the spinning it to pretend it is all a wonderful circumstance. The fire issue is just one part of the institutional incompetence now with us. That we now are watching $400 million in maintenance money and trail money be used to pay for putting out WFU fires is bordering on criminal, all because of some NGO dream about a forest that never existed, and gross lack of understanding, education, institutional memory, and initiative that characterizes the leadership of the USFS, BLM, USFWS, NPS. These agency leaders are responsible. The buck stops at their desk. There is way too much fire, and their feet need to be held to those fires.

It is broke, folks. The Agency is broke in money, in ethical capital, in education and skill. The USFS no longer works, has the confidence of the public, is a bad neighbor, and is not going to get better just because you wish it might. Only a working Congress (is that an oxymoron?) can fix it. I am not holding my breath in great expectation of that happening. My glass is not half empty. It is totally empty.

Comment By Matthew Koehler, 8-28-08

Yeah, you're right Jon Thomas, er, Bear Bait..."The BEST thing that Congress could do is go to the retired pool of former USFS professionals, people with forestry educations, and experience, and form an advisory board of former USFS folks to advise them on what really needs to happen...."

Yep, the solution is soooooo clearly to get the agency old-timers and dinosaurs out of retirement. The same old-school folks who effectively put in place the (wrong-headed) policy of complete fire suppression. The same dinosaurs, opps, I mean "professionals" who oversaw and managed the cutting down of 95% of all that decadent "old-growth" to make room for the fast-growing - and highly flammable - younger stuff.

The same old-timers who recklessly built a 440,000 mile road system on Forest Service lands that wasn't even close to sustainable, was poorly engineered to begin with and often times runs right through creek bottoms.

Don't forget the old-timers who came up with the idea to clearcut and terrace whole hillsides to make the trees grow faster...we clearly need them in this battle...after all, we got a "forest health" crisis out there that needs solutions! Yep, sure enough, it's 1960 all over again...that'll "fix" the agency.

Comment By bear bait, 8-28-08

Matt: Not one suggestion from you to endorse or reject. Nothing but burn the whole of the forests. If you look at the record, there has been nothing done on the forests for 20 years except let them burn. The purveyors of burn have sued to stop all fuel removal attempts. The Clean Air people have stopped all attempts at burning fuels, but WFU is putting out greenhouse gases at levels more than all human inputs put together for the regions on fire.

The "old timers" had ideas that were not acted on because the NGOs effectively politicized the forest policy debate, and Congress pulled funding to address many issues. And then the NGOs sued to stop any attempts at change. All activity stopped.

In an urban dominated Congress, mostly from East of the Mississippi River, where USFS lands ARE logged, on a sustainable basis, and the forests that have the most income and money to prevent fire, maintain forest health, are also the ones doing the most logging by dollar value in the whole of the USFS system. Most of those forests are acquired lands formerly held as tree farms, and with the REIT tax model for MegaPulps and MacTimber companies, many more thousands of acres of now private tree farm land will end up off the tax rolls and in the USFS system. At least those lands are being managed. In the West, our lands are being ravaged instead. And guys like you don't have any suggestions but the burn them in their entirety. Of course, what could be we expect from the new generation, raised to destroy what they don't understand. If someone builds a better sand castle, it is your duty to kick it down to its elemental grains, I suppose. But, Matt, until you come us with viable suggestions, an alternative path, burning while watching is the forest protection model now in play, and that is the antichrist to forest health and protection. A continuum of early seral succession vegetation does not a forest make. That is the future as provided by current management. Where there are forests today, after burning there will be far fewer forests in the future. Killing isolated heritage landscapes does nothing to facilitate having those landscapes in the future. Many are simply gone. Micro climates ravaged have little chance of replication. Oh, I forgot. Forestry education, research findings, anything that does not forward the social engineering and "change" agenda means nothing. My bad.

Keeping a worthless status quo is like keeping cottage cheese in the ice box. Works for a while, and when the rot sets in, you have nothing you wanted or would ever want. WFU provides that result. Unless, of course, it is the one in a thousand that does produce the desired consequence. The blind sow finds an occasional acorn. The modern education model---- lose a thousand students to keep one challenged kid in class---must be the new USFS mantra and model for maintaining forest health.

