WESTERN WILDFIRES
Senator Baucus Strategizes on Firefighting Funding
By Matthew Frank, 1-08-08
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| Senator Max Baucus (foreground) with Northern Rockies Regional Forester Tom Tidwell. BELOW: A Forest Service DC-3 aircraft. BOTTOM: Baucus tours the plane's fuselage. Photos by Matthew Frank. | |
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In the wake of a particularly long, dry and costly fire season in the West, Montana Senator Max Baucus talked strategy with state and federal firefighting officials in Missoula Monday on how best to fight and fund management of wildfires in 2008 and beyond.
Baucus arrived at the Smokejumper Center with a couple of his own ideas, ways agencies can escape the cycle of “robbing Peter to pay Paul,” as he put it—tapping money from other sources when firefighting bills exceed what’s been appropriated.
In the West, in the midst of a multi-year drought coinciding with some of the hottest years on record—plus the significant costs of defending homes built in the wildland urban interface—agencies are often in the red. Montana’s 2007 fire season cost the state of Montana more than was allotted for the entire biennium, forcing Governor Brian Schweitzer to call a special legislative session in September to refill the state coffers. Across the country, close to half of the Forest Service’s annual budget is now spent on fire suppression.
Baucus first spelled out his Stable Fire Funding Act, which would create a new $800 million trust fund the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management could draw on during extraordinary fire seasons. The interest generated from the fund would be used to cover 80 percent of firefighting costs exceeding agency budgets, freeing them from always having to “come back for replenishment,” Baucus said. 
Second, Baucus explained a provision he included in America’s Climate Security Act, passed by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in early December, that would provide $1.1 billion every year to combat catastrophic fires.
Neither of the bills are guaranteed to pass, but Baucus said, “I’m trying to get my foot in the door” to ensure the money’s there when needed.
Baucus, who climbed aboard a Forest Service DC-3 aircraft in a Smokejumper Center hangar before the meeting, was flanked by Tom Tidwell, the head of the Forest Service’s Northern Rockies region, and Bob Harrington of the State Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. Each provided their perspective on effective strategies, and members of the audience chimed in as well.
Harrington said there persists a fundamental disagreement on how to manage fires—where, for instance, thinning and prescribed burns can take place—and it creates a mire of litigation. “Is there any way to make these plans bulletproof, from the litigation perspective?” Baucus asked.
“It’s much better to build consensus than to make something bulletproof,” Harrington replied.
Tidwell brought up the growing—and expensive—problem of protecting houses bordering undeveloped public lands, the wildland urban interface. According to Headwaters Economics, the annual cost to U.S. taxpayers of protecting privately owned properties in the wildland urban interface has been estimated to be as high as $1 billion.
Baucus asked, Shouldn’t the homeowner have responsibility too? Yes, Tidwell said, and the agencies are educating homeowners on how to create defensible space around their homes and use less flammable construction materials. They’re also working with developers. Beyond the added cost of defending these homes, it “increases the risk to our firefighters,” Tidwell said.
Harrington added other, broader ideas including stiffer zoning requirements and building codes, “treating the interface boundary similar to a floodplain boundary,” and engaging with the insurance and banking industries. “People who live in the urban interface can and should be part of the solution,” he said.
Audience members raised a number of things including the need for more fuels treatment, more support for and awareness of local government and first responders, and support for Native American crews.
When Baucus asked for specific examples of what didn’t work in 2007, Harrington mentioned confusion over contracting and the “best value” process.
What else?
“It didn’t rain when we wanted it to.”
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Comments
The USFS fuels reduction plan for Region 1 is simple: let 'er burn. I would like to see the EIS for that. I want to examine the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act aspects of conflagration by intent. The Eco-Advocates ought to be writhing with conflicted interests in that area, sniffing their own butts like a dog with worms.
Baucus should know that as long as there is NO, ZERO, USFS accountability to asset loses, resource losses, expressed in dollars and mitigation costs, let 'er burn gets a free ride. There is always this discussion of subsidized logging, expressed in finite dollars. Where is the discussion of lost resources, in finite dollars? The question of who would need a USFS fire fighting component if letting it burn is the preferred alternative needs to be answered. It is time to question the motives of the Environmental Barons.
I always read these numbers of people and costs of "monitoring" WFU fires. So how much does it cost when you can see it from a satellite? You have to know the USFS CIA buddies have the resources to watch fire from afar with spy satellites. Or have them fly their camera equipped drones over the fires as part of training. No pilots need to die looking at WFU's in order to justify doing nothing by intent.
Baucus is just making a smile-a-thon trip through the homeland, bobbin' and weavin' like the hula doll on the dashboard, trolling for dollars. The fire fix is in, and has been, and Kimble, et al are well into replication of the 1910 fire events by piecemeal.
