Editor’s Notes: This essay is a possible chapter in a book-in-process about forestry in India during the Raj, although this story is about forestry education in Italy in the late 19th century.

Author Roger Underwood is a former General Manager of the Department of Conservation and Land Management (CALM) in Western Australia, a regional and district manager, a research manager and bushfire specialist. Roger currently directs a consultancy practice with a focus on bushfire management and is Chairman of The Bushfire Front Inc.. He lives in Perth, Western Australia.

As I write, a subdued and probably pointless “debate” (represented by a polite exchange of emails) is going on within the Australian forestry community about the professional training of foresters. On one side are the academics and the universities –- they seem mainly to be interested in designing courses that will attract students. On the other are the old lags (like me), who are concerned about the credentials of forestry graduates and their capacity to perform professionally in the management of native forests. What it comes down to, I suppose, is whether we want forestry graduates who are just glorified environmental scientists, or practical applied scientists with a passion for forest management and protection… which is how we old lags see ourselves.

By a happy coincidence, just as I was mulling over all this, I came across an article on 19th century forestry education in Italy. Although written over 120 years ago, it appeals to me not simply because (as some might think) it reinforces my prejudices about the current situation in Australia, but also because it is an enjoyable article in its own right.

The writer was Dr Hugh Cleghorn, a medical practitioner from St Andrews, Scotland and also a keen forester and a former Conservator of Forests at Madras in India. His article was first published in the Transactions of the Scottish Aboricultural Society Volume 3 (Number 2) of 1876 and was then reprinted in The Indian Forester of the same year. Forestry education had become a subject of great interest in India at that time, with the Indian Forest Service keen to recruit the best-trained foresters for its ranks, and just then setting up its own Forestry School at Dehra Dun.

Dr Cleghorn describes a trip to Italy and a visit to the famous Royal Italian Forestry School at Vallombrosa, near Florence . His hope is that “a short account of its history, and of a visit paid to it, may prove interesting”. It certainly did for me, reading his paper all these years later, and would have, I feel sure, helped to provide a blueprint for the Dehra Dun forestry school. … [more]

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Abstract

Currently, high intensity, large-area lightning fires that burn during droughts dominate Canada’s fire regimes. However, studies from several disciplines clearly show that humans historically ignited burns within this matrix of large fires. Two approaches for fire research and management have arisen from this pattern: a “large-fire biophysical paradigm” related to lightning-ignited fires, and an “eco-cultural paradigm” related to human-caused burning. Working at the edge between biophysically driven fires and eco-cultural burns, and their associated management and research paradigms, presents unique challenges to land managers. We proceed by describing fire frequency trends across Canada, and how an interaction between changing climatic and cultural factors may provide better causal explanations for observed patterns than either group of factors alone. We then describe four case histories of fire restoration into Canadian landscapes moving through evolution, or deliberate intent, towards increasing emphasis on an eco-cultural paradigm. We show that use of cultural burns maintains this facet of the long-term regime while providing greater capacity for larger, higher intensity fires to occur with fewer negative ecological and socio-economic implications. Key lessons learned by practitioners restoring fire to landscapes include: 1) fire is only one process in ecosystems that also include other complex interactions, and thus restoration of fire alone could have unintended consequences in some ecosystems; 2) recognizing long-term human roles of not only fire managers, but also hunters and gatherers is critical in restoration programs; and 3) this diversity of past, present, and future ecological and cultural interactions with fire can link managers to a broad constituency of stakeholders. Bringing this variety of people and interests into the decision-making processes is a necessary pre-requisite to successful fire management at the edge.

Introduction

Wildland fire is a dominant ecological process across Canada. Fire plays a critical role in maintaining characteristic vegetation communities within Canadian ecozones (Figure 1), including the grasslands of the Prairies, subalpine and dry interior forests of the Montane Cordillera, mixed conifer and deciduous forests of the Boreal Plains and Shield, and the eastern hardwood and pine forests of the Mixedwood Plains in southeastern Canada and the Atlantic Maritime ecozones (Stocks et al. 2003, Pyne 2007).

Although fire suppression is the primary land management objective in most of Canada, an average of over 2 million hectares burned annually from 1959 through 1997, with up to 7 million hectares burning in major fire years. During this period, burn area was dominated by large fires (>200 ha). Although these burns represented only 3 % of the total number of fires, they burned 97 % of the area (Stocks et al. 2003).

The current regime of large, high-intensity fire is thus understandably the focus of Canadian forest fire researchers and managers. The prevailing “large fire, biophysical paradigm” centers attention on lightning strikes that currently ignite the majority of these burns (e.g., Nash and Johnson 1996)…

From our experience, contemporary researchers and managers working on the basis of the biophysical paradigm tend to conceptualize that lightning ignitions have long burned the majority of the area in many Canadian ecozones (for argument, say >75 %), and for various reasons do not believe that human ignitions could have substantially contributed to historic fire regimes in most areas (e.g., Johnson et al. 1998, Bergeron et al. 2004a).

However important the biophysical role of fire is today, anthropological and historical research throughout Canada shows that, in the past, human attention focused more on an ecological and cultural importance of fire (Pyne 2007). For more than ten millennia, First Nations of indigenous peoples have occupied almost all areas of Canada, with population density highest in more southern areas (McMillan 1995). Studies clearly show that humans set low intensity fires that burned over the long term within the larger matrix of fires (Lewis and Ferguson 1988, Turner 1999). Historically, at least in some areas, human use, not suppression, of fire was more significant. Fire was an easily available tool that could be routinely used for purposes ranging from altering wildlife habitat, to improving berry crops, to warfare (Boyd 1999, Stewart 2002). People living on the land understood fire’s role intimately, and because it was their most powerful tool to change landscapes, integrated this understanding into daily decisions for survival. …

…[C]urrent researchers or managers working with fire based upon an eco-cultural paradigm usually conceptualize that ignitions by humans historically burned only a minor portion of most ecosystems (say 2 m after fire forced a re-evaluation of the program (Pyne 2004, 2007; White and Fisher 2007). A detailed review of the park’s long-term ecosystem states and processes concluded that a wide range of anthropogenic changes in the ecosystem, including reduced hunting by humans, predator control, and high human-use levels (that displaced wary predators) had allowed elk (Cervus elaphus L.) densities to increase beyond long-term norms (Kay and White 1995). Fire and ongoing high elk herbivory, in combination with prescribed fire, could actually eliminate some aspen stands (White et al. 1998). In addition, a major review of park land use practices recommended that ecological restoration would require a wide range of actions to manage human use to restore long-term ecosystem conditions (White and Fisher 2007). As a result, in the past decade, park ecological restoration has taken a much stronger eco-cultural focus (White and Fisher 2007). Researchers are working with Stoney-Nakoda elders to document pre-park establishment landscape use patterns (S. McGarvey, McMaster University, personal communication). First Nations representatives routinely attend park advisory committee meetings and are assisting park managers in culling human-habituated elk. Long-term patterns of human burning are of strong interest to fire managers. The current hypothesis is that high historic fire frequency on southwest-facing slopes and valley bottoms may be the result of First Nations’ burning to maintain bison habitat (White et al. 2002). …

Eco-cultural relationships dominate the approach taken by researchers and managers restoring fire to Garry oak (Quercus garryana Douglas ex Hook.) woodlands in protected areas within the Pacific Maritime ecozone such as the Cowichan Gary Oak Preserve and Gulf Islands National Park Reserve (Figure 2). The eco-cultural focus occurs because of strong recognition of First Nations’ cultural practices in the area, the relatively infrequent occurrence of lightning fire, the small area of parks surrounded by urbanization or occurring on islands that will not likely be burned by large wildfires, and the numerous rare species that may have high fire dependence (Turner 1999, Pellet et al. 2007, Bjorkman and Vellend 2010).

In combination with biophysical studies on fuels, weather, lightning, and charcoal accumulation patterns (Pellatt et al. 2007), researchers have focused on First Nations’ traditional knowledge of important resources such as camas (Camassia Lindl.) and how resource availability could be enhanced or sustained by cultural practices such as fire use (Turner 1999, Turner et al. 2003, Beckwith 2004). This work documents a legacy of knowledge accumulated through hundreds of generations of people living in and manipulating these ecosystems. However, fire restoration work in this ecozone remains limited. In cooperation with Hul’qumi’num First Nation, the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s (NCC) managers of the Cowichan Gary Oak Preserve do small burns in plots linked to research programs at several Canadian universities. The NCC conducted conducted three management-scale burns in 2009. The Hul’qumi’num are routinely involved in the restoration, including the first post-European contact harvesting of camas that were stimulated by prescribed burning, several annual culturally focused school tours, and employment of band members by the NCC for burn planning and monitoring. The NCC staff provided in-kind work on First Nation lands in exchange for restoration assistance on the nature preserve.

LESSONS LEARNED

Fire practitioners in Canadian parks and protected areas are stewards of combined eco-culturally and biophysically driven fire regimes. Similar to earlier generations of First Nations, today’s land managers face the same issue in maintaining eco-culturally important patches of relatively frequent, low-intensity fire dependent ecosystems within a landscape matrix of less frequent, large area, high-intensity fire. From the above case histories, it appears that managers are recognizing significant spatial and temporal interactions on the edge between these two general fire regimes. Moreover, managers are rediscovering First Nations’ traditional ecosystem knowledge of the human actions that were most practical for fire use in these northern regions where high-intensity fires are a dominant ecological force (Lewis and Ferguson 1988).

Management fires lit under an eco-cultural paradigm maintain an important component of the long-term regime while providing greater capacity for larger, higher intensity fires to occur with few negative ecological and socio-economic implications. Key lessons learned to date include:

• Fire is only one process in complex ecosystems that include human effects, predator and prey relationships, competition between species, herbivore browsing, and numerous other interactions. Thus, restoring fire cannot be done in isolation. It must be done in the context of a holistic ecosystem restoration (Pyne 2007: 472-73, White and Fisher 2007).

• Recognizing long-term human roles as not only fire managers, but also hunters, gatherers, and cultivators is critical in restoration programs. However, ongoing studies and participation of First Nations in park management suggest that use of traditional knowledge should be treated as an ongoing process (Pierotti and Wildcat 2000). In some locations in Canada, it has been several generations since native peoples lived on the land. It will likely take active experimentation and learning for First Nations and interdisciplinary researchers to rediscover lost cultural practices and integrate them into modern park management programs (Turner et al. 2003, Lepofsky and Lertzman 2008).

