The Fire This Time
Firefighting Needs Major Overhaul, Study Shows
Editor's note: At the time of publication, the fire study by lead author Tania Schoennagel could not be seen without paying a fee to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. However, the research can now be viewed in a PDF file, free of charge.By Amy Linn, 6-08-09
 |
|
 | |
| A member of the Helena Regulars fire crew works on the West Mountain fire near Alberton in August 2005. | |
|
Wildfire prevention efforts should focus more on homeowners and key ecosystems—and less on fires deep in the wilderness, according to a new study by the University of Montana, University of Colorado and Colorado State University.
The study—which calls for an overhaul of the National Fire Plan --takes a hard look at federal efforts to prevent wildfires that are increasingly scorching the West and threatening homes near forests and wilderness. Only 11 percent of National Fire Plan wildfire-mitigation efforts in the past five years have occurred near people’s homes or offices, where it’s critically needed, the researchers concluded.
Highlights of the research were announced today by the University of Montana. Here’s what the UM press release said about the study, which looked at 44,000 federally funded wildfire-mitigation projects in 11 Western states between 2004 and 2008:
-- The National Fire Plan “should emphasize constructing and maintaining “fire-wise” homes, restricting the abundance and configuration of residential housing units near wildlands, and improving cooperation among private and public landowners—both in implementing fire-mitigation treatments and in paying for fire suppression.
-- According to Cara Nelson, a UM assistant professor of restoration ecology and a study co-author, “as more Americans live in or near fire-prone forests and as more wildfires burn, most federally funded activities to reduce fuels and wildfire hazard have occurred far from the “wildland-urban interface”—the area targeted by federal wildfire policies. The results indicate that federal treatments are not effectively targeting the areas where the threat of wildfire to homes and people in the Western United States is greatest.”
-- Seventy percent of the wildland-urban interface, plus a 2.5-kilometer community protection zone surrounding it, is privately owned, which limits the federal government’s ability to treat the high-risk zone.
-- In the Western United States, the area of wildland-urban interface grew by 61 percent between 1970 and 2000.
-- The area of forest burned between 1987 and 2003 was six times greater than the area that burned in the previous 16 years, owing to contributing factors such as hotter spring and summer temperatures, longer fire seasons and earlier snowmelt.
The study appears in the June 8 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Read it in full by clicking here.
This story has been updated.
Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.
Comments
For example, the AP article about this same study opens with:
"While more than 1,000 homes across the West burn each year in forest and brush fires, only a fraction of federal efforts to reduce fire danger in the region has been concentrated in the communities at greatest risk, a group of scientists found.
The scientists analyzed a database containing the locations of all 44,613 fuel-reduction projects undertaken in Western states by various federal agencies under the National Fire Plan - from its start in 2000 through 2008. They found that only 3 percent of those projects were within what is known as the wildland-urban interface."
That's the money quote right there...Of all 44,613 federal fuel-reduction efforts in the West only 3% were within the WUI! Remarkable, don't you think? Especially given all the rhetoric about home and community protection coming from the previous Bush Administration, Mark Rey and timber industry leaders such as the lobbyist for the Montana Wood Products Association.
Hmmm...Sure seems like over the past 8 years that plenty of us forest advocates have been warning and speaking out about this very situation as we attempted to get the Forest Service to focus more time and effort reducing fuels near homes and communities and less time and resources trying to convince us that the backcountry needs more industrial logging.
So, a more accurate title to this article would be something along these lines: "Fuel Reduction Efforts Need Major Overhaul: Study Finds Less Than 3% of Projects in WUI."
And finally, in response to D's comment, the Black Mountain Fire in Missoula is an example of what happens when it's dry as a popcorn fart, you get lightening strikes and then you get 60 mph winds and humidity under 10%....Yep, things burn under those circumstances. Surprised?
The so-called WUI should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and not be a blanket distance definition. In the Black Mtn. 2 case, we knew (and accepted the responsibility) that this could happen and were advocating for fuel reduction on those public lands. Didn't happen.