A tiny rural school district in NW Oregon had the ADA parent lawsuit that resulted in the judge mandating the less than a hundred kids district to pick up their handicapped student in an ambulance each morning, and return her by ambulance in the evening, with three attendants (heavy child not capable of ever being ambulatory), and an all day minder at school, a health professional, to "mainstream" someone who was never going to speak, let alone read. The school system spent about $300,000 a year on one kid so that mom and dad could have relief care, money that could not be spent on teachers or materials for the other 99 kids. That is the WFU model from the agency whose agenda and experience is in human resources, not forest resources. Let a fire burn until it takes tens of millions of dollars to suppress it because, Goll-ee, Andy, the fire ran out of wilderness and there was nothing else to burn but private lands and property. If that is your Preferred Alternative, Matt, then use your considerable influence, experience, and native intellect to have the process go through the NEPA process and have a public hearing, and have alternatives for the public to respond to. WFU has done none of that, is most likely not defendable in court, but has not been there because the forest litigants are pressing for the illegal actions. And, scary as it might be, getting a special interest solution outside the public process. The Wilderness Society as Weyerhaeuser, as Plum Creek, should frighten you. And that is what we have right now. The Oligarchs of the Environment are running the show outside public purview, and the results are not what they are purported to be.

Comment By Matthew Koehler, 8-28-08

Jon (Bear Bait): You wrote, "Not one suggestion from you to endorse or reject. Nothing but burn the whole of the forests."

Actually John, I did provide a number of possible suggestions of how your "bring back the old-timer, dinosaurs to rescue the agency" idea could turn out. Maybe you missed that. Regardless, we have lots of suggestions as an organization and anyone is free to see what we're all about at http://www.wildwestinstitute.org.

I also have to take you task for your statement, "If you look at the record, there has been nothing done on the forests for 20 years except let them burn."

Well, Jon, I did look at the "record" and you should too. It's at:
http://www.fs.fed.us/forestmanagement/reports/sold-harvest/documents/1905-2007_Natl_Sold_Harvest_Summary.pdf

You still think the "record" shows that nothing has been done in the forest over the past twenty years? Ok, well, let's consult the "record" shall we?

According to the official Forest Service record of "Number of Timber Sales and Volume Forest Service Wide," since 1987 there has been:

- 4,000,033 timber sales on Forest Service lands (yes, that's just over 4 million total timber sales).

- These 4 million timber sales have accounted for 67 billion board feet of timber sold to the timber industry, That's enough trees cut down on our national forests over the past 20 years to fill 13.4 million log trucks.

Yep, you're right on the money there Jon..."nothing done on the forests for 20 years..."

Give me a break.

Comment By bear bait, 8-28-08

Matt: no breaks. Now go find the timber sales info by Region. And especially Regions 1,3, 4, 5, and 6. The whole of the USFS timber sale program nationwide is not the information I was citing, and all you have done is obfuscate because you are either disingenuous or did not understand the statement. I am talking about the forests of the West, where the WFU program is wreaking havoc on fire budgets, and local air and water quality, and destroying public assets worth billions of dollars, and imposing its will on an private sector that objects. And, there is only a vestigial logging program left in Regions 1,3,4,5,6 and 6, and that is under attack and litigated to nonsensical levels. Stopping logging and then only offering WFU in its place is a bad, bad deal.

There is a robust USFS timber sale program East of and along the Mississippi river boundary. There is a miniscule program in the West. And it is in the West where the millions of planted, plantation acres without thinning are the tinder for fires. That tinder exists because thinning is logging and logging is opposed by the Oligarchs of the Environment. They, and apparently you, would rather it burn than allow human use of a natural resource.