• As fire programs scale up to a landscape level, managers are beginning to observe the interactions predicted between eco-cultural and biophysically driven fire regimes. For example, Parks Canada now allows some spring-season, human-ignited fires to burn into drought periods later in the year, with careful monitoring and periodic containment actions. Since 1990, these multi-season burns are now the largest single source of area burned in national parks on the eastern slopes of the Montane Cordillera ecozone (Brian Low, Parks Canada, unpublished data). Moreover, anthropogenic burns are becoming important influences on the burning patterns of subsequent mid-summer high-intensity fires caused by lightning (Walker and Taylor 2004).

• The diverse eco-cultural fire and biophysical interactions with ecosystem components (e.g., eastern white pine, bison, trembling aspen, elk, grizzly bears, and camas) that have importance to past and current peoples link fire managers to a broad constituency of stakeholders. Bringing this variety of people and interests into the political decision-making processes (Pierotti and Wildcat 2000) is a necessary pre-requisite to successful fire management “at the edge” between smaller eco-cultural fires, and large, landscape level biophysically driven fires. …

CONCLUSION

Managers attempting to restore fire to Canada’s landscapes are constrained by patterns of ignition, fuel, topography, weather, and potential for high-intensity fires that confronted First Nations prior to the modern fire suppression period. Increasingly, today’s researchers and managers are consulting First Nations’ elders whose ancestors have 10 millennia of fire experience in Canadian ecosystems (Parks Canada 2000). Because interests of today’s park managers and long-term cultures may be similar (e.g., maintain biodiversity without destroying important human values), their approaches may become increasingly similar as fire management programs evolve.

Modern Canadian land use and political values limit human fire use within protected areas, likely to levels below historical conditions. Large fires caused mainly by lightning and unplanned human-ignitions will continue to burn most of the area, albeit also at reduced levels from historic conditions. However, ecosystem management of protected areas in Canada and other areas of the world is gradually evolving to recognize human’s important long-term influence on biophysical, ecological, and fire regime processes. This recognition enhances opportunities to re-engage humans in their important role in ecosystem restoration and stewardship. This process of re-engagement is essential for successfully managing processes such as fire that require strong stakeholder understanding and political support.

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Abstract

Recent research on the ecology of fire has challenged the view that the use of fire by indigenous peoples is detrimental to ecosystems and wildlife in protected areas. However, in Canaima National Park and World Heritage Site in southeastern Venezuela, since 1981 managers have employed a costly fire control program to eliminate savanna burning by the Pemon indigenous people. Here I present the results of the first study on Pemon perspectives of fire management in the park. I show that savanna burning is an important tool in indigenous land management and plays a key role in preventing large catastrophic fires. Pemon knowledge of fire also raises questions about conventional interpretations of environmental change in the park. Lastly, I recommend a fire management policy that seeks to integrate local ecological knowledge. This will require: (a) greater openness from scientists and resource managers to understanding Pemon rationale for the use of fire, (b) clarification among the Pemon themselves of their own views of fire, and (c) research partnerships among scientists, resource managers and the Pemon in order to encourage understanding of Pemon ecological knowledge of fire, and to assess its true impact in the Canaima National Park.

Introduction

Since 1872 when Yellowstone, the world’s first national park, was created, protected area managers have seen fires as a major threat to ecosystem and wildlife conservation (MacKinnon et al., 1986; Machlis and Tichnell, 1987). However, global research into fire ecology, both from natural and human perspectives, directly challenges this view. For instance, in Indian national parks research has shown that fires play a key role in maintaining particular types of forest ecosystems and their associated wildlife (Puyravaud et al., 1995). Similarly, studies in West Africa show that rather than causing net conversion of forest or shrub vegetation to savanna, indigenous fire practices are often vital for maintaining dynamic forest–savanna and savanna mosaics (Fairhead and Leach, 1996; Mbow et al., 2000; Laris, 2002). In some countries, such as Australia (Press, 1987; Lewis, 1989; Russell-Smith et al., 1997), a more thorough understanding of indigenous burning practices has resulted in their incorporation into mainstream protected area management.

Here I present the first analysis of indigenous views of fire and the perception of alleged fire-induced environmental changes in Canaima National Park in southeastern Venezuela. For more than 30 years, different institutions have striven to change or eliminate the traditional use of fire throughout the area popularly known as the Gran Sabana, in the eastern sector of the park. Fire control policies have been based on the assumption that the use of fire, particularly savanna burning, is causing a gradual reduction in forest cover (Galán, 1984; Gómez and Picón, 1994). Despite concerns over the use of fire in the park, land managers have shown little interest in understanding local fire regimes and Pemon views of fire. Instead, fire control has been based largely on preconceived ideas and unsubstantiated hypotheses of the impacts of fire, resulting in a long conflict between the State and the Pemon over the use of fire in the park.

Many Pemon do not share the view of fire as destructive, and opposition to official fire control policies has taken the form of silent but persistent resistance (Scott, 1990), including: (a) the continuation of traditional burning practices, despite official efforts to change them, and (b) the setting of small fires specifically to irritate park managers and to make the firemen “work and get wet.” …

By aiming to clarify traditional Pemon reasoning behind the use of fire, this article seeks to provide a starting point for constructive dialogue among the Pemon and to some extent between the Pemon and official land managers in order to improve fire management in the park. I show that the Pemon have important cultural and environmental reasons for using fire which deserve careful attention if fire management policies are to be well-adapted to the area.

Canaima National Park and its Traditional Inhabitants

Canaima National Park is located in Bolívar State, in southeastern Venezuela, close to the borders with Brazil and Guyana (Fig. 1) and covers an area of 30,000 km2. It protects the northwestern section of the Guayana Shield, an ancient geological formation shared with Brazil, the Guianas, and Colombia (Sharpe and Rodríguez, 1997). Canaima’s best-known features are its characteristic flat-topped mountains, known as “tepuis.”

In recognition of its extraordinary scenery and geological and biological value, the park was designated as a World Heritage Site in 1994. The vegetation of Canaima National Park is strikingly divided between a savanna–forest mosaic in the eastern sector of the park, known as the Gran Sabana, and humid evergreen forest in the west. It is still not clear what causes this difference and, in particular, how the savanna originated.

Some authors believe the savanna to be a product of a rain shadow caused by the eastern tepuis (Huber et al., 2001), or of drastic climatic fluctuations between 4,000 and 2,700 years B.P. (Rull, 1992). Others (e.g., Galán, 1984) consider the formation to be largely anthropogenic, a result of repeated burning by indigenous peoples. This disagreement over the environmental history of the area forms a central part of the analysis below. …

The traditional inhabitants of the park are the Pemon, a sub-family of the Carib linguistic family. Their entire population approaches 20,000 (OCEI, 1992), the largest among Central Guiana Highlands peoples (Thomas, 1982). About half of the Pemon are settled within Canaima National Park, in about 30 villages that vary in size from 100 to 1000 inhabitants, although some Pemon still follow the traditional dispersed settlement pattern of nuclear families (Thomas, 1982) Their subsistence activities include shifting cultivation, gathering, hunting, and fishing, although small-scale mining and tourism are increasingly providing work as well (Sharpe and Rodríguez, 1997). The Pemon use fire in three main activities: shifting agriculture, hunting, and savanna burning. Managers have traditionally believed that these uses are incompatible with two of the conservation objectives of the park: preservation of forest cover and watershed protection (CORPOTURISMO et al., 1974). …

Results and Discussion

… Research on fire ecology has paid scant attention to the study of local fire regimes and to the Pemon knowledge about fire management. In sum, there has been little effort to understand traditional Pemon use of fire and the ecological knowledge that underlies it.

Furthermore, research on fire ecology carried out in the park has favored studies that provide only a short-term view of savanna–forest dynamics such as fire behavior, savanna combustibility, and ecological dynamics of fire in order to determine the factors that generate instability in the Gran Sabana forests (Galán, 1984; Fölster, 1986; Fölster and Dezzeo, 1994; Hernández, 1999). Little attention has been paid to gathering sets of data to study processes of landscape change more directly and to document historical changes…

All this has contributed to perpetuating a monolithic view of fire among managers in the park, and has created a strong clash between two different knowledge systems about fire.

Rather than an isolated example, fire policy in Canaima National Park has to be understood against the background of a global discourse on fire and savannization responsible for creating distorted images of local knowledge systems of fire management throughout the world. The way in which the dominant view of fire became established in policy and scientific circles in Canaima shows striking parallels with similar processes documented in other parts of the world (Pyne, 1997). …

Pemon Views of Fire

The Pemon appear to use fire for a wide variety of reasons (Table I), which overlap considerably with results presented in other studies on indigenous fire practices (Hough, 1993; Mbow et al., 2000; Laris, 2002). Without fire, most of the traditional Pemon livelihood practices, including agriculture, fishing, hunting, and gathering, would simply not be possible. Hence, it is not surprising that young Pemon and elders most often define fire as “essential to life,” as a “help in their lives,” or as a “companion wherever we go.” In the words of one elder “fire works for you, fire works for all of us.” …

In the traditional Pemon world-view, fire is seen as an integral part of the landscape. This is partly because the Pemon consider themselves “savanna people,” in contrast to their indigenous neighbors from British Guyana, the Ingarikok, who are known as “forest people” (Koch-Grünberg, 1917 (1981c)). Being able to see the horizon, their land, and smoke gives elders a sense of tranquility.

The Cultural Significance of Fire

The perception of fire as an integral component of the landscape is linked to the view of fire as an inseparable part of the Pemon culture. According to 7 of 15 of the elders interviewed, the use of fire is deeply rooted in the Pemon through tradition. Consequently, the perpetuation of burning practices is viewed as an important part of the maintenance of the Pemon culture itself:

It is a custom of indigenous people to use fire. Our ancestors lived that way, just as other societies have their customs, (César Durán, Pemon elder. Interview, May 11, 1999).

Thus, the use of fire is a means of cultural reaffirmation, and also of legitimizing the Pemon sense of ownership over their lands, which EDELCA’s fire control program, among other contributing factors, is perceived to be threatening. This explains why a frequent Pemon reply when asked about the reasons for burning is: “I burn because this is my land, and in my land I do whatever I want to.”

The Aesthetic Value of Fire

Fire makes savannas turn green, making them aesthetically attractive to the Pemon:

Fire for us is important to replace the old weeds. We burn so that new plants come out. It is like a man when he has not shaven and his hair has grown: he looks ugly. If he shaves, he looks handsome. It is the same with the savanna (Leticia Fernández, Pemon elder. Interview, May 11, 1999).

