I. Introduction
II. Body:
A.Changing Forest
B.Human Causes
1. Grazing
2. Logging
3. Fire Suppression
B. Restoration
1. Thinning
2. Prescribed Burning
C. Project Delays
1. Procedural Delays
2. Appeal Delays
D. Political Solutions
E. Drawbacks
F. Community Forest
III. Conclusion
A. Humans' Role and Duties
B. What need to be done
IV.References
Introduction:
Humans have been changing the Western forests'
fire system since the settlement by the Europeans and now we are experiencing
the consequences of those changes. During the summer of 2002, 6.9 million acres
of forests was burnt up in the West (Wildland Fires, 1).
This figure is two times the ten year annual average, and it does not look like
next summer will be any better (Wildfire Season, 1).
Foresters have been trying to restore the forests back to their original conditions
by thinning and prescribed fires but have encountered countless delays. Politicians
are proposing sweeping changes in bills, which have caused great controversy,
in efforts to correct the problems that the Forest Service has faced in restoration
projects. Are these bills necessary or is there a better solution that politicians
are overlooking?
Changing Forest:
The Western forests are drastically different
from what they were like before the European settlement. In pre-European time,
the forests were open and park-like with only 25-35 trees per acre surrounded
by areas of open grasslands. One could easily ride a horse through the spacious
forest. This, however, is not possible in today's forests. Today, for example
the Ponderosa pine forests, have over 500 trees per acre, creating thick dense
areas of trees, brush, and bushes (President Bush, 4).
The pre-European forests were subject to frequent low intensity fires that were
started from the grass on the forest floor. These fires caused little damage
to the larger trees but were very important because they cleaned out the brush
and reduced the amount of seedlings growing in the forest (Step
1, 6). Occasionally, during periods of high rain the brush would grow up
and the high winds would spread the fire to the tops of the trees creating canopy
fires in tress that were otherwise fire-resistant (like the Ponderosa Pine).
These canopy fires, however,were not as destructive as the ones that the West
is experiencing today because of how the forest was spaced out. If a canopy
fire broke out in one area, it would be contained by the grassland border, and
be reduced to a low intensity grass fire which would eventually burn out. This
meant that some areas of forests would be severely damaged; some would experience
moderate damage, while still others might not even have fire. The effect of
this kind of sporadic fire was the key to maintaining the mosaic landscape of
the West.
Human Causes:
The dynamics of the forests changed with
the introduction of the Europeans. The frequent grass fires were eliminated
after a hundred years of cattle and sheep grazing. This meant that brush was
able to accumulate and more seedlings and fire intolerant trees were able to
mature. The Europeans also utilized the wood resources that surrounded them.
Extensive logging in areas, removed all the best Ponderosa pines leaving the
area virtually clear-cut. This opened area allowed more seedlings and saplings
to mature because there were no larger trees for them to compete with for water
and sunlight (Step 1, 6). These areas, that were once
Ponderosa pine forests, rapidly became Douglas-fir forests, a fire intolerant
species. After logging and grazing, the forests changed from being spacious
fire tolerant forests to dense fire intolerant forests.
By far, the greatest impact on the forests
has been humans suppressing fires in order to protect the forest and the communities
around them. After a destructive fire roared through Idaho and Montana in 1910,
the Chief of the Forest Service made it the objective of the organization to
put out the forest fires (Another Costly War, 23). Suppressing
wildfires was not feasible, because of the lack of organization, until the Great
Depression with the establishment of the Conservation Corps (Land
of Fire, 10,). From then on the efforts continued to become more effective
and elaborate and by1960's every large wildfire had been suppressed and put
out (Another Costly War, 23). These 70 years of fire
suppression have had disastrous effects on the forest ecosystem (Land
of Fire, 10). Suppression has allowed the growth and maturation of brush
and seedlings and an excessive build up of fuels. The forests have become multi-layered,
with a continuous vertical layer of fuels (brush, trees, etc...) extending from
the forest floor all the way up to the canopy. This situation makes it easy
for the fire to travel quickly from a ground fire to a canopy fire wiping out
trees that had survived a dozen previous fires (Another Costly War, 23). This
is the present condition of the Western forests; they are at a high risk of
being destroyed by fire, and foresters' are frantically trying to save the forests.