If there are dinosaurs out there in management, there are also media dinosaurs, NGO dinosaurs, and education establishment dinosaurs, all spouting bad information, and being supported by results based science out of universities that get their research money from a limited source to pursue limited subjects. This is a political science problem. The academic science in the deal is dependent upon money that comes with strings attached, and that has been apparent to emeritus faculty, especially at Oregon State School of Forestry. That place has become a font of results based "science", all of it aimed at stopping logging. Meanwhile, you at New West ought to examine their College forests, the McDonald and Dunn Forests. They log them to their limits, because the money stays in the School of Forestry. Follow the money. Follow the money from the NSF, from the Trusts hijacked by great grandchildren who don't have to work to earn a living, and you see that forest science is about money or the lack thereof. Congress seems to not want to spend money on National Forests, and when they do, the USFS goes "WooFoo" on them and spends that money and all the rest that was tagged for other forest purposes as well. A bad, bad deal, for forests, and for taxpayers.

There is a body of PhD holding scientists who vehemently disagree with your and the Institute's beliefs, and have the research and inquiry, literature reviews, to back their positions. Most avoid this site (New West) because it is so stilted in one direction, one point of view. All the diversity is center and left. Maybe it is like a bird feeder, in that what you attract is what you put out there. No flycatchers at the seed trough.

I am certainly no scientist nor claim to be. I do, however, read quite a bit, and do spend time with PhD types who solicit my empirical knowledge from a lifetime of forest involvement. I know places, species, habitats, relationships of geology, plants and animals I have crossed paths with in examining thousands of acres of timber in myriad locations over my lifetime. I have changed how public land managers looked at some trees and logging sites in the past, and most of the changes are now part of public land management policy. I negotiated saving hardwood trees in conifer forests that had wildlife value ( I was never successful at having one side of a big leaf maple girdled to essentially have a living snag, be accepted by ODF or USFS), leaving large open grown conifers of poor phenotype that had seeded the area once before, to a desired phenotype tree grown in a closer spacing (my issue was saving some native seed sources), and was maybe the first to demand that we put logs into creeks and to not take them out while logging equipment and experienced people were working there, to to provide "structure" in a creek to protect fingerlings. I gleaned that idea from an Andrews Research Forest study that showed sunlight grew the food chain, and structure provided security, which made me doubt and protest the way streams were "protected" in logging by no riparian disturbance at all. It takes 50 years or more to grow a tree big enough to be "structure", and only 15 years or so to canopy over the creek, cutting off sunlight and retarding the aquatic food chain, and while we were there, why should we not put cull logs into the riparian zone to make interim structure in hardwood dominated wetlands and riparian zones? Now that is de rigueur in operational logging plans, and stream restoration efforts.

The proof of all this disagreement with WFU is in the pudding, as it were. The Biscuit fire is the Silver Fire of 1988 reburned, by two fires that were first "watched" instead of actively suppressed, and then became a conflagration to the tune of the largest fire in Oregon in a century. Brush fields, and more frequent fires are in the offing. The forest as it was, the Wilderness protected Kalmiopsis, with the inherent Siskiyou diversity of plants and animals, will not be there in the future if only because of the soil loss, the seed source loss in such an extensive area burned. Fire in the droughty time of the year, which is there almost every year from July through September, is not the kind of fire that gently moves through the forest in a benign act of benevolent oxidation of surplus organic material. It is a god damned inferno that sucks topsoil into the plume, kills the duff layer, changes soil chemistry and water absorbing ability, and kills wildlife, including endangered species the very same forests and forestland managers have been charged with preserving at all economic costs. That went by the wayside with WFU. And I object. And would be irresponsible if I did not object publicly, if only due to the experience and knowledge learned in my lifetime in a free country, one that encourages people to speak out.

Comment By Matthew Koehler, 8-28-08

Yet again, Mr. Thomas (Bear Bait), your "proof" is not in your "pudding"...or should I say Biscuit. You're claim that the Biscuit fire was "a god damned inferno that sucks topsoil into the plume, kills the duff layer, changes blah, blah, blah..." is just yet again (surprise, surprise!) not backed up by the facts.

Jon, the truth is that 84% of the Biscuit fire area was either unburned, or burned at low to moderate intensity.