In this respect, Pemon motivations for using fire resonate with those of others indigenous peoples, where burning is seen as “tidy” (Hough, 1993) and a corrective tool for “cleaning the country and making it right” (Lewis, 1989). As for the aborigines in Kakadu National Park, Australia, where one of their strongest motivations for using of fire is “taking care of their country” (Lewis, 1989), in the case of the Pemon, the use of fire is seen as part of the duty they have towards their land:

I like to walk on clean paths, because that makes Pata feel happy (Valentina Rojas, Pemon elder. Interview extract, August 4, 1999).

The Environmental Importance of Fire

The use of fire to maintain the savanna looking “pretty” and green is intimately linked with one of the most important reasons given by Pemon elders for using fire, which has been entirely overlooked by EDELCA: each of the 15 Pemon elders interviewed stressed the crucial role that savanna burning has in preventing large, destructive, and occasionally catastrophic conflagrations. …

In the traditional Pemon view, then, large fires are prevented by collaboratively burning a mosaic of small portions of savanna of different height (in different stages of succession). In such a mosaic, fires die out naturally when they reach the border of a previous fire. …

Environmental History of the Gran Sabana

The central debate over the origin of the contemporary landscape of the Gran Sabana is whether or not the region was covered by continuous forest in historical times and, if so, whether the reduction in forest cover was caused by humans (Fölster, 1986; Huber et al., 2001). The presence of a human population that is highly dependent on the use of fire encourages the idea that the Gran Sabana is a manmade environment produced by the gradual, fire-assisted conversion of forest to savanna. The contemporary climate of the area also partially supports this view, since the humid tropical climate that exists in the Upper Caroní River Basin typically supports forest cover elsewhere (Fölster, 1986; Rull, 1992). …

The view that the forests have been the dominant feature of the Gran Sabana is a product of some scientists and resource managers basing their interpretations of the landscape on short-term, snapshot observations (Fairhead and Leach, 1996). If we focus on long-term observations instead, a different conclusion is reached, which interestingly enough has important points in common with the Pemon explanation of the landscape history. For instance, historical accounts by early explorers suggest that the landscape has not changed significantly over the last 160 years. The dominance of savannas over forests stands out very clearly in many accounts (Schomburgk, 1840; Boddam-Whetham, 1879; Im Thurn, 1885 (1934)).

Conclusion

This paper is a first step towards explaining the Pemon resistance to fire control in the park. I have argued that, contrary to conventional belief, the use of fire by the Pemon is not a product of ignorance or negligence. There are important cultural and environmental factors that explain its extensive use in the area, which land managers must understand to be able to develop a fire management program that is well-adapted to the area. Most significantly, the use fire is for many Pemon (particularly elders) an integral part of their culture, deeply rooted in their traditional practices. Thus, any attempt to eliminate or restrict the use of fire will inevitably be seen as a threat to their cultural identity and their sense of ownership over their lands, and is likely to meet with resistance.

Also, like other indigenous peoples living in similar environments (Lewis, 1989; Fairhead and Leach, 1996; Mbow et al., 2000; Laris, 2002), Pemon elders claim to have developed a prescribed burning system that involves the selective and cooperative setting of savanna fires at various times of the year in order to avoid large destructive forest fires. Ignoring this aspect of the Pemon logic behind the use of fire may explain an important part of the failure of EDELCA’s fire control in the park in terms of changing the use of fire by the Pemon and reducing the numbers of fires set every year.

Finally, Pemon ecological knowledge of fire suggests that concerns about the use of fire in the park are not shared locally, and that conventional interpretations of environmental change in the park need revision. A clear example lies in explanations for the environmental history of the Gran Sabana and its large catastrophic fires, which assign the Pemon more responsibility than they believe they deserve. In other cases, such as the debate over the impact of fire on the forest–savanna borders, resource managers are seen as making overly broad generalizations about the impact of fire out of a lack of understanding of Pemon ecological knowledge of fire. …

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Abstract

This paper synthesizes the existing literature about traditional and local ecological knowledge relating to biodiversity in Pacific Northwest forests in order to assess what is needed to apply this knowledge to forest biodiversity conservation efforts. We address four topics: (1) views and values people have relating to biodiversity, (2) the resource use and management practices of local forest users and their effects on biodiversity, (3) methods and models for integrating traditional and local ecological knowledge into biodiversity conservation on public and private lands, and (4) challenges to applying traditional and local ecological knowledge for biodiversity conservation. We focus on the ecological knowledge of three groups who inhabit the region: American Indians, family forest owners, and commercial nontimber forest product (NTFP) harvesters.

Integrating traditional and local ecological knowledge into forest biodiversity conservation is most likely to be successful if the knowledge holders are directly engaged with forest managers and western scientists in on-the-ground projects in which interaction and knowledge sharing occur. Three things important to the success of such efforts are understanding the communication styles of knowledge holders, establishing a foundation of trust to work from, and identifying mutual benefits from knowledge sharing that create an incentive to collaborate for biodiversity conservation. Although several promising models exist for how to integrate traditional and local ecological knowledge [TEK and LEK] into forest management, a number of social, economic, and policy constraints have prevented this knowledge from flourishing and being applied. These constraints should be addressed alongside any strategy for knowledge integration.

Keywords: Traditional ecological knowledge, forest management, biodiversity conservation, American Indians, family forest owners, nontimber forest product harvesters, Pacific Northwest.

American Indians

… Most of the literature about American Indian TEK relating to forest management in the Pacific Northwest characterizes how they managed forest resources in prehistoric and historical times. Fire was an environmental management tool commonly used by indigenous peoples in California and the Pacific Northwest in the past, although not all tribes used fire and not all environments were shaped by it (Blackburn and Anderson 1993, Boyd 1999a, Gottesfeld 1994). The most common use of fire prehistorically and historically related to food production. Fire was used for other purposes as well, such as increasing the abundance and quality of materials used in basketry. Today, burning by American Indians occurs on a much reduced scale, for example in collaboration with federal land managers trying to reintroduce prescribed fire into the landscape (Anderson 2005).

Other techniques used to enhance desirable plant species included planting or broadcasting seeds; transplanting bulbs and other propagules, shrubs, and small trees to make them more abundant and accessible; modifying soils and digging to enhance the growth of root vegetables; removing undesirable plants that competed with valued plants; selective harvesting; pruning or coppicing berry bushes and other shrubs to enhance their productivity and to encourage certain patterns of growth; pruning trees and shrubs near desired plants to reduce competition; rotating harvesting locations; and diverting water for irrigation and to reduce erosion (Anderson 2005, Blackburn and Anderson 1993, Deur and Turner 2005b). Although such practices are not as widespread today, many of them persist on a much reduced scale (Anderson 2005, Deur and Turner 2005b, Senos et al. 2006).

By regulating the size, intensity, frequency, and location of anthropogenic disturbances, American Indians and Canadian First Nations are believed to have manipulated biodiversity (Peacock and Turner 2000). Burning practices of Indians influenced forest composition, and the distribution and abundance of many tree and shrub species (Kimmerer and Lake 2001). These practices set back succession and promoted habitat heterogeneity by maintaining mosaics of vegetation types in different stages of succession. Burning and other vegetation management practices also multiplied the presence of ecotones (Turner et al. 2003). Several researchers believe that habitat and species diversity were maintained as a result. …

Family Forest Owners

Family forest owners are private individuals and families who own forest land but do not own wood processing infrastructure (Birch 1996). Our understanding of family forest owners’ views of biodiversity in the Pacific Northwest is sparse. There are a few studies that explore Pacific Northwest owners’ views on topics that can be considered surrogates for biodiversity — for example, wildlife habitat, forest health, riparian quality, and ecosystem management. These and studies conducted elsewhere in the United States suggest that family forest owners are aware of aspects of biodiversity—including species diversity, structural diversity, ecological time scales, and landscape context—and may be predisposed to developing LEK. It is important to understand the context of owners’ LEK; owners that manage production forests may operate with different assumptions about biodiversity than owners managing for mature native forests that provide aesthetic enjoyment.

As with American Indians, family forest owners do not believe that management interferes with the “naturalness” of their forests; rather, they believe their forests are better off because of their interventions. Family forest owners use their LEK to manage biodiversity in several ways. They experiment with planting patterns to foster favored wildlife species and view qualities and to explore new species arrangements. For many, diversity indicates a healthy forest. To achieve this diversity, they cultivate a variety of native species in addition to the primary commercial species on their tree farms (Fischer and Bliss 2006a, 2006b). Owners are also known to set aside stands of hardwoods, brushy areas, and wide riparian corridors instead of converting them to plantations (Dutcher et al. 2004, Fischer and Bliss 2006a, Jacobson 2002a). In Oregon, some owners have used prescribed fire to reduce fuels and control invasive species, mimicking historical disturbance processes (Fischer 2005, Stanfield et al. 2003). Although little research has been done on the direct impacts of family forestry on biodiversity, one landscape analysis conducted in Oregon suggests that family forest owners may maintain forest habitat diversity (Stanfield et al. 2003). …

Tenure security among family forest owners provides an opportunity for them to develop and apply experiential knowledge by experimenting with different practices and conditions in their forests. Nevertheless, family forest owners are subject to regulations and policy requirements, and are the targets of mixed messages about how they should be managing their forests (Sampson and DeCoster 1997), which affect their ability to use LEK. Their management practices are also influenced by the economic context in which they operate. It must be recognized that although family forest owners are motivated to conserve biodiversity, they do so at the expense of other land uses, and risk incurring future regulatory restrictions. …

TEK and LEK persist, develop, and flourish through application. Yet many knowledge holders lack access to and some control over forest resources, or face economic and policy constraints that inhibit their use. Thus, serious efforts to integrate other knowledge systems for biodiversity conservation must address the fundamental structural issues—such as land tenure, the imposition of unfavorable forest management practices and policies, and market conditions—that threaten to undermine the viability of these knowledge systems and their implementation in diverse forest landscapes. …

Knowledge sharing may occur in formal or informal ways, but by working together and sharing ideas, management approaches emerge that integrate different forms of knowledge. Two things needed to make such efforts successful are understanding the communication and operating styles of the people that hold TEK and LEK, and establishing a foundation of trust to work from. The communication and operating styles of forest practitioners may be quite different from those of western scientists and agency forest managers, with lack of sociocultural understanding between groups creating a potential barrier to understanding these different styles. …

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Selected excerpts:

Abstract

Stand development of ten structurally complex forest stands in the Upper South Umpqua Watershed was studied by backdating (reconstructing) stand conditions circa 1825. Mixed conifer and conifer/hardwood stands across a selected range of “Areas of Special Interest” sites were sampled for tree ages, tree characteristics, and fire history. Logistic regression analysis was used to create age/diameter models and the stands were backdated using increment core data and tree positions to create stand statistics for 185 years prior to measurement. The changes in number of trees and basal area over the last 185 years were calculated by species for each stand. Density of trees greater than 8 inches DBH increased from an average of 20 trees per acre to 90 (from 10 to 35 trees per acre to 60 to 115 trees per acre). Basal area increased 5-fold on average, from 65 square feet per acre to 225 (from 25 to 150 sqft/ac to 150 to 300 sqft/ac). In 1825 the ten stands were open and park-like with widely spaced trees. By 2010 the ten stands had accumulated from 10 to 20 times the tree biomass they had held 185 years earlier. In 1825 pines and oaks were dominant in stands below 3,800 feet in elevation. Today those same stands are dominated by Douglas-fir, grand fir, and incense-cedar, especially in younger age classes. In higher elevation stands the most abundant species has changed from Shasta red fir to Pacific silver fir.