Restoration:
Management practices have gone through dramatic
changes within the last decade, as foresters' have become more aware of the
importance of fire in the Western forests. It is estimated that there are 190
million acres of public and private land at risk of massive canopy fires if
not reduced (President Bush, 2). The goal of the Forest
Service now is reduce the risk for the forests by returning them back to how
they were before human interference. The best proposed way to accomplish this
is to use a combination of thinning and burning. Prescribed fires are the best
way to introduce fires back in to the ecosystem. They require very little human
invasion and mimic the natural fires that were normally apart of these forests
during pre-European times. But now, in these Western forests, if a prescribed
fire was started it would lead to a massive canopy fire because of the large
amounts of ladder fuels. Therefore, in order to use prescribed fires, foresters
need to remove these understory, fire-intolerant, dense trees so that the fires
do not get out of control. This process is called thinning. Prescribed fires
are important to follow up a thinning project because it removes the residue
from thinning (tree branches, saw dust, etc...). With the combination of thinning
and prescribed fires the forests have a chance to reduce to their natural conditions
and avoid the massive fires that they are facing now.
Project Delays:
In the last 15 years the management has
switched to these methods, after years of new management procedures, these increasingly
destructive fires have not been turned around (Jungwirth,
4). There are two key reasons for this, as highlighted by the Forest Service:
procedural delays and appeal delays (President Bush, 13-16).
According the results of a 2002 study done by the Forest Service, "requirements
for environmental analysis go well beyond what is required for fully informed
decision-making," (President Bush,14). It can take
up to six months for an environmental planning document to be completed just
for a routine procedure (President Bush, 13). There
are serious long-term risks at stake. Six months of planning can mean millions
of acres of forests destroyed and thousands of lives lost. The Forest Service
is so busy, working to complete the papers and documents required for analysis,
that it is unable to devote enough time to "fulfilling its historic mission:
to sustain health, diversity, and productivity of the Nation's forests…[and]
to meet the needs of the present and future generations" (HR 5319,1). The
Forest Service found that it spends 40% of its total time, an estimated $250
million per year, in planning and assessment work, (Clifford,
6). The Forest Service calls for a change in environmental analysis requirements
in order to be more efficient.
The National Forests are public land. This
fact highlights one of the problems the Forest Service faces; citizens feel
it is their property and they have the right to dictate how it should be managed
and used. The Forest Service stated that 48% of all its projects, from January
of 2001 through July 2002, were appealed while at the same time the General
Accounting office shows that only 1% have been appealed (Fire
Fight, 3). The difference between these two estimations is that the Forest
Service included appeals of timber sales and not strictly just fuel reduction
projects. However, despite the discrepancy, it is true that the appeals over
these projects have become a great deal more complicated in getting fuel reduction
projects implemented. Appeals over manual thinning cover more than 20 points
of objection, whereas most appeals only cover three or four issues. This makes
a compromise increasingly difficult if not impossible to achieve. The Forest
Service mentions that in most cases the appeals do not even change the prior
decision; only one out of ten actually change the outcome (President
Bush, 14). According to the book Forest of Discord, "many appeals are
frivolous or motivated by the desire to delay land management rather than improve
it," (Alexander, 31). Every appeal filed adds a
minimum of three and half months to be reviewed (President
Bush, 14). Considering that the appeals do not often change the underlying
decision, the appeals process is viewed as wasted time that the Forest Service
could be spending to reduce fuels.