Yes, it is important for private landowners to do their jobs of fuel reduction; it is also important for the adjoining landowners to do theirs...which is often public lands...sometimes five or more miles out. To insinuate that people are moving into "wildlands" is a misrepresentation. Those lands people are moving into have always been private--often with power high-lines and other man-made structures that are threatened. The MT Legislature has been taking an active approach to require fuel reduction on lands before subdivision approval. The thinly veiled guise of the "no-development" crowd to jump on this fire-wise bandwagon only makes the whole process more difficult.
We used to have people involved in the logging community that went to work on the firelines when that was necessary. We now have people from outside the area that are not familiar with the roads, terrain or past fire behavior. We were told fires would lay down in the old burn. We were then told that some of the hottest temperatures ever recorded were recorded in the old burns. We were told we didn't have to worry until the fire got into cheatgrass. That would have meant we shouldn't have to worry because there is no cheatgrass in our area, but it made us worry that the people in charge didn't know our area. Local people need to be actively involved in any plan.
My cabin was too well prepared in 2007 to merit the placement of sprinklers. That didn't make me feel better while my neighbors were getting sprinklers all around their cabins. Will we survive the next fire?
People don't have a vision of ten years from today, or twenty. Trees grow. Every year. So it is disingenuous to beat up on them about vegetation today that is now adjacent to their home on other's property. As a nation, at this time, we are against cutting trees. There are strict regulations in many urban areas as to what can be cut and by whom, only after some sort of deliberative process. In Corvallis, Oregon, every tree on a building lot has to be gps located if it is 4" dbh or greater. Then the house has to be sited so as to leave as many trees as possible. That the doug fir weed tree is part of this is only a 30 year in the future disaster in a wind storm, of which we have several each year. Those trees fall down and cause damage every year. And that is not even a part of the fire regime.
Land use in Oregon demands, under penalty, that after logging, in either a 3 year time frame or a 5, depending upon site, there are 185 "free to grow" established trees per acre. By law. By law the stand is planted to overstocking. And if the land was part meadow before logging, you can bet it all will be planted or there will be a hassle from the Forest Practices Officer. Overplanted by law is the name of the game. The same goes for public lands. We purposefully create the very fire hazards that many now think should be mitigated in some way, or reduced. You can't have it both ways. We plant too many trees. Get it?
The first obligation ought to be a volunteer fire safe perimeter around dwellings. And no CCRs, or local regulations, or statewide mandates to prevent that by denying tree cutting. That in itself will take ten years to overcome, those local and state regulations on private land tree management.
A few years back, there was a fire in Bend on Aubrey Butte, among chi-chi homes in a development with strict CCRs. A homeowner had limbed his bull pines, raked and disposed of the needle cast and needles, replaced his wooden deck with a cement one, had re-roofed his house, and had cement shakes instead of cedar, had cleaned his gutters, watered his surrounding lawns, and cleared the landscaping and removed the bark dust around the house, secured his soffits. He had made his place fire resistant. Consequently, he was now in a lawsuit with the homeowners board of the development for violations of the CCRs. And there he was after this fire, explaining his predicament, in front of his house, with the SUV and boat in the drive way, and the tv camera panned away from him until the speaker and his house were framed by the two chimneys that were all that were left standing of the homes on either side of his. That was the MOST expressive, picture worth a thousand words, result I have ever seen. The criminal with the home still standing. Duh! In the urban/wildland interface. The survivor of the inferno. To me, lesson learned.
But to expect a dollar appropriated by the Congress to do exactly that to homes, and expect that dollar to have done some good, is to expect too much. The USFS uses their money to fill the void of catastrophic fire suppression, from the fires they purposefully let burn until they are a catastrophe. Or they have some other project with local constituencies, far from the goal set by Congress, they spend the money on. They are about keeping the public from using public lands, and that is where the money is spent. If your house burns from their fire, c'est la vie. Tough. Gotta expect that living so far from town. It's YOUR fault. So keep paying taxes to fund, us, and take care of your problems with your money, and we will use your taxes to create more problems for you. That is why we, the Feds, are in charge, and you are not. And don't expect a kinder, more friendly government from ObamaNation. That ain't how they work, as we now well know. Even Justice Ginsberg has doubts.