Several lines of evidence suggest that the prairies, savannas, and open forests have been persistent vegetation types in the Upper South Umpqua Watershed for the last few thousand years, at least. Precontact forest development pathways were mediated by frequent, purposeful, anthropogenic fires deliberately set by skilled practitioners, informed by long cultural experience and traditional ecological knowledge in order to achieve specific land management objectives. At a landscape scale the result was maintenance of an (ancient) anthropogenic mosaic of agro-ecological patches. In the absence, over the last 150 years, of purposeful anthropogenic fires, the anthropogenic mosaic has been invaded and obscured by (principally) Douglas-fir. As a result, the Upper South Umpqua Watershed is now at risk from a-historical, catastrophic stand-replacing fires. …

Conclusions

1. In 1825 vegetation types in the Upper South Umpqua watershed consisted of prairie, oak savanna, sugar and ponderosa pine open woodlands, and high elevation shrublands.

2. Since 1825 the changes in stand structures have been dramatic. Density of trees greater than 8 inches DBH increased an average of 450 percent and basal area increased 5-fold. By 2010 the ten stands had accumulated from 10 to 20 times the tree biomass they had held 185 years earlier. In most of the stands the species relative proportions also changed significantly. In 1825 pines and oaks were dominant in stands below 3,800 feet in elevation. Today those same stands are dominated by Douglas-fir, grand fir, and incense-cedar, especially in younger age classes.

3. By implication the forest development pathways have changed since 1825. Tree recruitment and biomass accumulation rates have increased, and tree species relative proportions have changed (from dominance by pine and oak to dominance by Douglas-fir).

4. Human-set fire has played an important role in the development of these stands. Frequent anthropogenic fires maintained uneven-aged, sparsely stocked, open and park-like stands for thousands of years. The elimination of anthropogenic fire over the last 150 years is the key factor that has altered development pathways and forest structure and composition.

5. The anthropogenic fire regime was typified by frequent, low-severity fires of limited individual extent, which cumulatively burned over the entire watershed every 1 to 10 years. At a landscape scale the result was maintenance of an (ancient) anthropogenic mosaic of agro-ecological patches. In the absence of the purposeful fires set by skilled practitioners, the anthropogenic mosaic has been invaded and obscured by (principally) Douglas-fir. Infrequent, a-historical, catastrophic stand-replacing wildfires have replaced low severity fires due to the massive build-up of biomass (fuels).

These findings should be useful in:

* Advancing understanding of forest dynamics, historical human influences, and historical landscape geography,

* Informing the maintenance and preservation of historic cultural landscape features — the anthropogenic landscape patterns are cultural legacies by themselves (Lake 2005),

* Evaluating and mitigating catastrophic fire hazards and risks, and

* Informing restoration efforts, where restoration means active management to recover historical cultural landscapes, historical forest development pathways, and traditional ecological stewardship to achieve resiliency to fire and insects, provide sustainable resource products and services, and to preclude and prevent a-historical catastrophic fires that degrade and destroy myriad resource values (Charnley et al. 2008, Dubrasich 2010b). …

Dr. Charles E. Kay, Ph.D. Wildlife Ecology, Utah State University, is the author/editor of Wilderness and Political Ecology: Aboriginal Influences and the Original State of Nature [here], author of Are Lightning Fires Unnatural? A Comparison of Aboriginal and Lightning Ignition Rates in the United States [here], co-author of Native American influences on the development of forest ecosystems [here], and numerous other scientific papers.

Full text with photos (click on photos for larger images):

PINYON PINES and upright junipers are found throughout the West. Ash and red berry juniper occur in Texas, while western juniper is most abundant in the interior Pacific Northwest. One-seeded and Utah juniper are widespread in Nevada, Utah, and on the Colorado Plateau, whereas Rocky Mountain juniper can be found in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. All junipers have small, scale-like leaves and are often called cedars due to their aromatic wood. In fact, the most widely occurring juniper in the East is known as eastern red cedar. In addition to the tall, or upright junipers, there are a few, low-growing species of which horizontal and common are the mostly likely to be encountered.

Pinyons, on the other hand, are represented by only two species. Single-leaf pinyon has only one needle per fascicle, while two-needle pinyon has two needles per fascicle or bundle. Pinyons are abundant in Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. Pinyons and junipers are the most drought tolerant of all western conifers. In addition, pinyons and junipers are chemically defended by terpenes and other compounds that inhibit ruminant microbial digestion. Livestock will generally not consume pinyon or juniper and mule deer will generally browse juniper only if the animals are starving. Pinyons and most junipers are also extremely invasive.

Prior to European settlement, it has been estimated that pinyon and juniper covered 7.5 million acres in the West, while today P-J has infested over 75,000,000 acres, a ten-fold increase. Moreover, the number of trees per acre has increased 10 to 100 fold. I have compiled 1,879 repeat photosets in southern Utah and of that total, 1,007 photo pairs depict pinyon and/or juniper. In 96% of those cases, P-J increased, often dramatically. As pinyon and juniper have expanded their range and thickened, the production of shrubs, forbs, and grasses has declined precipitously. In many stands, understory forage production is near zero, and as understory species decrease, soil erosion increases, even on ungrazed sites. In New Mexico’s Bandelier National Monument, for instance, as pinyon and juniper have thickened, understory species have been eliminated, which has lead to a drastic increase in soil erosion threatening the park’s archaeological sites.

Closed-canopy stands of pinyon-juniper are rare in early historical photographs. Instead, most stands once consisted of a few widely-spaced pinyon and/or juniper with abundant grasses, shrubs, and forbs in what could be characterized as a savanna. With time, however, those stands have infilled until today many pinyon-juniper sites have a closed canopy. Pinyon and juniper have also extended their range by invading grasslands, sagebrush, and other plant communities. Historically, old-growth pinyon-juniper was restricted to rocky outcroppings, areas with poor soils, and other fire refugia. Crown-fire behavior in pinyon-juniper is increasingly common in the West today, but there is no evidence that was the norm prior to European settlement and the expansion and infilling of pinyon-juniper woodlands. Only 3 or 1,007 historical photos taken in southern Utah show any evidence of stand-replacing fire in pinyon-juniper until modern times. The same is true in other areas.

Now, pinyon and juniper do provide hiding and thermal cover for mule deer, but as P-J has invaded winter ranges, millions of acres of once productive habitat have been, and are being, lost. Biodiversity has decreased, as have sage-obligate species, such as sage grouse, which could soon be added to the Endangered Species List. Water yields and spring flows have also declined, as pinyon and juniper consume more soil moisture than forage species. Professors David Engle, Bryan Coppedge, and Samuel Fuhlendorf have characterized the expansion of juniper and other woody vegetation as a “Green Glacier” and have noted that it is “changing endemic avifauna to an extent equivalent to that of the Pleistocene on the Great Plains.” They went on to concluded that “the Green Glacier or woody plant encroachment into grasslands is creating a 21st century environmental crisis that might well surpass the ecological impact of the 20th century Dust Bowl.” Pinyon and juniper also provide ideal stalking cover for mountain lions and bears.

Four hypotheses have been advanced to explain pinyon and/or juniper expansion in western North America since European settlement - -livestock overgrazing, carbon dioxide enrichment, climatic variation, and reduced fire frequency. Several authors have suggested that overgrazing by domestic sheep and cattle has led to an increase in pinyon and juniper. According to this view, overgrazing reduced grass competition and increased bare soil, which allowed pinyon and juniper to increase. Other researchers, however, have compared pinyon-juniper encroachment on grazed versus ungrazed sites and reported that pinyon and juniper increased irrespective of grazing treatment.

Similarly, although increased atmospheric carbon dioxide enhances the growth of woody species, there is little evidence to suggest that factor alone is responsible for the westwide expansion of pinyon and juniper. In addition, climatic conditions in the West have generally become drier and warmer, which should not favor pinyon-juniper expansion. Yet, not only have pinyon and juniper expanded but they have moved downslope into more xeric environments. Thus, there is no evidence that climatic variation has been driving pinyon-juniper encroachment. This leaves fire, or the lack thereof, as the most logical explanation for the expansion of pinyon and juniper. Both pinyon and juniper have relatively thin bark and both are easily killed by even low-intensity burns. Moreover, since pinyon and juniper usually have branches down to ground level, it is very easy to ignite entire trees, even with cool-burning grass fires.

The fire hypothesis involves three factors, two that are commonly mentioned in the scientific literature and one that, to date, has largely been ignored. Fire suppression is the factor most often mentioned followed by livestock-induced reduction in fine fuels. By grazing grasses and other range plants, domestic sheep and cattle reduce both the amount and distribution of fine fuels that are necessary to carry fire through non-forested communities. While all this is true, I would add a third component, which I believe is even more important than the first two — aboriginal burning, both inadvertent escaped campfires, as well as purposeful landscape ignitions.

In a recent scientific publication, I compared known lightning-ignition rates on every national forest in the continental United States with potential aboriginal-ignition rates based on estimates of indigenous populations and the number of fires each native person started per year. Using realistic estimates of native populations, as well as the number of fires each indigenous person started per year, potential aboriginal rates were 270 to 35,000 times greater known lightning-ignition rates. Thus, the dominant ecological force for the last 10,000 years has most likely been aboriginal burning. Fires, through frequent, were of a low intensity as most aboriginal burning was conducted during spring or fall when there was little chance of extreme fire behavior. Moreover, once an aboriginal fire-regime was established then any lightning-caused fires behaved like human-set fires. Again, large scale, high-intensity crown fires in pinyon-juniper, though increasingly common today, seldom occurred in the past.