The saving grace in all this is this winter's precipitation and cold. So where is global warming when you need it? Brrrrr.
I promise not to bark at the moon, and I am not kidding. I would be pretty certain technology has advanced so far, and the expansion of military black ops groups has grown expotentially, that the Piss Fir Willis outfit is probably no longer an asset, as they say. But don't think for a moment that they weren't in the not too distant past.
Yeah, Max, get off your can and introduce a repeal of EAJA for one thing. Loser-pays for another. Legal sufficiency for another. Introduce and pass something that doesn't allow cases to be won only on procedural and paperwork grounds.
Harrington is nuts when he thinks "consensus" is going to work. By the time you've conceded everything to the ponytails, there's no trees left.
And G, thanks for making the point about WUI. There was another Jamison opinion story in the Missouliar about PC selloffs and how terrible Headwaters Economics think it all is. But the fact is, the PC ground is in fantastic shape as far as defensibility is concerned. The company isn't about to leave a close-crowned forest with actual wood in it.
As sad as I am to see it sell, the fact is, those parcels are comparatively safe.
As for the larger landscape, the fact that Tidwell spouted that silliness shows you just what a great job Mark Rey has done at floating the ship Jim Lyons torpedoed. Why did I vote for Bush? Oh, because Gore and Kerry would have been WORSE. Gulp.
How can you honestly state that "the fact is, the Plum Creek ground is in fantastic shape as far as defensibility is concerned" when the fact of the matter is that numerous 2007 wildfires ripped through Plum Creek Timber Company lands? Remember that Jocko Lakes fire that nearly burned down Seeley Lake? That fire ripped right through heavily logged, thinned and roaded Plum Creek Timber Co lands. How about the Chippy Creek fire? How did Plum Creek lands fare in that fire? Then there is the Brush Creek fire, Mile Marker 124 fire and the Black Cat fire.
However, the way Plum Creek Timber Co's lands burned in 2007 is hardly an anomaly. Remember the 2003 wildfires in Montana? Remember how the heavily logged, thinned and roaded Plum Creek lands up 8 Mile Creek in the Bitterroot were completely burned over? I certainly do because I went up there, walked around in the Plum Creek moonscape and snapped a lot of photos. Unfortunately, I can't provide any of the stark photos in this post.
Still looking at the 2003 fire season, how did the heavily logged, thinned and roaded Plum Creeek lands up Gold Creek in the Blackfoot fare? Well, local firefighters working the blaze dubbed Plum Creek’s lands "the Black Desert." Does that give you any indication? I too have spent a lot of time up the Gold Creek drainage over the past few years to access the Rattlesnake Wilderness for elk hunts and backpacking trips and I can tell you that those heavily logged, thinned and roaded Plum Creek lands burnt to a crisp in 2003 are still in sorry shape. For those interested in looking at the Plum Creek lands burned in the 2003 Mineral-Primm fire up Gold Creek, this PDF contains photos and some text: http://nativeforest.org/pdf/Mineral_Primm.pdf
Moving along, Dave, you state: "Harrington is nuts when he thinks "consensus" is going to work. By the time you've conceded everything to the ponytails, there's no trees left."
As one of the lead "ponytails" (come on Dave, you know you're just jealous of the locks!") I'm qualified to address this statement. For example, let's look at the Kootenai Forest Stakeholder Coalition, which the WildWest Institute helped form about a year ago. The Kootenai Forest Stakeholders Coalition (KFSC) is a broad coalition of groups, including timber, mining, motorized recreation, conservationists, elected officials and more. We work on various projects and plans for the Kootenai National Forest to ensure the projects are beneficial for everyone.
To date the diverse Kootenai Forest Stakeholder Coalition (which, again, includes us "ponytails" who happen to believe the government should follow the law and best science when logging on our public lands) has endorsed five fuel-reduction projects and helped negotiated a sixth. The work covers some 7,000 acres in the Wildland-Urban Interface; Meadows, Green Mountain, West Elk, Kootenai River North, Camp 32, and Obermayer. These projects will produce over 16 mmbf of wood products. The Stakeholders voted with a "Consensus without Reservation" recommendation on every endorsement. That certainly says something.
In addition to endorsing fuel reduction projects with "consensus without reservation" that cover 7,000 acres and will produce over 16 MMBF of wood products on the Kootenai National Forest, folks should note that the KFSC model has been used to establish a similar stakeholder group in Montana's Mineral and Sanders Co. Things aren't going to change overnight, but the accomplishments of the KFSC group within the first year of existence speak for themselves, especially given the diverse make-up of the group. But I guess you won't know anything about this Dave, because you don't participate in these coalition-building groups now do you?
And how would the general public know anything about it really, given that the local papers are more interested in controversy regarding public lands management?