I'd invite you to look at this publication, http://www.nativeforest.org/pdf/Biscuit_Primer.pdf, especially page two, which has photos, graphs and related quotes about the Biscuit fire. Here's one of the quotes from Greg Clevenger, resource staff officer for the Rogue River/Siskiyou National Forest: “We don’t anticipate any (long term) adverse effects out there on the fish and wildlife and flora. There is a lot of unburned area, and there’s a lot that burned at a very low intensity. This is by no means 500,000 acres that has been wiped out.”

But if folks want to believe Mr. Thomas', er Bear Baits, "god damned inferno sucking topsoil..." story, that's fine too.

And, Jon, I'm not doing your stupid little homework assignment from your first paragraph. You know full well that of the 4 million timber sales on National Forest lands over the past twenty years (resulting in 13.4 million log trucks full of timber) a good percentage were in the western regions of the FS.

Comment By Matthew Koehler, 8-29-08

The Idaho Statesman had an article yesterday, titled Deadly Blaze prompts Boise to look at new rules, which is directly related to the theme of defending homes from wildfire. The link to the Statesman article is here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/273/story/485880.html .

Boise is looking to expand "Firewise" requirements, in part, because as the lead-in to the article points out: "One of the most devastating fires in Boise's history was made worse by the number of cedar-shake roofs in the neighborhood it hit." The article goes onto report, "Of the 10 homes that were destroyed in the fire, one had a tile roof and the rest were likely covered with wood shakes, according to a preliminary city inquiry."

It's interesting to read the article from the Idaho Statesman in the context of a recent commentary (http://www.mtpr.net/commentaries/489) from a Montana logging lobbyist blasting the city of Helena, MT for looking to enact a ban on shake roofs...something the logging lobbyist referred to as: "over reaching and over reacting to wildfires in other locations and thereby placing Draconian restrictions on a small portion of Montana's citizens."

Firewise requirements (http://www.firewise.org) are neither Draconian, nor "over reaching and over reacting to wildfires." Firewise requirements work, save lives and ensure firefighter safety. Why is that so hard for some people to understand?

Comment By bear bait, 8-29-08

Firewise is logical and should be addressed in building codes for outlying areas now being developed. In the middle of old town Helena would be not addressing the most vulnerable of homes, those at the edge of growing communities, and those near urban wildland reserves.

On the other hand, Wildland Fire Use, where Federal land managers have been given authority without any public process to allow them to arbitrarily chose and pick fires that will not be extinguished in high fire season is as insane as Firewise is logical.

That the process of allowing fires to burn has not been exposed to public comment and vetting, that the USFS and others have spent the last 20 years disregarding education and experience in favor of social engineering to hire and fire, has meant that the USFS fire institutional memory has been erased, people without proper training and backgrounds have been allowed to hold jobs they are not qualified for, and there have been terrible results, deadly results, that are not accounted for in the disciplinary process of the rule of law.

There is criminal liability to some of this in a real world. There is at the least, an in house discipline system that has not been followed. Letting a fire burn until it is almost surely not going to be suppressed and only put out by winter weather, in the meantime destroying private property, is in my mind criminal. Arson. Fraud begetting arson. An act of omission that is unforgivable.

The answer is to get rid of WFU until it has been through a public process demanded by NEPA, and then address set fire in low risk times of the year as a means of forest health improvement. And for certain, on the edges of development, where the urban wildland interface is now or will be in a decade, demand building codes and CCRs that require "Firesafe" rules be followed.

I would say the common sense should prevail, but that would be blasted by the Oligarchs of the Environment as too inclusive. And, looking at much of what they propose, I would have to agree with them. But theirs is a job of excluding as many from as much as possible. People, we are told, are too many and too wasteful to be allowed on land they covet and comfort. People are the problem, and damn, I am one of those. What to do?

Comment By Dave Skinner, 8-29-08

One thing about that 1987 timeline for timber sales is that the bottom fell out in the West around 1995 as the last contracts were completed. Up until that time, there were usually three years worth of pre-sold timber, but that dried up the day Clinton took office.
So, the better question would be, how many sales since 1995?

Comment By Matthew Koehler, 8-29-08

Fine, Dave, move the goalposts...

