SOS Forests

“Where a fire threatens life, property, or resources, it is suppressed.”

Ummmm, it’s ALL resources, unless it’s a brushy smorgasboard of manzanita, whitethorn, deerbrush and live oak. I guess we can let that burn, if the conditions are right.

So, I guess we’re leaving the future of our forests to the discretionary work the Federal fuels guys? Well, I guess that’s a little better than the 9th Circuit court judges!

The Rogue NF is not a “brushy smorgasboard of manzanita, whitethorn, deerbrush and live oak”. You are thinking of California foothills. The Rogue and the Siskiyou are actual forests, with trees, many of which are old-growth.

And no, devolving forest management to the fire community is not superior to 9th Circuit Court judges. It is a guarantee of megafire holocaust.

That is exactly what has been happening since Clinton et al killed forestry. The result has been the wholesale destruction of forests and the largest and most expensive fires in every western state.

The masses have been propagandized to hate cutting trees, but the end result of that policy has been the incineration of tens of millions of acres of priceless, heritage forests.

The fire community has become the sworn enemy of forests. They seek “forest renewal” which is code for holocaust.

There is no law that calls for that. Even the 9th Circuit court judges look askance at megafires. Only the insane fire community, operating with a Farenheit 451 mentality, desires megafires.

Putting the criminally insane in charge of our forests is a horrendously bad idea, and must be halted now. They indiscriminately burned Idaho, Arizona, Montana, and California, but they are not going to burn Oregon. That buck stops here and now.

Je défie les honnêtes gens de le lire, sans que leur cœurs bondisse d’indignation et crie leur révolte.

Here’s what I sent.

I am writing to express my initial negative response to any RRSNF proposal to back away from initial attack to “Appropriate Management Response” for future fire on the forest. The RRSNF has already been caught up in the Biscuit fire and its aftermath. I remember talking with Tom Link a few years ago, and the fire shocked him and others. Jack Ward Thomas and one or two others told me on other occasions that when the NWFP was established, the expectation was perhaps fires in the tens of thousands, NOT in the hundreds of thousands.

I have no interest whatsoever in sanctioning fire crews “observing” fires. What happens too often is the observed fire cooks for a while, and when national assets are tied up as the fire season gets rocking, it’s plume time. That happened with the Ahorn fire in Montana. Sure it was wilderness, but it had a horribly-early start date, then it spilled out and cost a pile of money and manpower. Stupid. Enough is enough.

You people need to defend what remains. You are going to have to cut some sticks to do that, and follow up logging with prescribed burns. The forest is too unstable now for any other course. There is too much risk, especially with the coastal/maritime/Mediterranean climate of the area.

In general, any program of fire or fire use on the RRSNF must comprise two approaches, and only those two. The first is prescribed fire in conjunction with fuels preparation, meaning mechanical fuels removal of enough scale and volume and reach to A). be fiscally self funding and B.) effective at preventing a wildfire escapement originating from within the project area to either untreated areas and/or other ownerships.

The second approach is to plan for aggressive initial attack of all other fires that start outside a planned time period for prescription burning.

The sick fact is, USFS cannot go around blowing 46 percent of its budget in one month on fire. Never mind wrecking the assets (which ain’t just wood, but wood DOES matter inasmuch as it IS your revenue source whether you like it or not) and attributes the public prefers to black sticks.

Let’s just say I am massively once burned and more than twice shy.

While you are at it, why not smack roadless, which limits suppression to an initial attack either by rappelling teams from helicopters or an airstrike with retardant or smokejumpers if they can land.

They initially attacked these fires in Idaho, flew a couple of planes over and then backed off and waited for the fires to get out of hand then they huddled around the subdivisions and towns being threatened with the equivalent of a squirt gun up against the fires of hell.

That’s exactly what they are proposing to do to Oregon.

They propose an EA (Environmental Assessment). That means no Environmental Impact Statement. That means a pre-decided Finding of No Significant Impact and Categorical Exclusion.

But the Rogue and the Siskiyou are lousy with Threatened and Endangered Species such as northern spotted owls. That’s why those forests have been off-limits to any forest management since 1990. That’s why thousands of mills closed and a hundred thousand people lost their jobs.

The NEPA knife cuts both ways. Incinerating priceless, heritage forests with nothing but an EA to justify their whoofoo program is dead in the water. It’s dead before it hits the water.