"One year after fire Black Mountain is springing back to life" @
http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2004/08/01/news/top/news01.txt
FYI-Not only do we family forest owners not ask the rest of the public to subsidize anything, we also responsibly pay more in fire taxes than those in paved-over cities--in addition to all the other property taxes we pay. Not to mention the open space benefits family forests provide. If a fire starts on private land and spreads to public lands, we are held responsible for those firefighting costs...public lands fires have the same liability. We are not advocating clear cuts or Wilderness lands logging....things must be done on a case-by-case ecological basis.
A study such as the one above that fails to recognize ecological factors and lumps statistics together in such a way is inherently flawed and lacks credibility.
I never implied that fire could not be a good thing. I am intimately connected to the land and accept the responsibilities and risks that come along with it. Any other interpretation would be mistaken.
Fires are the result of fuel, and fuel is the annual growth of all the plants on the landscape. If fire is the only way to reduce fuels, then why do we have to bankrupt our auto industry to reduce emissions while we allow the same government to not fight fire, and to burn millions of acres "because it is natural and reduces fuels." The logic evades me.
Fire not only destroys the trees and the brush, but it also does harm to watersheds, to animals, to the human experience. Fire is NOT a good deal the way we are allowing to course its way through the landscape at this time. A lot of low level, low impact fire, can be a wonderful deal. Unfortunately, allowing fires to burn in the heat of high summer is patently insane. But, this is ObamaNation, and we are filled with hope that it does not burn this year, and we know that any change will come from the top, not from the people. A socialist dictatorship in charge of the environment can be a good deal. They can just deny use of public lands, as well as private. If the President's Administration can demote bond holders to third or fourth in line in bankruptcy, by fiat, (and for Fiat), then they have just denigrated bonds as a financial instrument, and torpedoed public funding and raising money for capital improvements. That is some kind of change. I had hoped the new guy in town would change the way the USFS is doing business. Evidently they can't even get someone on board to see what the problems might be. So, business as usual, and that means WFU and AMR is the "stay the course" for fuels management, and ecosystem repairs. Burn it. It will be better for it someday. Sorry about your house, fool.
I got a bootleg copy of the paper, have NOT read it yet, but did some research into the CV's of the authors.
Bottom line for now: This is advocacy masquerading as "science," and as such is shamelessly manipulative and shamefully unethical. Shame on New West for falling for this like a brick outhouse from orbit.
The idea is to put out a press release hyping a "paper." The good pet "reporter" carefully cribs from the press release. The "scientists" get press hype (good for grants), the "reporter" gets to fill his or her hole with little or no work and no need to actually READ THE PAPER and get contextual comment from others who may have read it.
In the meantime, the lay public has no access to the document either, unless they want to subscribe to the journal. But having the riffraff actually see the real thing and judge for themselves is NOT the point.
The idea is, instead, to put "science" out in the policy arena in the most favorable terms. I mean, if I haven't read the paper then I can't decide for myself if the work is valid. This is completely unethical.
When scientific papers are publicized to a lay audience as significant enough to warrant public notice, then the paper itself should in fact be posted alongside. This is doubly necessary when the conclusions of the paper may have a policy impact, as THIS particular effort is BLATANTLY intended to do.
The link provided here by NW goes to PNAS, and I was not able to get the paper itself.
No, after doing a search for the article, amd after searching for the LEAD AUTHOR'S name, which is NOT listed by Amy, but since I'm so talented and good looking, I tried to get the article:
" Purchase Short-Term Access
* Purchase this Article - You may access this article (from the computer you are currently using) for 2 days for US$10.00.
No, by dang, I don't THINK so. I don't think the public should have to pay when the whole point of these press releases is to generate publicity, but apparently NOT foster informed discussion.
Wow, this is scummy. I'm not through with THIS, no sir.
I really fail to see why this study has your undies in such a knot. Seems like a pretty straight forward number crunching exercise to me.
Perhaps you're so upset because you guys and people such as lobbyists for the MT Wood Products Association have constantly used this comment forum to tell us that there is basically "no management" taking place on public lands. So isn't it funny that the researchers found that between 2000 and 2008 there were 44,613 fuel-reduction projects undertaken in Western states by various federal agencies under the National Fire Plan?
What the researchers found is that of these 44,613 fuel reduction projects only 3% were found in the wildland-urban interface. They also found that even if you expand the borders of the WUI out by another 1.5 miles into the forests, the total percentage of fuel reduction projects conducted to reduce fire risk in WUI areas comes to 11 percent.