Finally, to address Gman's statement, "It [sic] not much use to have private land owners create defensible space if the feds won't conduct fuel reduction on its land." Gman, care to provide any facts to back up such a claim? So you think private landowner's attempts to create defensible space around their homes is useless because the federal government doesn't log deeper into the backcountry? Again, I'd be curious to see any science that supports your claim. You can visit the official FireWise website (http://www.firewise.org) and that organization would certainly say different. So too would Jack Cohen, the Forest Service's leading expert on preventing home ignitions during a wildfire. Cohen has stated, "The evidence suggests that wildland fuel reduction for reducing home losses may be inefficient and ineffective. Inefficient because wildland fuel reduction for several hundred meters or more around homes is greater than necessary for reducing ignitions from flames. Ineffective because it does not sufficiently reduce firebrand ignitions." You can learn more about Cohen's work and research at: http://www.firelab.org/ .
Just an FYI if you are interested, Earl Cooley published his memoirs "Trimotor and Trail" in 1984. Cooley, as you probably already know, was one of the first Forest Service smokejumpers.
I didn't see any mention of the CIA in his book. Interesting though... it's the first I've heard of their being a possible connection.
As for Plum Creek burnovers, I'm sure you can find anything you want someplace and then rack off a series of selective shots. SWCBD and Sierra Club do it all the time, so why not you?
I wish I had the time and resources to go to these places you rap about and look at the overall picture. Probably be different. Maybe I should give PC a jingle and ask for a tour.
Gman is right about escapement from unmanaged federal ground. I mean, what about Cohen's "firebrand ignitions?" Where do those come from? O ya, from that doghair across the creek with 100 foot flame heights.
Think about this, Matt. When the Jocko fire was scaring Seeley, the crews were trying to stop the fire from overrunning the town. They could not be dinking around with PC's regen, even though it would be perfectly feasible to establish a line in those units IF there weren't more dangerous runs happening elsewhere in the fire area.
Finally, the fire I DID get a good eyeball on this year, Brush Creek. I was stunned to see the low morts in the regen and the near-total zap of the "good stuff." 75 percent of unharvested areas in Brush Creek burnt at over 80 percent mort. Something like 25 percent of regen (most was beetle cut) burnt that hot, the rest went on the ground or didn't burn at all.
As for the KFSC, I'd go if I were PAID like you and Cesar and Jeff...but I find it amusing that of you three, none are actual Lincoln residents.
I'd like to see the same deal for the FNF, made up of and limited to county residents. It would be fun.
http://www.wildwestinstitute.org/pdf/Plum_Creek_8mile.pdf .
So if you get "the time and resources to go to these places I rap about and look at the overall picture" I'm quite confident you'd see (even 4 years later) much of the same landscape-level "Black Desert" clearly illustrated in these photos. Perhaps your buddy Petersen at Evergreen could send you on another mission just like Biscuit.
It's also important to note that this consensus building process on fuel reduction and restoration projects on the Kootenai went forward - and continues to move forward - despite the fact that our organization has on-going litigation on the Kootenai and a number of outstanding appeals. Collaboration, in my view, is not to be viewed as replacing or skirting NEPA or the public appeals process, which Congress established in direct response to Forest Service and timber industry abuses on public lands. But certainly as more collaborative groups are established I hope we'll start to see more common ground regarding strategic fuel reduction near communities and bona-fide, ecologically-based restoration of our forests and watersheds. We believe there is plenty of work to be done in our national forests if we just focus on the areas of agreement and move forward from there.
If you read Norm Johnson and Jerry Franklin testifying before a congressional committee late last year, you will understand that two of the "Gang of Four" who wrote the NW Timber Plan, and the Spotted Owl protection rules, have made a 180 degree course turn, and are now advocating an open canopy, and if a larger diamter tree needs to be cut, so be it. Their observations are that stand removal fire has destroyed millions of acres of spotted owl and other old growth critter habitat, and the only way to stop the loss is to try to replicate the open forest canopy that was here when Europeans first arrived.
The answer, of course, is restoration forestry. That is a process that goes way beyond thinning as a silvacultural application. The whole of the forest has to be addressed in a very extensive and comprehensive way that has as a goal a forest restored to pre-European structure, one that was essentially envigorated by, not destroyed by, anthropogenic fire and lightening fire. The current "let 'er burn" regime is counter-productive to that end or goal. Wholesale logging is counter-productive. The process will have to be part science, part art. And it will have to pay its own way. Oh, and it will take a long time. My standard way of looking at things is that it takes at least three times as long to fix something as it took to screw them up. So maybe it will take more than 300 years of restoration forestry to achieve the goal. I wonder if we, as a people so closely involved with a culture of instant gratification, will have the patience to persevere.