If there are sufficient fine fuels and if human life and property are not an issue, fire can still be used to control pinyon-juniper. As stands have thickened and eliminated understory fuels, however, often the only option is mechanical treatment, including chaining, brush-hogging, roller-chopping, and hand clearing, among others. Increasingly, though, various environmental groups are objecting to any manipulation of pinyon-juniper, contending that it is “unnatural” to create habitat for mule deer and other species. What those organizations fail to realize, however, is that to return the West to the way it was before European settlement, which appears to be their standard, we need to reduce the area infested with P-J by at least 90 percent. Moreover, since large-scale crown fires are entirely outside the range of historical variability, the only safe way to restore most P-J infested rangelands is with mechanical treatment followed by reseeding. Once areas have been opened up and fine fuels regrown, then it may be possible to reintroduce fire to prevent subsequent reinvasion by pinyon-juniper. The goal is not to create mule deer, or any other habitat per se, but to restore the land to its former productive condition.

Figures 1a and 1b. Pinyon – juniper invasion of Harris Flat in southwestern Utah. Historically, pinyon and juniper were confined to the rocky slopes of Harris point in the distance and the low rocky hill on which the camera station is located. By the time the initial photo was taken in 1936, however, pinyon and juniper had started to invade the sagebrush flat. As pinyon and juniper have increased, sagebrush, grasses, and forbs have declined. Today the site would support a high-intensity crown fire, which historically was not the case. [Click for larger images]

Figures 2a and 2b. This Photo Plot Transect was established by the Forest Service in 1943 to monitor vegetation conditions on a mule deer winter range in southwestern Utah. Historically, there was only a scattering of pinyon and juniper at this location, but by the 1940’s pinyon and juniper had begun to invade the sagebrush community. Today the site is a pinyon-juniper woodland and is no longer used by the wintering deer. [Click for larger images]

Editor’s Notes: This essay is one of a series (circulated to colleagues on the Internet, but unpublished) which examines reports, letters, stories and anecdotes from early volumes of The Indian Forester, the principal forestry journal of India since 1880.

Author Roger Underwood is a former General Manager of the Department of Conservation and Land Management (CALM) in Western Australia, a regional and district manager, a research manager and bushfire specialist. Roger currently directs a consultancy practice with a focus on bushfire management and is Chairman of The Bushfire Front Inc.. He lives in Perth, Western Australia.

Baden-Powell and Australian bushfire policy: Part 2

By Roger Underwood

In an earlier paper on this issue [1] I discussed the profound influence of 19th century Indian colonial foresters on the development of bushfire policy in Australia and (indirectly) in the United States. The first senior foresters of the Indian Forest Service, men like Baden Baden-Powell, Dietrich Brandis, William Schlich and David Hutchins, were German, French or English-trained, and were wonderful pioneering foresters, but they had little practical understanding of fire behaviour or fire ecology and they were imbued with the desire to stock-up every acre of forest with commercial trees. Fire was seen as the principal enemy to this policy, and as an enemy to be ruthlessly expunged from the face of British India.

The imperial view on fire was not shared by the indigenous population, who had been using fire as a land management tool for perhaps thousands of years. There were also opposing views within the forestry profession, and some of these found voice at conferences of forest officers, or in published papers. A good example is the work of M. J. Slym a forest officer working in the Salween Division of British Burma in the 1870s. Slym presented a paper, entitled Memorandum on Jungle Fires, at a Forest Conference at Rangoon in 1875. The paper was subsequently published in The Indian Forester two years later [2].

Slym’s paper, which focuses on the monsoonal rainforest in which the principal timber tree is teak (Tectona grandis) addresses what he describes as

… the general belief among forest officers that fires do a great deal of harm.

but he points out that this view is not universally held, nor does it reflect the views of the native populace who have lived in and around the forest for centuries. He summarises the opposing views as follows: “while many have pronounced that [the effects of fire] upon the forests to be unqualifiedly injurious and that they must be prevented at any cost, others believe they act favourably towards [the forest].”

Both positions are deficient in Slym’s opinion; the first view “does not show how fires could be suppressed without doing harm in some other direction” while the second fails to “disclose how fires act favourably” towards the forest.

The causes of jungle fires in Slym’s district in Burma were many and varied. There were the inevitable “escapes from camp fires” a fire cause that still figured prominently in bushfire statistics in the jarrah forest when I was a young forester, but other causes are more exotic, for example, fires lit to drive game for hunting, to clear jungle pathways of snakes and to keep tigers at a safe distance from villages.

Of great interest to me was that Slym also lists as one of the main causes of forest fires

… the tradition of the hill people that burning the forest has a salutary effect.

This belief is

… kept alive by [their] actual experience of the increased healthfulness of the districts after fires.

This is a close parallel with the well-documented use of fire by Australian Aboriginal people for the purpose of “cleaning up the country”.

Slym then takes up, one by one, all of the standard arguments used to justify the banning of fire from the forest. It is claimed, he reports, that fires destroy seed, kill seedlings, char the stems of mature trees allowing access for insects, destroy the humus and impoverish the soil. Each of these he deals with in turn, systematically proving the fears to be groundless or requiring qualification, and basing his position on personal experience and observations in the forest. In particular he draws attention to what would later be called by Australian foresters “the ashbed effect” – that is, the increase in soil fertility arising from increased nutrient availability after a fire. “Many a forester” he adds “will have noticed the fine teak seedlings that spring up from almost every burnt heap and near every burnt log of wood.”

Modern Australian bushfire managers would applaud Slym’s understanding of the two most fundamental aspects of forest fire management: first, that fires cannot be prevented; and second, that fire damage is related to fire intensity. He does not advocate widescale annual burning, but rather a well-managed firing of the bush that is integrated with other management demands for the purposes both of minimising wildfire damage, and promoting forest health.

Eventually he concludes:

The collective inference I draw, is that [fires] should not be prevented entirely, but the strength of them sufficiently lessened to lessen their harm. This can only be affected by firing the forest ourselves…commencing early [in the dry season].

He goes on to say that in his opinion, the forest should be burned

… at an interval before the leaves accumulate, thus preventing a fire that harms the forest.

It is almost as if he is writing about bushfire management in the Australian eucalypt forests in modern times, so precisely does this view coincide with contemporary enlightened philosophies [3].

Furthermore, Slym concludes that the ideal of fire exclusion as promoted by the senior brass of the Indian Forest Service at that time has costs that do not outweigh the benefits.

[Fire exclusion] is all but impractical, and at best dangerous, as it may, as already has been shown, drive teak out altogether [4].

Again I hear the voices of modern fire ecologists, speaking of species that decline and eventually disappear in bushland where fire has long been un-naturally excluded.

Slym was familiar with the long-held burning practices of the Burmese hill people, and was close enough to it to enable him to see the way it was done, as well as its impacts. It is obvious from his conclusions that he understood the relationships between fuel levels, fire intensity and fire damage – concepts that are still not understood by many Australian academics today – and of the need to integrate fire management with other objectives, in his case timber production and regeneration. The silvicultural system adopted for teak forest by the Indian Forest Service was a selection system using a prescribed girth limit restriction which ensured the retention of growing stock, and allowed natural regeneration. This operated with great success for generations, something that could only be achieved through close attention to fire management at the same time [5].

There is another echo of modern times in the denouement of this story. Slym’s paper to the Rangoon conference was so unpopular with the senior staff of the Forest Service, that it was omitted from the published conference proceedings. Slym was told by the Conference President (presumably Dietrich Brandis, the Inspector-General of the Indian Forest Service at the time) that his paper “could not be recorded, neither could the reason for not doing so be mentioned”. Luckily for posterity the editor of The Indian Forester took a different view and agreed to publish it, although this may have been done provocatively, as later editions of the journal contained letters from correspondents who disagreed with Slym’s views [6].

The muzzling of voices critical of government policy was not, of course, and is not restricted to British India. I can remember when I started work as a forest officer in Western Australia in 1962 being briefed on the fact that there was a clause in the Public Service Act forbidding any government officer from voicing criticism of any government policy; severe penalties would apply to a transgressor [7]. As far as I am aware this rule persists to this day.

I am also reminded that a similar form of censorship operates in some scientific journals today, where editorial panels control what is, and what is not published according to whether or not it fits with the panel’s stance on issues such as fire or global warming. Slym’s paper would be very unlikely to appear today in, for instance, the journal of the Australian Ecological Society, or the lamentable Journal of Wildland Fire.

A direct line of descent to early Australian bushfire policy can be traced from the concepts espoused by Baden-Powell and his contemporaries at the upper echelons of the Indian Forest Service in the 1870s. It would be interesting to know how the policies evolved. The early Australian bushfire policies (largely derived from Indian colonial forestry) dictated fire exclusion and opposed prescribed burning, but were eventually overthrown in the 1950s and 1960s, having been undermined by two factors. First, they failed the ultimate test: they did not prevent damaging wildfires. Second, they were opposed from below by the people in the field – the forest officers who were responsible for implementing the policy and who knew it did not and could not work. Eventually, some of these men reached a position in which they could re-make the policy, and luckily they had the guts and the capacity to do so.

There is another factor. I remember a story once told to me by an old field forester who had worked in the jarrah forest in the late 1930s and early 1940s when the bushfire policy was still one of fire exclusion. “Beyond the narrow firebreak strips, we weren’t allowed to do any burning,” he said, “but what we did do, whenever possible, was to let the bush burn of its own accord.” In other words, if a fire started under the right conditions, there would be no hurry to put it out and, who knows, maybe some of these fires started quite accidentally from the escape of a forest officer’s billy fire, lit under exactly the right conditions.

The capacity to circumvent unpopular policy has been around as long as there have been unpopular policies. It is intriguing to think how M.J Slym managed it in British Burma in the 1870s, as I have no doubt he did.

Endnotes

[1] Underwood, Roger. 2010. Baden-Powell and Australian Bushfire Policy. Western Institute for Study of the Environment Forest and Fire Sciences Colloquium, January 2010 [here]

[2] Slym, M.J. 1877. Memorandum on Jungle Fires. The Indian Forester Volume 2 (3).

[3] It might be suggested that the differences between Burmese teak and Australian eucalypt forest are so different that no comparison over management can be made. It is true that teak is deciduous, but by the same token most eucalypts shed their entire leafy crown every 12-18 months. Furthermore, although mostly the teak forests are more humid, the dry sclerophyll eucalypt forests have a quite distinct wet and dry season, and in both the most suitable time to undertake low intensity burning is early in the dry season (late spring in southern Australia).

[4] Slym is referring here to a paper by a Colonel Pearson published in The Indian Forester in 1876, in which Pearson concluded: “In the Boree Forest of the Central Provinces, where fires have been put out for many years, it has been found that at least one hundred seedlings of Dalbergia and Pentaptera spring up for every one of teak.”