Like I said before, those are pretty remarkable numbers given all the rhetoric we've been hearing from the logging industry and previous Bush Administration about protecting homes and communities from wildfire.
You can try and discredit the researchers all you want, but unless you have actual evidence that directly contradicts their findings I'm not sure why anyone would listen to anything you guys have to say on the subject.
Instead of attacking the researchers shouldn't we all just admit that if the goal is really to protect homes and communities from wildfire that the federal agencies (largely under the Bush Administration) have clearly failed to effectively target that work where it will do the most good and protect the most homes/lives and ensure firefighter safety? Seems like there should be some common ground there that we could all work on.
Anyway, none of this is really new news as plenty of us have been advocating a more focused approach to protecting homes and communities from wildfire for years now. Too bad nobody really listened as we'd certainly be closer to reaching to reaching that goal than we are now. Thanks.
It's just the kind of guy you are.
In 1964, the Northwest had a 100 year flood. High water laden with "stream structure" (read logs, windfalls, logging debris from debris torrents) took out riparian trees, which in turn wiped out bridges, river side homes, and cause havoc over the entire region. It was declared that wood in streams was the evil producer of biological oxygen demand (BOD) that killed fish. A scientific study to make sure no more wood could wash down a stream and wipe out a culvert or a bridge, or summer home. So, logging had to remove all the wood in streams that logging lines would hang over. And there was enough zealous contract enforcement that if became common practice to remove it all, even it had been there for a century. To have to re-rig and go back to clean out two logs or even one was expensive beyond the pale of common sense. So it was all yarded to a landing and burned in the slash pile. And after the logging was over, a reforestation crew walked the 5th order stream ways, and greater, and hand picked all the limbs, cones, sticks, whatever, out of the now structureless sluice that once was a seasonal waterway to year around streams now devoid of cover and thermal protection. A very large hammer was used to kill a flea. Best science, you know. Gotta do what the "ologists" feel is needed. So a guy who an expert on caddis fly larvae ruined thousands of miles of stream structure. That is real history. That is what really happened. All in the name of results based science. But logging got the blame. Science got a pass. It always does.
And then the issue of charismatic surrogate critters and the ESA became all the rage, and that has developed to where there has to be lichen studies and reptile and amphibian census work to make sure nothing happens to one of them in a logging project. Best Science says all those critters are connected to the total productivity of the forest, and we can't lose one. So the better result is to have conflagration melt the top soil, or whisk it away on the winds, along with all the organic material in the soil, and fry the reptiles and amphibians to organic goo. Best science, you know. Fire is beneficial. That is destroys animal habitat is not to be a concern, because it produces new habitat for woodpeckers and bark beetles. Never mind that several million acres of spotted owl habitat have been turned to snags and gravel. No whitefooted wood rats under snag forests to feed owls now without security cover. But fire is good, and because all that can happen is a new forest grow there, and sequester carbon, stand removal fire is necessary and needed. And logging is bad. Can't be discussed. All the science says logging is bad and conflagration is wonderful. I guess we can say that about the Missoula Floods, too, in some sense of the renewal process. So if fire is so good, why not just burn down Vermont to renew it? Or North Carolina? Or California? OH, I forgot that California is well on its way to that result. No logging and all the forests burned. All supported by the Sun God followers that represent CA in Congress.
Science is a tool, Joe, used selectively to forward political agendas. And science is tweaked to support political agendas. Science is a whore. Science needs money to exist. So academic whore seek out the john's with money to support their endeavors. Science money is directed by the political majority to serve their purpose. Science money is sent to R&D;efforts in academic settings, to further a capitalist agenda. Science is bought and paid for, at all levels and times. There is nothing pure, noble, about science because it runs on money, and to get the money, is required to produce a wanted result. By either side of any equation. Iran's "nuclear power generation", wink wink wink, or small pox virus kept to "study", not because it can be weaponized. Science and the evil scientist are real as witness Khan or whatever his name is in Pakistan, the leaker and seller of nuclear technology the dictatorial dolts of the world.