In some ways, I hope they try to get away with mere EA. That opens the door to a lawsuit shutting down the whoofoo program nationwide. Maybe that’s their intention, I don’t know. But that’s going to be the outcome. Just you wait and see.

The Appropriate Management Response has been in place for decades. It just now has an “official” name and document. Nothing will change in how the Forest Service fights fires.

“Appropriate response” in USFS bureaucratese means whoofoos, let burn fires, No Initial Attack.

No Initial Attack is the strategy that resulted in the 500,000 acre Biscuit Fire (2002), the largest fire in Oregon history and most expensive suppression effort in US history. That fire was ON the RR-SNF!

No Initial Attack is relatively new (the first use on the RR-SNF was 2002) and most assuredly that policy has not been in place for decades.

No Initial Attack resulted in catastrophic disaster the one time it was tried on the RR-SNF. Now they want to try it again. How many acres will the next No Initial Attack fire burn? How much will it cost? How much will it destroy?

Even if they do have an initial attack, it is pointless if they don’t follow up the following day and stay on it.

Ask Central Idaho. Oh wait, that’s me, and I did ask and I witnessed and I suffered. Thanks for the respiratory illness.

Bill Clinton politicized the USFS, forest management and biology. Science is not the driver today. BMP is out the door. Now forests are to be managed by their ability to bring urban votes to legislators and those with presidential aspirations. If the voters in town can shove wolves up a rural butt, shut down commercial activity in the forests, they can and will burn them all up if that is what they desire.

I guess I am now of the opinion that the sooner they burn it all, the sooner the resolution to management will come. I want to see how the very frequent brush fires that will follow conflagration will work to end global climate change. I want to see wolves working some of the grease wood patches to try and kill a deer. And I want to see the mud flows of the RRSNF rivers.

Everyone knows, do they not, that the most unstable of all geology is in the Siskiyou and Klamath-Trinity NF…all that schist and serpentine and decomposed granite is flowable dry. I have seen it in a cat road flowing like water in the heat of summer, long before you would see the cat come around the corner with a turn of logs. The soils would run down hill dry. And when it rained, it all went south.

Once I was in a thunderstorm, and the road in the Ashland watershed had no culverts, just 2×6 troughs like waterbars. And we were stopping to knock balls of hail out of the ditch that were diverting water across the road and eroding out the fill slope. It looked like a quart of water was taking two quarts of soil with it down the hill. I suppose the good news is that there is little soil because it has no way to stay on the hillside, and what is there is so laden with magnesium that only by lots of precipitation can the chemical barriers to growing vegetation be overcome.

That country was once traversable by horse anywhere you wanted to go. Indian burning for eons had kept it in fire replaced grasses and big old trees that lived through low intensity fire. Not that way today, pardner. Lots of oak leaves and buck brush to fuel a full fledged conflagration. And the smoke will just sit in the Medford area like soup in a bowl. hee-haw….burn baby burn.

That country now is so full of McMansions perched atop chimney draws that a big fire will do lots of expensive damage. And, if it burns the O&C timber that those counties sorely need to pay for local services, now that no USFS logs are hitting the market, then the loss will really cause local pain. I would think Peter the DeFazio, he of all the answers but no solutions ever produced in a long career, will have a tough time defending the politics of “let ‘er rip” fire management… or fire watching. Time will tell.

The modern era of catastrophic wildfires on federal forestlands can be said to have started with the Biscuit (nee “Silver”) Fire Complex of 1987 and the Yellowstone Fires of 1988: 20 years ago. Such fires have continued on an almost annual basis ever since.

Passive management of federal lands and “Appropriate Management Response” are demonstrated colossal failures, yet continue to be promoted as “protecting” our forests and wildlife. What gives?

Current efforts to create more Wilderness in Oregon on both State and federal levels indicates the enormity of the problem. The public actually think these methods work, and our elected officials promote that belief.

If our political leaders believe in these approaches — despite all evidence to the contrary — how can the public be persuaded to think any different?

Now that the eco’s AND the Bush Administration are united in burning our forests to the ground, what can foresters do? It looks like the shift will have to go with salvage logging. The stage is set for foresters to make their stand in court on the benefits of salvage logging. Too bad the government lawyers know almost nothing about forests. And in a battle of lawyers, which lawyer would you trust on environmental issues? (No, you DO have to choose!…LOL)

“Appropriate Management Response” certainly does NOT mean “No Initial Attack.” It just merely gives a name to the process USFS firefighters have used in the last 20 years or so to determine how best to manage a fire when considering the resources at risk, available resources to fight the fire, and the fire itself. I know… I am a firefighter.