Political Solutions:
The Politicians have taken these difficulties
(procedural and appeals delay) as an indication that the laws and regulations
need to be changed. President Bush released his "Health Forest Initiative"
to set the stage for this change. His proposal seeks to speed up hazardous fuels
projects, to have the courts consider the long-term danger when ruling on appeals,
and to grant stewardship contracts to logging companies to thinning out the
forests and reduce the fuels. This proposal was submitted to Congress on August
22, 2002 and negotiations have begun in Congress to compose a bill that would
speed up these necessary fuel reduction projects. Most of these plans involve
some from of streamlining the environmental laws, limiting appeals, and long-term
contracts with logging companies to perform the fuel reduction projects. Proposed
bills with these components are the National Forest Fire Prevention Act (HR
5214), the Wildfire Prevention and Forest Health Protection Act of 2002 (HR
5309), and the Healthy Forest Reform Act of 2002 (HR 5319) (Wildfire
Season, 5).
Drawbacks:
During congressional hearings objections
to the proposed plans were vocalized. In these testimonies, it was stated that
"there is…little scientific information about how thinning actually
affects the overall fire risk in national forest…. No peer-reviewed, empirical
studies show that thinning forest in fact leads to a systemic reduction of subsequent
fire intensity," (Gridlock on the National Forest,
4) This fact should be considered when implementing a thinning project.
Many of the bills, proposed to Congress, call for a quicker analysis and waiving
or limiting the environmental laws temporarily so that thinning projects can
get done quicker; however, this kind of strategy forgets to consider the uncertainty
that surrounds these projects. Thinning and prescribed fires are experimental
procedures and they need to be treated with extreme caution and careful planning
(Gridlock on the National Forest, 7).
Another continual fact brought up against
these proposals is that they take an entire range of forests and treat it all
the same. Forests at lower elevations and dryer areas, such as the Ponderosa
pine, have experienced drastic changes their fire cycles but not all forest
in the West have experienced this (Brown, 13). Cold,
moist forests at higher elevations, like the lodgepole pine, subalpine fur and
Engelmann spruce forests, have historically been regenerated once a century
by massive canopy fires and wiping out much of the forest (Brown,
13). The fire conditions in these forests today are very typical of these
areas even before fire suppression occurred and therefore do not need to have
thinning and burning done on them. The proposals, now waiting litigation by
Congress, do not account for these site differences. The plans propose a "one
size fits all" application of thinning and prescribed burning that is unacceptable
to manage a diverse landscape.
These proposed bills also seek to reduce
or eliminate the appeals process for fuel reduction sites. This can be a risky
option to embrace. Limiting appeals can make the agency more efficient but it
also can limit justifiable appeals that would normally bring to light harmful
effects unnoticed by the Forest Service (Alexander, 32).
In a broader sense, to refuse the public the right to voice their opinions and
concerns is a concept that does not go over well. The end result would cause
more active protesting and "sit downs" to prevent fuel reductions
projects from happening. These plans should be seeking public involvement not
trying to go around it.
The inclusion of stewardship contracts worries
many individuals and groups as well. The fear is that these contracts open up
the forests to logging companies and provide them with incentive to take the
larger trees that do not necessarily need to be removed. Looking beyond this
fear, however, stewardship contracts can provide positive outcomes. The fuel
reduction projects are mainly geared removing small diameter trees. Companies,
harvesting these small diameter woods, are turning it into pulpwood, but there
are many there are many more profitable uses for this wood. This small wood
has many new emerging uses like building hogans for Navajos (Little,
38). Providing companies a contract, guaranteeing ladder fuels every so
many years, will encourage them to modify their mills so that they might be
able to market this small diameter wood (Fire Fight, 2).
Another concern is that these bills do not
established priorities for communities. Community protection should be the focus
of the fuel reduction projects. There is so much time and money spent by the
Forest Service to deal with appeals because they do not set their priorities.