If Skinner doesn't check the facts, then will you, Joe? will you be the minder and fact checker of the science used to forward the environmental agenda? Or do they need checking? Is science an institution to trust without fact checking, doing due diligence? No Bernie Madoff types in science? No Strangelovian social agendas? No Aryan Nation genetic discoveries to be used to cleanse the social order? Whose surgeon bleeds you the best? Should we make mercury available in schools to treat venereal disease? Which cigarette will improve your health? And will logging destroy the forest forever? Or, as has been documented in the rainforests of Panama, from the time of a slash and burn farm being abandoned, it takes 50 years for the land to return to a fully functioning primeval rainforest with the complete cast of critters and plants. It took New England 200 years to go from logging to subsistence farming to the industrial revolution and land abandonment to being the functioning forests of today. And that from Harvard Forest manager who says logging must be a part of responsible land use. Am I to believe him? Or Matt who is the Montana forest expert who believes fire is much better than logging.
Here's the only sentenced I noticed: "Science is a tool, Joe, used selectively to forward political agendas."
Seems like you have a poor understanding of what science is.
You are simply entirely wrong. Here's the definition to help you out:
sci-ence [sahy-uhns]
–noun
1. a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences.
2. systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
3. any of the branches of natural or physical science.
4. systematized knowledge in general.
5. knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study.
6. a particular branch of knowledge.
7. skill, esp. reflecting a precise application of facts or principles; proficiency.
-----------
What you describe is probably more in line with the definition of politics, but, like I said, I'm not going to bother carefully reading an author I know to be unfit of serious consideration.
Take this for example from Bearbait's adamant but poorly thought out rant:
"Science needs money to exist. So academic whore seek out the john's with money to support their endeavors."
True, science that is of public interest (progressive interest or conservative interest I might add) does get funded. BUT, scientific articles are peer reviewed by other scientists that don't receive a dime for their effort. It is part of the obligation of being a scientist. So profit motive is largely pulled out of the results.
Is it perfect? I'm not claiming it is. But it is a damned sight better than listening to the crap you, Bearbait, Koehler spew.
(Sorry, Koehler, usually you also spew crap. Though, like Bearbait's rants, I must admit I haven't actually read anything you posted on this comment thread. That whole credibility of the author thing again.)
Link to the full text article: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/06/05/0900991106.full.pdf+html
After reading the paper, the headlines and conclusions being touted as its results are nowhere near as exciting as the vague suppositions actually posed in the paper. This paper is just a lot of smoke and mirrors – one of those that seemed to have a pre-set conclusion in mind and made sure to get the “right” data to back that up.
The authors define the WUI as a combination of interface (high-density residential areas of 97 people/square km) and intermix (low-density residences - >0.06 units/ha), and the WUI2.5 (WUI + 2.5 km buffer - the community protection zone). By this definition (as stated in a cited reference), the WUI comprises only 2% of the area with "wildland vegetation" in the West.
They did find that when the management objective was WUI/Defensible Space, 80% of the area treated was within 0-2.5 km of the WUI. Of treated areas >10 km from the WUI, only 41% of the area had the same objective.
From the paper: "Because ~70% of wildland vegetation in the WUI2.5 across the West is privately owned, the ability of federal agencies to implement fire-risk reduction treatments near and within communities is significantly limited and may explain the positive relationship between distance from WUI and area treated. This discrepancy between landownership patterns and the need for fire mitigation presents a vexing problem for federal land-managerscharged with reducing fire risk within the mostly privately owned WUI."
The authors used revealed they used NFPORS data from 2004 to 2008. They took the lat/long reported for the treatment and built a circle out from that point to represent the area treated (regardless of the actual shape of the treatment unit), then compared that to their WUI definitions in GIS.
They express surprise that during that time only 11% of all projects were in WUI because HFRA specified at least 50% should be in WUI. HFRA became law at the end of 2003. Only projects implemented under HFRA were subject to that 50% goal. Given the planning requirements and timeframes in today’s FS, it's unlikely many HFRA projects were even implemented until 2006 or later.