Copied directly from the summary document:

“AMR is any specific action taken in response to a wildland fire suitable to meet protection OR
fire use objectives described in the fire management plan.”

“What Appropriate Management Response is not.
• Not new—building on what we have successfully done
• Not “Let Burn”
• It’s not just a cost issue”

“Why the Appropriate Management Response?
The Appropriate Management Response does not replace, supercede, or give emphasis to any
particular fire management strategy or tactic. Instead, AMR is intended to include all available
strategies and tactics, encouraging consideration of a wider spectrum of management options
from which to make a calculated response based on the circumstances of a particular fire at a
particular time with particular characteristics. Use of this concept dispels the interpretation or
belief that there is only one way to respond to each set of circumstances.”

As to the earlier claims of an EA being a pre-decided Findings Of No Significant Impact, see this excerpt from the Council of Environmental Quality (especially (1)):

“A. The environmental assessment is a concise public document which has three defined functions. (1) It briefly provides sufficient evidence and analysis for determining whether to prepare an EIS; (2) it aids an agency’s compliance with NEPA when no EIS is necessary, i.e., it helps to identify better alternatives and mitigation measures; and (3) it facilitates preparation of an EIS when one is necessary. Section 1508.9(a).”

An EA is a document that can lead to an EIS or stand on its own if there is a FONSI. It is not a pre-determined result. It’s all part of the NEPA process.

Mary Beth — if Appropriate Response is S.O.P. and has been for 20 years or so, why then is a Plan Amendment required?

This is a major change. Otherwise why the fuss and bother?

And the changes mean very specifically the inclusion of Wildland Use Fires, aka Wildland Fires Used for Resource Benefit, aka fires that are monitored (watched) but not contained, controlled, or extinguished, aka Let-It-Burn fires.

That is the nub of the change. It is a big one. It is codifying the approach taken on the Biscuit Fire.

WFU’s lead to megafires. It has happened before, right on the RR-SNF.

WFU’s are not silviculture and they are not stewardship actions. WFU’s do prevent or preclude massive resource destruction; instead they are it.

In this case, an EIS IS REQUIRED, because the impact on resources from WFU’s is potentially horrendously bad.

The EA is being prepared precisely because the intent is to forego an EIS. They are desperate to avoid that NEPA process. Their EA will say “no EIS required” when the opposite is the case.

Which is your argument. Oh, this is no change. It’s all the same thing we have always done. Just a paperwork update. Not important. Please pay no attention to it.

Sorry, but I see it differently. I see the imposition of WFU’s as a recipe for disaster.

The fire community wants to “renew” forests by burning them down, and I wish to save the forests we’ve got left by restoring them. Those are two different goals entirely.

Mary Beth:

Please note that “Appropriate Response” is a 20-year old program and then read my comments above regarding the past 20 years of wildfire history in the western US.

Appropriate Response is a proven failure and on a massive, unprecedented scale. Who determines “appropriate,” and which way is the wind blowing when they do?

It can’t work for the same reasons it hasn’t worked. History tells us why.

If I am not mistaken, Forest Service “Fire Gods” can take “credit” for WFU’s as “acres treated”. When it comes time for budgets to be doled out, the most acres often get that “discretionary spending”.

Burning should only occur when the outcomes can be carefully controlled. When a WFU works and goes out after consuming the scant fuels of a high-elevation lightning fire, that’s great and everyone feels warm and fuzzy inside. Other situations demand action to prevent damage to forest values. This “natural and beneficial” stuff is merely a smokescreen to stick it to anyone they deem to be in the way.

And, we certainly can’t say that the Forest Service has the cream of the crop in wildland fire fighters. Every other Agency pays substantially more, with better benefits and work conditions. We are the minor leagues of firefighting.

Money (or the appearance of money in the case of Tamarack) determined the “appropriate” response in Idaho.

I know this website’s predecessor had numerous references to last summer’s fires in central Idaho. And I’m going to point some things out again, that I and others have pointed out before.

East Zone Complex Fire started after lightning strikes not too far from Loon Lake where there is an old WWII bomber that crashed in the 40s that has been allowed to rot basically. The fire was reported immediately by the hot springs people in Burgdorf.