[5] My colleague, South Australian forester Jerry Leech, has worked in Burma on many occasions in recent years, and has described to me his delight in inspecting natural teak stands managed under a selection system, cut and regenerated four times over the last century, still magnificent today and the records of each cut still meticulously maintained.

[6] To give him credit, the Editor of the edition of The Indian Forester in which Slym’s paper was published was Baden-Powell. He added a footnote to the title of the paper as follows: “We trust the above memorandum will cause a vigorous discussion of the subject of fire protection.”

[7] My father, an agricultural scientist, fell foul of this law. In the 1920s he was a junior officer of the Department of Agriculture, and wrote a letter to The West Australian newspaper critical of the government for not insisting on the Pasteurisation of milk. My father got off lightly: he was hauled before the Director and officially reprimanded, but under the regulations he could have been fined or sacked. Ironically, a law was introduced not long afterwards making Pasteurisation of milk compulsory – a significant factor in reducing the prevalence of tuberculosis. My father took no credit for this, as the Pasteurisation of milk was universally adopted by western countries at about that time.

Full text [here]

Selected excerpts:

The forest products industry has been practicing sustainable forestry for much of the Twentieth Century. During this time we have seen substantial gains in the management and utilization of forests, particularly on forest industry lands. “Although the forest industry occupies only about one-seventh of total U. S. timberland, its land produces a full fifth of national timber growth, a quarter of the growth of softwoods, and about a third of the annual timber harvest.” 1/

The forest industry has signed on to the sustainable forestry initiative, no doubt for public relations, but it does not need market illiterate bureaucrats and GAGs (green advocacy groups–The Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club, et al.) telling it how to practice sustainable forestry. …

Depletion is not caused by lack of resources, but by a lack of institutions, specifically private property rights and free-markets, that allow for a rational and sustained use of resources. In America, it is a manufactured crisis. If depletion of forest resources were a real problem, the responsible solution would be to find ways to increase productivity. Locking up more of the American land base (50 percent or more with Reed Noss’ Wildlands Project) and restricting utilization on remaining lands is neither a serious nor an ethical approach to depletion. But then the crisis-mongers are not concerned about the depletion of resources but the control of resources.

A statist perspective of sustainability

Sustainability is defined as

meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

The American Forest & Paper Association expands this to include forestry.

Sustainable forestry means managing our forests to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs by practicing a land stewardship ethic which integrates the growing, nurturing, and harvesting of trees for useful products with the conservation of soil, air and water quality, and wildlife and fish habitat.

What bureaucrat or academic can make an accurate measurement of my “sustainable” allotment of forest resources (or any other resource) in quantifiable terms; e.g., cords, tons, board feet, cubic meters, kilograms, etc.?

Who is the soothsayer, seer, or mystic that can divine what future generations will want from the forest or any resource?

Who can determine the annual removal of wood products or any resource compared to the volume estimated to be sustainable?

The answer is no one.

History tells us “no exhaustible resource is essential or irreplaceable… The relevant resource base is defined by knowledge, rather than by physical deposits of existing resources.” 7/ Unless suppressed by government force, human intelligence and ingenuity break the bonds that carrying capacity imposes on other species. …

Sustainability, as defined, is vague and inoperable highfalutin rhetoric. It is evidence that the natural resource community, at least in the public sector, academia, and some corporate boardrooms, is ignorant of market economics and responsible social behavior. This ignorance puts the productive future of the forest resources sector very much at risk.

Who in government or academia is qualified to make this allocation? Not the U. S. Forest Service (USFS). In A Gradual Unfolding of a National Purpose: A Natural Resource Agenda for the 21st Century, USFS admits it has “approximately 40 million acres of national forests that are exposed to abnormally high risk of fire, disease, and insect outbreaks… the vulnerability of these forests is unacceptably high.” 9/ If a private sector forester had 40 million acres of mismanaged forest, he would not be rewarded with more resources to mismanage or misallocate.

Allocations by government are not based on market signals but on political signals. Unable to use rational price signals as a guide, the USFS is so flummoxed by competing demands for resources from public forests that it is moving more and more to a policy of no-allocation (preservation not conservation).

Inability to make a rational allocation does not deter market illiterate bureaucrats from trying. …

Change is anathema to government. It seeks refuge in the fairyland of static analysis and equilibrium. It has little or no ability to innovate. Forcing a result is not innovative. No central-planning bureaucrats can keep up with millions of individuals expressing their preferences through millions of daily choices. To have control, bureaucrats must ignore market information and use the power of government to limit market choices. It must prevent change.

An ecosystem is not an objective reality in nature. It is an artifice to justify regulating across property boundaries. It has nothing to do with sustainability. It has everything to do with control.

Limiting choices, especially the entrepreneurial spirit of discovery, forecloses options to future generations. …

When government is the arena where citizens fight for privileges they cannot get through the free-market mechanisms of cooperation and voluntary exchange, hostility and chaos are the norm. There are no common grounds, only battlegrounds — exactly where we are with public land disputes.

Costs and benefits cannot be shared by all under the social organization of free-markets and private property rights. For forced sharing, allocations must be controlled by government. Under government control, resources are not allocated to their highest and best use by well-informed political or bureaucratic decision-makers. The allocation occurs in response to political pressures brought by organized special interests, each with a narrow focus on a specific outcome, regardless of long-term or unintended consequences.

Self-interested bureaucrats are often happy to cooperate as they are empowered. Bureaucracies are corrupted. Data are distorted. Logic and reason are discarded. …

A rational measure of sustainable resource use

Government has never found a way to live with limits. If there is a rational way to allocate resources, it must be found outside of bureaucratic planners.

The solution can be found in a free-market economy with its price signals and its attendant regulatory force—private property rights.

In a free-market, competition weeds out the inefficient, wasteful use of labor and resources. Depending on the division of labor to supply a wide diversity of goods and services, a free market fosters a spirit of cooperation. It is regulated by respect for property boundaries and the individual responsibility demanded by private property rights. “Only the self-regulation of the market—where individuals directly bear the costs of their bad judgment—can discipline greed.” 22/ Bureaucracy does not have this self-regulation. …

In a free market where property has alternative uses, “[i]t is always in the interest of entrepreneurs to maximize the present value of their land and capital assets. Excessive depletion of resources would lower their capital value…” 29/ On the other hand, if, in a command economy where property use is dictated by government, the cost of retaining its current productivity exceeds the value of its services, the quasi-owner has an incentive to deplete the property if the costs of doing so are low enough. …

Resources will be allocated by the market or by government. Government allocation
would require an expansion of government. The only way government can expand is by taking resources from creative, productive individuals.

Government central planners do not know what the resource base is. They cannot see the future. They do not and cannot know the correct allocation of any resource.

What are the dire consequences of the inevitable wrong guesses by bureaucratic planners?

* Waste of resources
* Misallocation of resources
* Economic stagnation
* Discouragement of innovation
* Violence
* Bigger and more intrusive government.

That a free market and its price signals do not guarantee a perfect allocation of resources does not mean government is better. Clearly, it is not. In a free market, failure is a signal that resources are being wasted or misallocated. It is a signal that individuals cannot ignore. Only government can ignore failure. We have a cornucopia of information documenting this government failure. Rewarding government failure with more power is not just folly, it is downright destructive.

Note: Jerry Williams is retired U.S. Forest Service, formerly Director, USFS Fire & Aviation

Full text [here]

Selected excerpts:

“The future isn’t what it used to be.” — Variously ascribed

Background and Introduction

The United States has a history of large, catastrophic wildfires. 1910’s Big Burn, a complex covering some 3,000,000 acres across Washington, Idaho, and Montana was certainly among the largest. It was also among the deadliest. As Stephen Pyne and Timothy Egan have described, it stunned the nation, changed the day’s political dynamic, and galvanized support for the protection of public lands. The Big Burn spawned an enormous effort to control this country’s wildfire problem.

One-hundred years later, solving the wildfire problem in this country remains elusive.

Since 1998, at least nine states have suffered their worst wildfires on record. Perhaps like the Big Burn, these recent wildfires were remarkable, but, unlike 1910, not for want of firefighting capacity. In the modern era, these unprecedented wildfires are juxtaposed against the fact that today’s firefighting budgets have never been higher, cooperation between federal, state, and local forces have never been better, and firefighting technology has never been greater. How could fires like this - with all of today’s money and partnerships, and tools – how could they happen? How could modern wildfires approach the scale and scope of wildfires from a hundred years ago?

In 2003, following a decade of record-setting wildfires across the country, the U.S. Forest Service began looking into what would become known as the mega-fire phenomenon. A comparative, coarse-scale assessment of nine “mega-fires” was completed in 2008 1/.

1/ The report’s findings were presented at the Society of American Forester’s National Convention in Orlando, Florida on 2 October 2009 in a paper titled, “The Mega-Fire Phenomenon: Observations from a Coarse-Scale Assessment with Implications for Foresters, Land Managers, and Policy-Makers,” by Jerry T. Williams and Dr. Albert C. Hyde. The views expressed in these reports and papers are those of the author(s). They do not purport to represent the positions of The Brookings Institution or the U.S. Forest Service.

Will another 1910-like wildfire happen again? No matter how low the probability, recent mega-fires are testament that large, catastrophic wildfires can happen in today’s world. Who would believe that, in 2003, 15 people would lose their lives and over 3,000 homes would burn outside of San Diego; in a State that arguably fields the largest firefighting force in the world? Who would think that, within sight of the Acropolis in 2007, 84 people would die from a wildfire running into Athens, Greece? And, who could fathom that, a year ago last February, whole towns would be consumed and 173 people would die from bushfires in Victoria that would become the largest civil disaster in Australia’s history?

The increasing frequency of mega-fires makes it un-wise to dismiss them as anomalies and somehow accept them as too rare to address or too difficult to mitigate. Global warming, the vulnerability of deteriorated fire-dependent landscapes, and growth behaviors at the wildland-urban interface have changed the calculus of wildland fire protection in the United States and elsewhere around the world. The trajectories that these factors are taking suggest that mega-fire numbers will grow, not diminish. If we are asking the “chance” of catastrophe, these factors have changed the odds of wildfire disaster.

Mega-fires are important indicators that reflect an unwelcome “new reality.” Their impacts go far beyond today’s immediate concerns over rising suppression costs. They carry significant implications for foresters, land managers, and policy-makers.

Will another 1910-like wildfire occur? Modern mega-fires offer insights that might help us answer and respond to this question. If you trust the fireman’s adage that, “when wildfire’s potential consequences are high, going-home gas is cheap,” it is in our best interests to take notice, proactively study these catastrophic wildfires, and act on their lessons.