According to that same Forest Service document, there have been approximately 1,920,000 timber sales on national forests since 1995. I still have a hard time believing that's "nothing done on the forests" as your buddy Jon Thomas Bear Bait claims.

Comment By Dave Skinner, 8-29-08

Volume since then?
And I suppose that same document gives growth and mortality figures? Got a link?

Comment By bear bait, 8-29-08

I just read the USFS summary of all sales sold, nation wide, for 2007. 131,856 timber sales. Total volume, 2,499,327 mbf....2 billion 499 million 327 thousand board feet. An average of 18.9mbf per sale. Eighteen thousand 9 hundred board feet of log scale per individual sale. Log trucks haul between 3 and 4 thousand board feet, so we can call that 5 loads of logs per sale, and using the average value of the timber logged in 2007, it comes out to $358 per timber sale.

There is such a thing as a "Ranger Sale", of less than 10mbf, that is negotiated to enable people to buy trees and logs for access or fire wood, any number of reasons a tree or more needs to be cut out of a joint use road or what have you. Those are probably in these numbers. And, there are national forests in many states, with myriad demands, and most of the timber being cut for sawmilling is being cut on the East coast and Midwest National Forests. Most proposed timber sales on National Forest land in the West get appealed unless they don't amount to much.

The reality, Matt, is that the average USFS timber sale is worth half a good Winston 5 piece fly rod.

If it takes 100mbf of logs per day to run a small sawmill, then you would have to have 5 sales per day bought and logged, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year. The administrative costs, insurances required, bonds, contracts printed and signed, will take all the money generated and much more in addition.

So, in this raw state, the USFS numbers make no sense to me. I can see a Ranger sale here and there to clean up windfalls on a road ahead of fire wood thieves. I can see small log thinnings. But to lead me to believe the USFS has a robust timber sale program on 200 million acres of land that sells a couple of billion board feet per year is to be laughable. I will bet that amount of timber has been burned in August alone. The bug kill and windfalls will have taken an amount 4 times that. And the growth on the whole of the USFS lands will have been 20 billion board feet this year at the minimum. A number like that could well be the net growth after mortality. And I am not talking about the Wilderness areas. But those kinds of numbers are not available, easily to me, nor do I have the time to run them down.

I planted trees in Boy Scouts and bought the commercial thinning logs from that planting 15 years ago to run through a sawmill. By all the measurements that the 9th Circus seems to hold in awe, the 21" dbh as the benchmark for an "old growth" tree, the trees I planted in Boy Scouts are now all old growth, but only 55 years old.

All the fuel loading problems with forests, and the intensity of fires, is because the forest grows trees, adds wood, limbs, needle, leaves, shed wood, needles and leaves, every year, in drought years and in wet years. Trees grow and get bigger and more numerous, and that is the problem: how do we lower the fuel levels? Is burning it at random really the responsible and just answer to management of a commons that was formed in law to be a multiple use resource provider for the national good?

Comment By data, 8-29-08

Mortality as a % of growth in Idaho:
2004-2007 avg. = 56.9% on National Forest land, 11.5% on Private.
2001= 45% NF, 21% all other owners
1990 = 29% NF, 19% all other owners,
1979 = 18% NF, 11% all other owners.

Sorry no link, you have to do the calculations by hand (you can do MT) but you can retrieve the data from the FS site. These figure are for timberland only, mortality rate is even higher on National Forests when all forest lands (ie wilderness, parks etc.) are included.

Comment By Dave Skinner, 8-29-08

Sixty percent mort? That's outrageous. How is it possible to have "healthy" when half of what grows croaks? Ympn Yiminy.
And yeah, Matt, I stumbled across a USFS summary that shows the bottom fell out in about 1990, the first three years after 1987 have more wood harvested than the next six. For 24 years before that, ten billion feet was normal. And by 2001, the average declines to something like a sixth of the peak, at 2 billion feet. Is it ANY coincidence that the dinky harvests coincide with the trend toward huge-a-mongous wildfires?

Comment By Jedediah Redman, 9-08-08

Dave and marian are still convinced God created trees so unemployed Montanans could have jobs clearcutting them...