Now, I believe the Payette officials who said they hit the fire with an initial attack. Most people in the greater Burgdorf, Secesh, Warren, South Fork area do not. I believe that they initially attacked it because I asked, “what did you do after the initial attack?” And I got another believable answer: they pulled back. They determined it was uncontrollable.

The second part of that statement I do not believe. That fire eventually burned something like 300,000 acres. Generally it turned Secesh Meadows into the Alamo, Burgdorf was spared, except that the road was closed and the hot springs business placed in jeopardy. Warren was surrounded by flames, and the South Fork (built on a blowout) now gets to see how big a blowout they can have this spring, since we’ve got quite the snowpack and they have nothing to hold that drainage where the South Fork Road comes down from Warren to the South Fork subdivision.

The Cascade Complex started with some lightning strikes south of Warm Lake. One of the fires was a lightning strike due west (essentially) of the salmon trap on the South Fork and Warm Lake. That particular fire was a part of the East Zone Complex, though oddly enough closer to the Cascade Complex and in the Boise Forest and at the time no where near any of the East Zone fires. We were told was in an extremely remote area, way high up on the mountain, so the USFS decided to watch it and let it burn some of the forest. Initially it was a problem for the Southern Idaho Timber Protective Association, but it was soon turned over to the East Zone Fire managers because it did not threatened the things the SITPA folks care about.

That particular fire, as fires do, kept growing. The fires south of Warm Lake spread toward Stolle Meadows.

There’s an important road (it has pavement, something pretty special in central Idaho) in between the two fires. Warm Lake Road was closed off basically on the day the remote town of Yellow Pine was expecting people for its Harmonica Festival (which I agree they should think of a June festival). Anyway, the tiny town’s only major event was ruined. And why? Because of a remote fire that wasn’t threatening anything. The USFS decided, hey, we’ll get some whoofoo action going on this one. That particular fire made a bee-line for the road, eventually coalescing into the Monumental Complex (later the Cascade Complex).

All throughout the summer in July and August, a common question came up: “why aren’t you attacking the fire and containing the fire?” The answer was that the terrain is too remote, too steep, not enough access, or we are attacking it (that last answer generally came from the people who just assumed you were a dumb hick from the sticks who shouldn’t live out here). You might remember how one firefighter ripped Yellow Pine a new one in an act of stupidity. Even if you think that way, you must grant they are a unique bunch in Yellow Pine.

Moving on, because I’m coming to a point, we were told all these reasons why they couldn’t contain these fires: it’s the worst year ever for moisture content, terrain to remote, terrain too steep, not enough access, our resources are spread thin as fires are real bad throughout the West, we are just going to protect the structures, and on and on, so many different reasons for not making attempts to contain fires that all began small (because that’s how all fires start), so many reasons that it was almost a textbook case in propaganda (not that any one of those reasons weren’t believable, mind you, but it was the ease with which each of the reasons flowed, and the cadence and the manner that when one reason didn’t satisfy, another one was immediately offered).

And then a funny thing happened, The fires threatened Sun Valley and then Tamarack Resort. All of the sudden the resources on the largest complexes in the nation at that time were reassigned to go off and fight the Sun Valley Fire and the Tamarack Fire (I know they weren’t named that, but that’s what they should have been named). Those fires were contained quickly, containment lines dug, airstrikes galore, even a shooting death in one of the fire camps (I forget if it was murder or suicide or both).

We got to see something we were informed didn’t exist: a forest firefighting community with enough resources to kick a fire in the teeth.

And why was that? Money. Money made all the difference, If the people in Yellow Pine, Warren, Burgdorf, South Fork and Secesh had any real money, if they weren’t already living in areas the New USFS would just as soon close off for roadless areas and backpacking hippies who finally quit torching homes and come to walk around aimlessly because they need an excuse to not shower. If the residents, who in the minds of the New USFS and the enabling Eco Nazis are trespassing on the forest by living in their historic communities that have been there as long as white men have been here, if those people just had a billion dollars and any influence, the 800,000 acres that burned up in central Idaho would have been something more akin to 40,000 acres.

But alas, the people in those communities are a mix of economic status, all with a common trait no longer encouraged in this country that once championed individual spirit, by God these people want to be left alone, left out of the collectivist experiment, and so by God they are going to burn for it. Oh sure, it is not a conscious decision for the most part, but then there’s this guy (who after being outed for being an inhuman jackass claims he was misquoted, yet he’s quoted more than once over several years saying the same damn thing) this jackass goes around while homes are burning to the ground, boulders are crashing into other homes, he goes around and talks about how great it is that all this forest is burning up and if they wanted to fight these fires they should have never hired him (that’s basically what he said).