Discussion

Up until the late 1980’s, we could not imagine mega-fires. They are the “Black Swans” 2/ of wildfires. Although infinitesimally small in number, they carry enormous consequence. They are shocking to survivors, long-lasting to affected communities, and, in some ecosystems, immeasurably damaging. They are “mega” as much or more for their impact, as they are for their size.

2/ The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb 2007. Random House Publishing, New York.

Their onset challenges a deeply held belief in our ability to control wildfire. They threaten our wildfire protection strategy, but, perhaps more troubling, mega-fires may jeopardize our larger stewardship responsibilities, as well. …

Initial attack (IA) wildfires are “new starts,” where potential social, economic, or environmental values at risk require a suppression response. Under moderate conditions, they often remain relatively small and are suppressed quickly, at little cost and with little loss. In an average year, about 95% of all wildfires are contained during this initial attack phase. However, as fuels dry out, temperatures rise, humidity drops, wind velocities increase, and where slopes are steeper, fire behavior becomes more intense. As this happens, wildfires sometimes transition into Extended Attack Wildfires.

Extended initial attack (EIA) wildfires represent only about 4% of all wildfires annually, but they are often the most dangerous. Firefighters working at the head of these fires are often caught by surprise. Extended initial attack fires commonly transition rapidly from a wildfire that appears innocuous to a “blow-up” situation. Initial attack objectives (spatial or temporal) are exceeded. When safe practices are overlooked or tactical modifications are not rapidly made, firefighters often find themselves in a very dangerous situation. Extended attack wildfires account for approximately 70% of all fireline-related fatalities. Historically, virtually all multiple-fatality wildfires have occurred during extended attack operations. When extended attack operations fail, wildfires transition into Large Fires.

Large wildfire (LF) incidents account for only about 1% of all wildfires. These fires require greater suppression force, more sophisticated management organizations, and higher levels of support and leadership. Incident commanders select tactics having a high probability of success; ones that minimize suppression costs, with respect to firefighter safety and values at risk. Although they are infrequent, these wildfires represent approximately 95% of the total acres burned and about 85% of total suppression-related expenditures in an average year. Under prolonged droughts and extreme fire weather conditions, where entire landscapes are susceptible to extensive burning, large wildfires may transition into a mega-fire.

Mega-fires (MF) exceed all efforts at direct control until firefighters get some relief in weather or a break in fuels. They are unbounded at the extreme. That is; their size and impact seems limited only by the depth of drought, the amount of available fuel, and the velocity of the wind. Operationally, firefighters are on the defensive. Practically, the first priority is often less about fighting fire than it is about saving lives and protecting property. Public and political pressures to “do more” are common, no matter how dangerous the situation or how slim the odds of control.

Mega-fires might be characterized as a “situation,” rather than an “incident.” They are not just bigger wildfires. These wildfires exceed our memory of “worst case.” They make headline-news and evoke deep public angst. They always result in intense political scrutiny. Because mega-fires typically occur at landscape-scales, they usually involve a number of jurisdictional interests, often at different levels of government. Their management extends well beyond conventional firefighting organizations. Command and coordination functions must accommodate law enforcement, emergency services and disaster relief personnel, public utilities, and local elected officials. Managers must be responsive to an anxious public and a hungry, on-scene media. Emotions almost always run high.

Afterwards, somebody is almost always up for blame. Calls for improved detection, more rapid response, more aggressive attacks, bigger and better tools, more able leadership, and “improved” organizations …next time…are not uncommon. For better or worse, something always comes of them 3/.

3/ Western Australia’s disastrous Dwellingup Fire (1961) is an exception to the more common suppression-centric fix. Following that fire, government responded by adopting a more balanced fire protection model. Prescribed underburning, strategically placed across the landscape at planned intervals, has been the centerpiece of this fire protection strategy. In the intervening 60-years, suppression costs, private property losses, and fatalities have dropped off significantly.

Fundamentally, mega-fires define the limits of suppression. They are an indication that our wildfire protection objective is at risk and that our firefighting doctrine has “hit a wall.”

The Mega-Fire Project set out to begin better understanding this new phenomenon. The assessment was coarse-scaled and comparative. It evaluated nine mega-fires that occurred across the United States between 1998 and 2007 4/. This paper focuses on the conifer-dominated examples. Among the assessment’s findings, several are relevant in attempting to answer the question, “Can a 1910 happen again?”

4/ Volusia-Flagler Complex (205,786 acres, Florida 1998); Valley Complex (212,030 acres, Montana 2000); Hayman Fire (137,760 acres, Colorado 2002); Rodeo-Chedeski Fire (468,638 acres, Arizona 2002); Biscuit Fire (499,965 acres, Oregon 2002); Ponil Complex (92,522 acres, New Mexico 2002); Georgia Bay Complex/Bugaboo (561,000 acres, Georgia and Florida 2007); Boise National Forest portion of the Cascade Complex (302,376 acres, Idaho 2007).

Principal Findings

* Virtually all of the mega-fires evaluated in this assessment occurred in predominantly dense, late-successional forests. At the landscape-scale, these forests had remained largely un-disturbed for a long time.

* Although mega-fires burned across a wide variety of habitat types and fire regimes, a significant portion of the overall mega-fire acreage studied in this assessment occurred in shorter interval fire-dependent ecosystems, much altered from their historic condition…

* On many mega-fire landscapes, the forest conditions that fueled these severe, high-intensity wildfires were often reflected in governing land-use objectives. On public lands, they were called-for in Land / Resource Management Plans. …

* In virtually every case, the values that were being managed for were lost or severely compromised, as a result of the mega-fire’s impacts. …

Other Findings

* Virtually all of the mega-fires evaluated here were wind-driven. They all burned under drought conditions. …. Extreme fire weather conditions (high ambient air temperatures, low relative humidity, and high-velocity windspeeds) often resulted in “off-the-charts” fire behavior. …

* Several of these mega-fires burned during large-fire episodes, when multiple large wildfires were simultaneously breaking out in the vicinity. In several cases, mega-fires came out of the “backcountry.” Given other competing demands and their relative proximity or long distance to high-values elsewhere, they were often assigned a lower priority, at first. After a while, their size and intensity diminished tactical options for control.

* Nearly all of the mega-fires studied here involved several ownerships with different jurisdictional responsibilities and land-use goals. Public and political frictions were particularly intense between ownerships when the program goals of one competed with the interests of another. The “decision space” available to one landowner often depended upon the compatibility of objectives and resilience of their neighbor’s land.

* On wetter, cooler sites, where longer interval fire regimes were more broadly represented, two observations might be made: 1) A general absence of landscape-scale diversity commonly described altered conditions. … 2) Regardless of what may have been burning in the longer interval fire regimes, the highest values at risk (and, often, greatest suppression efforts) were generally in the dry forest types…

* In some cases, type conversions, occurring across large areas, contributed to wildfire hazards … In the absence of periodic under-burning, fire-intolerant species encroached further down the temperature-moisture gradient onto the warmer, drier sites. In some cases, in an earlier era of exploitation, a history of over-grazing and high-grade logging often accelerated these type conversions.

* The “melding” of transition zones between fire regimes has changed landscape-scale fire behavior. In these areas, recent wildfires are sweeping entire landscapes with high-intensity fire behavior. Wildfires that may have exhibited low- or mixed-severity fire behavior over much of the landscape one-hundred years ago, exhibit severe, stand replacement burning over most of the landscape today. …

* On some mega-fires, recent understory thinning and/or prescribed under-burning had occurred within the mega-fire perimeter. On these areas, burn severity and resistance-to-control was much lower, compared to adjacent un-treated stands. …

Planning-Related Findings

* After-action assessments (post-wildfire reviews) generally focused on operational performance. They rarely linked land management plans and practices to wildfire outcomes. So long as administrators confine their focus on corrective actions to fire operations, Fire Management will be confronted with a problem that they, alone, cannot solve.

* In several plans, it appeared that “no-action” was often perceived as having no consequence. Although project-level environmental assessments addressed - at length - the social, economic, and biological impacts of various treatment alternatives, little or no such rigor was applied to the “no-action” option. …

* Many of the laws that govern the management of fire-prone ecosystems reflect an inherent bias. Mitigation treatments, which might reduce wildfire risk, “compete” against other values that may, temporarily, be degraded. In many cases, these proposed treatments simply cannot get past the short-term risks involved regardless of long-term benefit. On the other hand, wildfires (even those that may eventually result from “no-action”) get a “pass.”

* Because mega-fires are burning at stand replacement intensities across a wide mix of altered fire regimes over such extensive areas, many of today’s mega-fires may be setting the stage for the next generation’s mega-fire. …

* On federal lands, the forest planning cycle takes many years to complete (7-8 years). A plan’s life is 15-years. Given what many climate scientists are projecting, there is a growing sense of urgency in fire-dependent ecosystems. It is not clear that the development of forest plans can “beat the train to the crossing.” Nor is it clear that a plan’s life will enable long-term mitigation strategies at meaningful scales.

Conclusions

Mega-fire potential may be something like the tumblers in a lock. The confluence of drought, extreme fire weather, heavy, continuous fuels over extensive un-disturbed landscapes, multiple large fires burning at the same time (all with high values-at-risk competing for scarce resources), and a severe late season wind event are all “tumblers.” When these “tumblers” drop in unison, disaster opens and the chance of trouble suddenly blows-up. The chances of that are slim, but - here, in the Northern Rockies, disaster has threatened more than once over the past many years. …

In 1910, the dry forest types in much of the region were still open, still resilient, and still exhibited low- to moderate-fire behavior potential when they burned. In a way, these 1910 stand conditions in the ponderosa pine type may have been a “buffer,” now lost. In 1910, when wildfires “roared out of the mountains” onto the warmer, drier sites, they ran into forests that were less hazardous. Pushed by high winds, they swept through the understory, but they burned at lower intensities and passed quickly. Afterwards the forest and most of its values were left largely intact. In a more open condition, it was still possible to save lives and homes. Today, tightly compressed multi-storied stands, choked with upwards of 1,000 trees per acre and packing heavy fuels, dominate these same sites. Insect infestations and standing dead only add to the problem. When these forests burn today, they burn intensely and not much comes through it. …

The future really isn’t what it used to be. In the past, a “benevolent” climate cycle, open dry forest types, a diverse, “mosaic-like” landscape in the backcountry, and a relatively low and dispersed population were some insurance against all but the most angry disasters. Today, though, across broad reaches of the Intermountain West, where drought, deteriorated forest conditions, and landscape homogeneity have all come to a head, the magnitude of a potential disaster may be much greater than we imagine. …

Experienced firefighters know to act on important fire danger indicators. They know that, when the weather changes, “blow-up” conditions can develop. During extended attack operations, they know that they need to rapidly change their tactics or risk losing lives. Smart, attentive firefighters know that - when their control objective is exceeded and their assumptions about their environment have collapsed - they need to act. Those that fail this most basic task are at risk of joining an awful statistic associated with extended initial attack tragedies.