NFPORS is the repository for just about all fuels-related treatments including regular old-fashioned timber sales. That's why so many activities were outside WUI. The authors also pointed out that there were often multiple objectives for treatments, with 60% of the areas treated listing 5-12 objectives per treatment. NFPORS apparently indicated that 80% of all treatments had “fuel reduction” as part of the goals, which indicates federal agencies were working on the issue of fuel reduction long before HFRA. The authors chose to disregard that particular objective because its a "nonspecific term" and therefore not "discriminating." Seems to me if you are seriously looking at implementation of the National Fire Plan, you ought to look at fuel reduction.
The authors also pointed out that there were often multiple objectives for treatments, with 60% of the areas treated listing 5-12 objectives per treatment. They did not report results for "fuel reduction" since it's a “nonspecific term”, but it was recorded for 80% of the area treated and therefore, was not "discriminating."
From the paper: "Fire mitigation treatments located far from the WUI may play an important role in protecting timber resources and rare or threatened species or ecosystems from high-severity fire, but their effectiveness in direct community protection requires more systematic evaluation. In contrast, there is strong evidence that the potential for a home to burn is relatively independent of distant wildand-fire behavior. Empirical, modeling, and post-mortem studies have shown that ignitability of building materials and the abundance and arrangement of wildland fuels in the immediate surroundings (<50 m) of a house best predict its potential to burn (14). Thus, fire-proofing houses and their immediate surroundings should provide the most direct and effective wildfire protection of homes and communities in the WUI."
The "strong evidence" referred to is one Cohen paper from 2000 - "Preventing disaster - Home ignitability in the wildland-urban interface." Neatly sidestepping how well home ignitions are prevented when the fire doesn't get close to them in the first place:
From the paper: "The extent to which past fuels-reduction treatments actually mitigated subsequent fire severity was beyond the scope of our investigation. A number of studies have shown that mechanical thinning with slash removal and prescribed fire can reduce subsequent (within a few years) wildfire severity in stands with historical low-severity fire regimes (15-20). However, similar fuel treatments may be less effective in ecosystems where historical and current fire regimes are characterized by high-severity fires that are driven by extreme weather (21, 22), although treatment size and arrangement remain important factors to evaluate (23)."
Then a paragraph later:
"Far from the WUI, however, fuels treatments should be implemented only where substantial benefits to watershed protection, biodiversity, or restoration of degraded forests can be demonstrated."
But yeah, I picked up on that last paragraph, too....basically sums up the guilty until proven innocent, prove the negative mindset of the Noss/Franklin/Dellasalla/Lindenmayer mutual peer review campfire circle.
If the recommendations and conclusions here were followed, the end result would be green spots around forest homes and pretty much black everywhere else. I can't help but conclude the real desire here is a literal scorched earth policy....it's okay to smoke a forest, even so-called disappearing old growth, as long as no tree will ever be used for human purposes. That's the bottom line.
If "scientific researches" are just going to completely disregard 80% of the pertinent data just because it's a "non-specific, non-discriminating term" (even though that term is what the whole paper is about!) and at least half the data analyzed doesn't even count towards the pre-conceived conclusion (from the NFPORS data), the public should be able to see that for themselves.
Full text of the referenced study, for those to get their scientific information from the source rather than a political columnist can be found at: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/06/05/0900991106.full.pdf+html .
Ochenski can’t even get his facts right, never mind the interpretation. It was not, as Ochenski reports, 11% of the 44,613 projects that occurred in the WUI. The study indicates it was 11% of the total area (i.e., acres) treated. The total number of acres treated was about 7.4 million acres over the 5-year period, which means roughly 814,000 WUI acres were treated--maybe.
Ochenski says: “What that means is that nine out of 10 areas [sic] logged for fuel reduction were too far away from human inhabitants to have much, if any effect on the wildfire threat to communities.” I wonder if he is referring to wildfire threats and effects like green house gas emissions to the atmosphere and their contributions to global warming, damage to watersheds, or damage to other public/community goods besides air and water—things like old-growth forests or the multitude of fish and wildlife species that depend on functioning forest ecosystems with LIVE trees, not burned landscapes pouring greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and eroded soils into rivers.
Neither Ochenski nor the study’s authors address costs of conducting treatments, particularly they did not address the difference in cost between treating outside the WUI (several hundred $ per acre on average) vs. treating inside the WUI (several thousand $ per acre on average). No wonder these folks don’t understand why more WUI acres weren’t treated. If they don’t understand why “50% of fuel-reduction resources nationwide” were allocated to the WUI under HFRA, but just 11% of the acres treated were in the WUI. It’s because they clearly don’t understand the cost difference for dealing with these two different types of forest. But it’s much easier to imply some anti-environmental political conspiracy than to research something as irrelevant as costs to do fuels management in our forests.