If the Forest Service wants to get areas cleared of high fuel build up then
it should start in areas that involve the least amount of controversy (Gridlock
on the National Forest, 12). That means their first priority should be clearing
out fuels around communities. As a second priority the Forest Service should
work at thinning out areas that have been altered greatly by fire suppression
and other human disturbances (Gridlock on the National Forest,
12).
Community Forests:
Congress does not need to make such sweeping
strides towards fuel reduction---its being done already. Right now programs
within local communities are working together to protect their community from
fires. It is called "Community Forest" and those involved in such
projects say it really works. These groups started up out of the National Fire
Plan in 2002. The program was designed to have all spectrums of view points
and positions, (environmentalist, local teachers, small contractors, Bureau
of Land Management.…etc.), to work together and be involved in the planning,
implementation, and monitoring of fuel reduction projects within their community
(Gray,19).
The strength of this program is that it
works at having everyone affected come together to create a solution that all
parties can be satisfied with. The very nature of this program reduces the amount
of appeals on their projects. Having the community involved ensures that the
community will be protected; the fate of their community will not need to rely
on the Forest Service or some other agency, which might not put them as top
priority. These groups working in collaboration have also worked around need
stewardship contracts by relying on small logging companies to do the work.
Small companies are able to modify their small mills with very little difficulty
and have been able to find new and inventive ways to utilize the small diameter
wood (Jungwirth, 4).
Conclusion:
Humans have altered the fire systems that
once shaped many pre-European forests in the west. It is now up to humans to
solve the problem, but that is seemingly impossible given the recent political
bills that seek sweeping changes. Nothing will ever be accomplished if the focus
is not on a common goal. The Forest Service needs to start with the common experiences
and make changes incrementally. They should start from within Community Forest
and work out from there. The destruction of the Western pine forest is the result
of humans and it is their responsibility to fix the harm that they have done.
The forests now depend entirely on humans; it is time for everyone to work together
to fix the harm that has been done.
References:
Alexander, Kelsey, et al. Forest Of Discord: Options
for Governing Our National Forests and Federal Public Land. Bethesda, MD: Society
of American Forest, 1999.
"Another Costly War That America Can Never Win?" The
Economist 17 Aug. 2002: 23
Brown, Rich. "Thinning, Fire and Forest Restoration:
A Science Based Approach for National Forest in the Interior Northwest." Defenders
of Wildlife Dec. 2002: pg 9-17. Viewed 7 Nov.2002
Clifford, Tom. "Support the President's Timber Initiative."
The Montana Standard. 6 Oct. 2002: 8 pars. Viewed 2 Nov. 2002.<http://www.montanaforum.com/rednews/2002/10/04/build/forests/opbush.php?nnn=5>.
"Fire Fight." PBS Online News Hour. 22 Aug 2002: 3 pars.
Viewed 10 Nov. 2002
Gray, Gerry. "Washington Outlook." American Forest. Autumn
2002: 19.
"Gridlock on the National Forests." NRDC. 4 Dec 2001.
Viewed 8 Nov. 2002
"H.R. 5319: Healthy Forests Reform Act of 2002." (2002):
11 pgs. Viewed 1 Nov. 2002
Jungwirth, Lynn. "Opinion: Conservation is everyone's
business." American Forest. Autumn 2002: 4.
"Land of Fire." Scientific American Nov.2002: 10.
Little, Jane. "Hogans of Hope." American Forest.
Autumn 2002: 39-42.
President Bush, George. "Healthy Forest: An Initiative
for Wildfire Prevention and Stronger Communities." 22 Aug. 2002. Viewed 2 Nov.
2002.<http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/healthyforests/Healthy_Forests_v2.pdf>.
"Step 1. Characterizations of the Watershed." Forest
Service: 17 pars. Viewed 7 Nov. 2002.
"Wildland Fires of 2002 Summary." National Fire News.
11 Oct. 2002: 1 pg. Viewed 2 Nov. 2002
"Wildfire Season Heats Up Debate in Washington." Forest
Source. Oct 2002: 1&5.