A similar situation confronts us, now, strategically. Plenty of indicators are warning of impending danger:

* Although protection agencies can claim a remarkable suppression success rate, our measures of success (i.e. suppression costs, private property losses, natural resource damages, and firefighter fatalities) are, in many places, climbing. Increasing suppression preparedness budgets and adding capacity is having little or no effect in reversing this trend.

* On public and private lands across the West, the rate of fuel accumulation often remains far greater than the rate of fuel treatment. In short interval fire regimes, over-accumulated fuels –- and resultant high-intensity fire behavior — are well beyond the historic range of variability in most places.

* Understory thinning and low-intensity prescribed burning hold promise as the means to mitigate wildfire hazards, but – at today’s scales - they are too small 5/. They are expensive. They are also generally perceived as too disruptive, too fraught with risk, and – in the context of most prevailing laws – too at-odds with society’s values in the short-term.

5/ Some estimates for the West maintain that, in order to stem rising costs, losses, and damages in shorter interval fire regimes, a program goal of 3 million treated acres per year for 15 years would have to be reached.

* Across broad, undisturbed landscapes, senescent forests lie at risk. Today’s bark beetle infestation is tied to warmer-than-normal winters and dense stand conditions. The infestation covers vast swaths and extends up and down the Intermountain West, adding to wildfire risk.

* Fire seasons are beginning earlier and lasting longer. Prolonged droughts have diminished (if not eliminated) late-season moisture differentials. In a “normal year,” riparian zones and north slopes often impede fire spread. But, when everything is dry, everything can burn. Today, whole landscapes are susceptible to intense burning. Today, late in the fire season, “mosaic burns” are seldom seen.

Mega-fires are emerging as a leading edge indicator of deteriorated conditions in fire-dependent ecosystems.

In my view, there is an urgency to confront this new mega-fire threat and modify our wildfire protection strategy 6/. If the last century was about understanding and controlling wildland fire, the next century needs to be about reconciling our aims, with respect to the dynamics that define these fire disturbance regimes. It needs to be about managing our expectations for the land in ways that are consistent with the dynamics of the land. If the last century was about strengthening the tactical dimensions of fire control, the next century needs to be about restoring fire-dependent lands and, strategically, better aligning our perceptions, our laws, our policies, our plans, and our practices the “new realities” of a changed environment.

6/ Strategy is defined, here, as having three discreet elements: 1) Determination of an end result (e.g. Restore and sustain safe, resilient fire-dependent ecosystems), 2) Establishing the means (social, political, economic – including markets – legislative, organizational, and scientific) for achieving that end result, and 3) Determining the most effective way in which all means can be brought to bear in accomplishing the desired ends. Adapted from: On Strategy, by Harold G. Summers, Jr. Presidio Press, Novato, CA.

Although we may be beginning to shift, we are not yet there. We have not yet acknowledged the limits of suppression. Born of 1910, our doctrine that attempts to match increasing wildfire threats with greater suppression force has “hit the wall,” with those very few wildfires that occur under the most adverse fuel and weather conditions. We may have reached a remarkably high success rate with this doctrine, but the consequences of that remaining 1% represent nearly all of our costs, losses, and damages. The doctrine is not achieving our wildfire protection objective:

“Minimize private property loss and natural resource damage without compromise to firefighter safety, at the least suppression cost.”

If our wildfire protection objective is to “stand up” against the looming threat of a changing climate, we are going to have to square our strategy with the dynamics of fire-dependent ecosystems.

In some fire-prone forests, the best “hedge” against the mega-fire threat may be a more diverse landscape. In the dry types, the best insurance against loss may be more open, more resilient forest conditions. In these solutions, though, it seems that we are systemically immobilized. Our own doctrine and many of the perceptions that surround firefighting capabilities simply will not acknowledge that we cannot, somehow, close that one-percent. Many of our land management laws, policies, and plans are at odds with the thinning, prescribed burning, and selective cutting needed to mitigate the mega-fire threat. Markets that might help are going away. And policy strategies that might use high-intensity wildfires to clean up the fuels and solve the problem are not always consistent with the ecologies involved. In many places, we find ourselves between a rock and a hard place.

Why should we work to reconcile these dilemmas? Why should we take this on? Some will argue that all of this is too costly, too contentious, and much too complicated to confront. Some will find comfort in the facts that, after all, federal fire protection budgets have never been higher, cooperation between partners has never been stronger, and technological advances have never been greater. Some, against a growing body of evidence, will deny the problem and insist that a few more firefighters, a little better cooperation, or a new technology can somehow fix all of this.

In my judgment, the mega-fire threat will not be fixed on the fireline. History is replete with examples where tactical victories have given way to strategic defeat.

Perhaps the most alarming finding of the mega-fire assessment centered on a confounding irony: Where the aims for air quality, endangered species habitat, watersheds, and other irreplaceable high-value assets called for managing vast, uninterrupted landscapes in stasis (i.e. leaving it un-disturbed), all or most of what we were hoping to preserve was lost or severely compromised. Holding onto un-disturbed late-successional stand conditions over very large areas in short-interval fire regimes may have been feasible in a cool, wet climate cycle, but it is proving unsustainable in a hot, dry climate cycle.

There are examples in this country and abroad where people have found ways to reconcile differences among competing values in the larger interest of a safer, more sustainable “whole.” There are models where States have adopted laws that integrate the disturbance dynamics of wildland fire to ensure the health and resilience of the whole ecosystem. The mega-fire threat gives plenty of reason to consider these examples and these models and act.

Strategically, we are at an impasse. We can claim a remarkably high suppression success rate, but we cannot close the margin holding nearly all of the consequence. We seem stalled in our ability to increase mitigation to more meaningful scales, within acceptable limits of risk. And, in these highly dynamic disturbance regimes, our regulatory imperative for un-disturbed conditions is crowding out the ecological imperative for protection.

While we remain immobilized, the conditions that predispose these tragedies continue to incubate.

Ken Schlichte is a retired Washington State Department of Natural Resources forest soil scientist. Northwest Woodlands Magazine [here] is a quarterly publication produced in cooperation with woodland owner groups in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana.

Full text [here]

Selected excerpts:

Climate changes are always occurring, for a variety of reasons. Climate changes were responsible for the melting and retreat of the Vashon Glacier back north into Canada at the beginning of the postglacial Holocene Epoch around 11,000 years ago. Climate changes were also responsible for the warmer temperatures of the Holocene Maximum from around 10,000 to 5,000 years ago, the warmer temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period around 1,000 years ago and the coldest temperatures of the Little Ice Age during the Maunder Minimum around 300 years ago. These climate changes, the reasons for them and their effects on our Northwest forests are discussed below.

Forests soon became established on the glacial soil deposits left by the retreat of the Vashon Glacier, but some of these forests were later replaced by prairies and oak savannahs as temperatures increased during the Holocene Maximum. …

Forests began advancing into the South Puget Sound area prairies and replacing them as temperatures began decreasing following the Holocene Maximum. Native Americans began burning these prairies in order to maintain them against the advancing forests for their camas-gathering and game-hunting activities. Forest replacement of these and other Northwest prairies has proceeded rapidly since the late-1800s in the absence of these burning activities. …

The warmer temperatures and increased solar activity of the Medieval Warm Period were followed by a period of cooler temperatures and reduced solar activity known as the Little Ice Age. The coldest temperatures and lowest solar activity of the Little Ice Age both occurred during the Maunder Minimum from 1645 to 1715… The Dalton Minimum was a period of lower solar activity and colder temperatures from 1790 to 1820. Mount Rainier’s Nisqually Glacier reached a maximum extent in the last 10,000 years during the colder temperatures of the Maunder Minimum and the Dalton Minimum and then began retreating as Northwest temperatures warmed following the mid-1820s and the Dalton Minimum. Beginning in 1950 and continuing through the early 1980s the Nisqually Glacier and other major Mount Rainer glaciers advanced in response to the relatively cooler temperatures and higher snowfalls of the mid-century, according to the National Park Service. …

The National Climatic Data Center (Figure 3) indicates that annual temperatures in the Northwest Region (Washington, Oregon and Idaho) trended upward at a rate of 0.06 degrees Fahrenheit per decade from 1900 to 2000 for a total increase of 0.60 degrees Fahrenheit during the 20th century. The National Climatic Data Center also indicates that during the 20th century the Northwest Region’s annual precipitation increased by 10 percent and the summer precipitation increased by 28 percent.

The National Climatic Data Center (Figure 4) indicates that annual temperatures in the Northwest Region have trended downward at a rate of 0.95 degrees Fahrenheit per decade during the 10 years from 2000 to 2009.

Impacts of Climate Change on Washington’s Economy, published in 2006 for the Washington Department of Ecology and the Washington Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development, predicted that the Northwest will continue to warm approximately 0.50 degrees Fahrenheit each decade over the next several decades and that forest acres burned annually during the 2040s will be double the forest acres burned during an average 20th century year. This 2006 prediction contrasts with the National Climatic Data Center figure indicating that Northwest annual temperatures have actually been trending downward at a rate of 0.95 degrees Fahrenheit per decade during the 10 years from 2000 to 2009.

Wildfire problems and mountain pine beetle outbreaks increased significantly in Northwest forests during the 20th century and some have suggested that climate change is responsible, despite the fact that Northwest annual temperatures increased by only 0.60 degrees Fahrenheit during the 20th century and have been trending downward since 2000. Western Forest Health and Biomass Energy Potential, published in 2001 by the Oregon Department of Energy, gives the primary responsibility for increasing wildfire problems to 20th century fire control activities that allowed development of forest communities that are overstocked and too dense for the moisture and nutrient conditions of a particular site. These forest communities are also highly susceptible to mountain pine beetle outbreaks. Forest thinning experiments that began back in the 1960s in response to increasing mountain pine beetle outbreaks have indicated that thinning of dense overstocked stands minimizes the potential for outbreaks.

In summary, climate changes are always occurring for a variety of reasons, and Northwest forests have experienced a wide range of temperatures in the 11,000 years of the Holocene Epoch. Temperatures have been trending upward since the end of the Maunder Minimum in 1715, but Northwest annual temperatures trended upward only 0.60 degrees Fahrenheit during the 20th century. …