The study does note the application of different types of treatments inside vs. outside the WUI. For example: prescribed burning was applied on 29% of acres in the WUI vs. 45% of acres across the West as a whole; mechanical treatments were applied on 62% of WUI acres vs. 46% of total area treated; and 58% of WUI acres had broadcast burning vs. 83% of the total area treated. However, the study does not examine the costs or money spent on these different treatments. The study seems content to add up number of acres and draw conclusions about the ineffectiveness of funding management activities on public lands without examining precisely how those funds were spent. Maybe it would be informative to know how much was spent on analysis of environmental impacts (e.g., complying with NEPA) compared to on-the-ground implementation, or maybe how much was spent on those various treatments on WUI vs. non-WUI acres.
An astute mathematician might also notice that the percentages in the preceding paragraph add up to more than 100%. That’s because a given acre on the ground (i.e., “footprint” acre) can be counted more than once. For example, doing some mechanical treatment to cut down fuels counts as one treatment, coming back some other time to pile the slash can make that acre count again, and it can be counted again if managers return and use a prescribed fire to burn the piled fuels. Doing that same series of three treatments on a footprint acre would make that acre “count” as three acres. Doing that set of treatments in 2004, and then coming back and doing the three treatments again in 2008 would make a single footprint acre actually count as 6 acres in the total. So, maybe 7.4 million acres were treated, with 814,000 in the WUI, or maybe a substantially smaller number of acres were treated. It’s not clear that we can tell from the study or the data the study used.
Neither Ochenski nor the study authors discuss how much timber was removed from the landscape either as a part of these treatments or as part of the federal timber program. That might give too much useful perspective—a perspective that wouldn’t fit with a priori conclusions about effectiveness of HFI & HFRA. So, let’s add a few relevant facts to the discussion:
• The total volume of timber from national forests in Montana that Bush & Rey sold to their “pals in the logging industry” was less than 900 million board feet total from 2001 to 2008, inclusive.
• The volume harvest from national forests in Montana under the Clinton administration (1993 to 2000, inclusive) was 1,458 million board feet, 64 percent more!
• If we go back to one-term president Jimmy Carter, the harvest was 1,806 million board feet, from 1977 to 1980, inclusive. That is more than twice the volume cut by Bush & Rey in half as many years.
I would think that if the Bush administration had caused “more logging on national forests” and “grant[ed] favors to their cronies in the logging industry by allowing them to cut profitable old growth and green trees,” as Ochenski and others of his ilk would have us believe, then the harvest volume would have gone up, not down during Bush’s years in office. Likewise, if logging in national forest had been “fast tracked” as Ochenski suggests, then the time for a harvesting or fuels project to go from planning to implementation would have decreased, rather than increased form a year or less during the Clinton administration to two to three years under Bush. But hey, we can’t let relevant facts get in the way of political rhetoric—can we?
Todd, you seem to be taking Ochenski to task for his statement that the Bush Administration wanted "more logging on national forests" and that they "granted favors to their cronies in the logging industry by allowing them to cut profitable old growth and green trees."
You try and convince people that Ochenski must be wrong because logging levels under the Bush Administration were lower on national forests than they were under the Clinton Administration.
Looking at the volume of lumber harvested from national forests is only part of the picture. I hope I don't need to remind you that for the last half of the Bush Administration we were in the middle of a tremendous downward economic spiral that has resulted in the steepest decline in wood consumption in recorded history. Of course, many of us warned about this very situation for years as we attempted to let people know that this over-consumption and over-development couldn't go on forever. To bad your friends in the timber industry didn't take this impending "perfect storm" that many of us were warning about a little more seriously. Maybe if they did we'd be further down the path of sustainability.
But your notion that because timber harvest levels during the Bush Administration weren't as high as they were during Clinton than that means that Bush must have been a decent environmental president and he certainly didn't want more logging on national forests or didn't grant any favors to his cronies in the logging industry is as completely off base as it is comical.