Comment By bear bait, 9-08-08

The USFS is convinced Government and the Courts saved those trees so they could watch them burn, all at great expense. How you can spend $3 million watching one fire burn, while making no attempts to suppress it, has to be Boondoggle City politics as its best. Bureaucratic double speak as we have known it forever.

In Oregon, we have a Good Green Governor, of the Democrat stripe (black and white), now actively going after field burning on less than 50,000 acres per year, complete with a small army of trial lawyers smelling money. The reason: California wildfire smoke was driven north to Eugene in time for the Olympic Track trials this summer, which resulted in several hundred field burning smoke complaints to Oregon DEQ. However, there was no field burning, by volunteer action by farmers, for the entirety of the Trials. How about that for a political reaction to a non-event!!!! I now wonder how our lawyer Governor and his trial lawyer money bags cronies would respond to a UFO sighting?

All the while the lawyers and the Governor are posturing and writing letters and opining on public health and the poor smokers with respiratory problems, the USFS has at least two WFU fires spewing huge amounts of smoke and particulates in the air, from 30 or more tons of material per acre on fire, instead of the mere 3 tons per acre consumed in a field burn. Not one word about that health hazard, that green house gas emission source, that waste of public resources never to be accounted for. One fire was contained, and the overhead team dismissed. The lesser team that took over promptly lost the fire, as has been their record this summer, and the PissFir Willies and Willettes are just happy as clams now that the fire has crossed the Zane Grey summer steelhead North Umpqua, the hiway is closed, and that pristine watershed is being visited by the wonders of incineration.

That might be a long term blessing. If enough of those blue blood, high dollar fly fishers in that world class fly fishing only (and no strike indicators allowed, or weighted flies), some bucks up movers and shakers might stir the honey bucket of USFS malfeasance enough for the stink to get to the Chief's Office with some sort of admonition to quit messing up the jewels of fishing. All reports from the Salmon River in Idaho have that system wracked with landslides, washouts, and steam damming events, all on Idaho's wild and pristine ESA listed salmon habitat. All of burned to a crisp, and nobody is getting in there because the trails are gone (and this year's fire budget has now taken the trail maintenance money for this year and next), and that is just how the USFS wants it: unseen. Unseen devastation.

Your favorite creek or river is on the list. It is time and random acts of ignition standing in the way. Now that man caused ignition is "natural" and another reason to have WFU designation for a fire, it will be a short time until there is random ignition by fusee across the landscape as the caretakers burn it all in some Machiavellian act of governance and control.

Selective environmentalism is a favored political tool from the left. If you complain about it, you are demeaned. Sort of like the complaint against the "Jesus freak" Christians being too strident, and the next day, the complainants are defending muslims right to practice religion in public schools, and delineating space for them to pray, and letting the women wear a burka to have ID photos taken for driving licenses.

The old USA double standard from the left is alive and well. Farmers burning stubble to save pesticide applications and expense, as well as multiple ground workings, are stopped, while the USFS can burn heritage forests with impunity, outside of NEPA, and with the blessing of the Greenies. No health issues there. Loggers can't burn slash, thinning sales are stopped by litigation by professional non-profit litigation companies, but allowing the very same timber to be consumed by fire is just dandy. Go figure.

Comment By Jedediah Redman, 9-08-08

J. Redman:
"what we have now in forest management IS what you propose. No human inputs. Natural. But new. New to here in the last 200 years of all the time since the last Ice Age....and guess what? It isn't working for the plants, the trees, the critters or the humans."

You are on intimate terms with the plants, the trees, the critters
and all humans, eh, barebate?
I'm guessing you and most humans are just anthropomorphizing to beat the band.
As for this human, natural is suiting me just fine...

Comment By bear bait, 9-08-08

Redman: do you understand that word "anthropomorphizing"? My degree is in history. Essentially, that means I can read and understand most of what I read.

The people who read the tree rings, study the vegetation maps, age the obsidian by the water content, the scientists, have a story of how we got here from there that is far different from what you espouse.

You are wrong, and they are right. End of story.

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