So look, I know it’s hard to discern the intent of these wonderful euphemisms they come up with to discuss change by making it sound like a change, with the equivalent effect of you moving your couch three inches one way or another, but au contraire, mon frere, these lovely little appropriate response words are nothing more than, we’s a gunna burn dat der forest real good, yes sir brer wabbit, I was born in da briar patch and a sumtimes it a burned real good.

Apologies to Uncle Remus

I am waiting for the clever reader who cuts and pastes into Google that French quote above. It is a literary reference. Grumpster? Can you solve my little lit puzzle?

Mike,
I had a whole, big, long reply started to you and just happened to read a few more of your posts on other articles (which I think were also written by you?).

Long story short, I can see that no amount of logic, facts, etc. will sway your hyperbolic rhetoric and it would be a massive waste of my time to even try. I love trying to educate others (and myself) through a civil dialog and/or debate, but there’s no point here. I can’t debate with someone who just states what he thinks or feels without any facts to back it up.

Bob,
I would ask you, what should be done instead? The full-suppression and “10 AM” policies of the past did not work either. Nothing will ever work 100%, we just have to do the best we can with the science available and lessons learned from the past.

I will make one point: AMR is not strictly a USFS policy. The Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, and the National Association of State Foresters have all adopted it as well.

Do a Google search (which you seem to advocate), and just read through some of the results on the first two pages to educate yourself more on this topic. I did, and learned a lot.

Oops, somehow the response to Bob got put in the middle of my response to Mike. Bob, only the paragraph immediately following your name is meant for you.

Mary Beth:

Here’s hoping you can cut through the rhetoric and continue contributing to proactive discussions on these important points.

The weird thing is is (not a typo) that the 10:00 AM policy DID work! Media distorts reality, and politicians (and agency “scientists”) follow suit. Votes and money.

The “six-year jinx” of Tillamook Fires (1933, 1939, 1945, and 1951) ended when a combination of road-building, salvage logging, and quick response with WW II technologies (mostly planes, chain saws, and cats) was successful in controlling the 1951 fires before they attained catastrophic proportions. From 1945 until the Yellowstone and Kalmiopsis Wilderness (”Silver Complex”) fires of 1987 and 1988 there were NO (”none”)catastrophic-scale wildfires in Oregon; and relatively few in the entire western US! Over 40 years of mostly successful wildfire control.

The post-War housing boom likely had something to do with this history, in addition to public policy and improved technology, but the fact is that Smokey Bear had an obvious hand in reducing wildfire frequency, severity, and intensity during those decades.

In the late 1960s the federal government began creating passively-managed “Wilderness” areas (which are, indeed, “racist” in the truest senses of the word), and the rest is history. Clinton’s NW Plan, increased Wilderness acreages, and the “roadless” policy exacerbated the problem.

Recently, history (”documented fact”) Deniers have been touting clearcutting, Global Warming, climate change (!), and/or past policies as creating this situation. Mike is right, and they are wrong. It is just plain bad management and worse policies driving this mess; which should be obvious to the most casual observers, but is not.

How can that be? Today on OPB radio they had a discussion on “magic” and how easily and willingly people are misdirected and deceived. If I can saw a lady in half before your eyes, I can also make you believe in Global Warming and AMR. And just as easily discount the decades of documented success of Early Response and of active management.

These are PR moves, made to cover terrible management decisions and results. The Enviros are NOT Foresters, but a large number of forest “scientists” are opportunists and politicians.

One man’s opinion, with some rhetoric.

Mary Beth — it really doesn’t matter, but I have been a professional forester for 34 years in Oregon. I do have all the docs you mentioned and a library full of more besides. I have fought many, many fires, and even taught at fire school.

And I have been very civil with you, and posted your comments as you sent them to me. I disagree with you, but have not censored, insulted, or belittled you.

This IS my site. I do have the right and responsibility to post what I deem fit. Sorry if it displeases you, but I am not blogging to please anyone but myself.

Mary Beth,

Don’t do what the alarmists do, don’t do what the collectivists do, don’t pick up your toys and go home when challenged. That’s how problems such as fire bomb forests occur.

Stay in the discussion, check your feelings at the door, and agree or disagree.

Those who run off just show they don’t like to be challenged and that they haven’t got enough information to back up their argument.