What Ochenski has pointed out above, and what many of us spent time trying to point out over the past 8 years, was that the Bush Administration was doing everything in its power administratively to grease the wheels for more logging and resource development on public lands. That seems to be pretty common knowledge here in 2009 so I'm a little surprise that someone such as yourself doesn't seem to realize this or at least acknowledge it.
For just a quick thumbnail look at some of the Bush Administration's attempts to rollback/weaken rules and regulations dealing with national forest management I'd encourage folks to check out this document:
http://www.ourforests.org/fact/timeline_of_rollbacks.pdf.
Keep in mind that this list of Bush Administration rollbacks only went to mid-Summer of 2003. I'm pretty certain that the final 5 years of Bush Administration was more of the same. I'm just surprised that Mr. Morgan has apparently forgotten about all these well-documented attempts by the Bush Administration (and a little side-kick/former timber industry lobbyist called Mark Rey) to increase logging and resource extraction on our public lands. The fact that the Bush Administration may have failed in these attempts has more to do with their own incompetence, questionable management and profound economic realities than anything else.
The Bush administration wasn't trying to "grease the wheels" for more logging on public lands. What they were trying to do was implement some sensible regulations like HFRA in order to make some land management activities more cost efficient and sensible for the general taxpayers.
If you read Todd's posting closely you would notice that his analysis was well thought out and he even showed some balance critiquing how the FS calculated acres treated and also questioning the cost effectiveness of actions given NEPA related costs.
All you can do is spew is the old Bush-Rey rhetoric and it's getting old and dated. There's a new president in office, one who I'm pretty sure you and I both voted for. And guess what Obama is doing?...he's seeing through the tired old obstructionist half truth arguments that groups like the WildWest Institute have been pushing for the last decade.
Obama is appointing relative moderates to run our public land agencies. Reason and balance is being heard over rhetoric which can't bode well for groups like your own.
The Bush Administration, timber industry and their supporters were very open about this goal and these tactics so you'll have to excuse me if I have no idea where you're coming from attacking me for simply saying so...other than that you are like so many other anonymous posters who chose to hide behind some fake name and lob bombs at people you don't like. OK...I guess that's just how you roll.
As for why we are even talking about the Bush Administration right now when Obama's in office, I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the fact that this study looked at at 44,000 federally funded wildfire-mitigation projects in 11 Western states between 2004 and 2008, which is roughly Bush's second term and before Obama even took office on Jan 20, 2009. The other reason I even brought up the Bush Administration was because Mr. Morgan spent the final two paragraphs of his critique of Ochenski's piece (which strangely isn't even posted anywhere on this site or in this comment thread) making the bizarre claim that the Bush Administration didn't actually want to increase logging on public lands and didn't want to change administrative rules and regulations to achieve this goal.
Finally, as I already said above: shouldn't we all just admit that if the goal is really to protect homes and communities from wildfire that the federal agencies (largely under the Bush Administration) have clearly failed to effectively target that work where it will do the most good and protect the most homes/lives and ensure firefighter safety? I mean, can't we do better? Seems like there should be some common ground there that we could all work on. That's why the WildWest Institute has played a leadership role in the Montana Forest Restoration Working Group, the Lolo and Bitterroot Restoration Committees, FireSafe Montana, the Lemhi County Forest Restoration Group and the National Forest Restoration Collaborative, among other endeavors.
Watch closely, I'll try to show some points of agreement in my response. I too didn't like all of Bush's resource policy decisions, particularly some dealing with oil and gas leases.
I'm quite sure you're wrong with Bush's forest policy legacy.
I know you like to equate any changes in administrative rules or regulations made by Bush/Rey as a negative but your rhetoric only will carry you so far. As I said before I'm quite sure changes like HFRA will be looked on favorably down the line perhaps even by the current Obama administration.
Mr.Morgan and timbertiger provided well thought out analysis and critiques to the study and the poor journalistic response by the media. We all noticed that you didn't challenge them on those fronts.
I do think that we all can agree that protecting homes and communities from wildfire is a good common goal that can be achieved in many different ways. Forgive me though if I have a hard time seeing the WildWest Institute in a leadership role in the effort. Your paper and court trail is just too long and fresh in all of our memories.