SOS Forests

Put the Gifford Pinchot in the Hands of Professionals

Note: Another commentary regarding our forests worthy of posting at SOS Forests: Frank Backus of Bingen, WA, is a 38-year professional forester who has spent most of his career working in and around the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. He works as chief forester for SDS Lumber Co.

by Frank Backus, opinion in the Clark County Columbian, August 31, 2008 [here]

The Cold Springs Fire in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest has cost taxpayers $11 million to date, destroyed 8,000 acres of varying habitats, including irreplaceable legacy ponderosa pines, wildlife and riparian habitat. State- and private-managed timber damage is yet to be determined but is substantial. There’s got to be a better way.

The original forest-planning effort that culminated in the 1990 Gifford Pinchot Forest Plan involved local people and professional resource managers from the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. The plan was constructed by people who knew the forest and its needs. It balanced timber production and the local economy with wildlife habitat, stream protection and recognized differing ecosystems.

The ink was barely dry on the plan when environmental appeals and lawsuits hammered local Forest Service land managers. The northern spotted owl became a major litigation and political weapon forcing common sense and professional land managers to the sidelines.

President Clinton’s well-intended 1993 forestry summit brought together renowned specialists who were cloistered in downtown Portland and told to write a plan for Pacific Northwest forests over a few short weeks. The results were unfortunately predictable, and, for the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, enormously harmful.

The Gifford Pinchot Forest spans the Cascade Range, north of the Columbia River Gorge and contains a host of ecosystems. The forest borders on the west are in sight of Vancouver and Portland with typical Western Washington forests. The eastern border of the forest is a completely different environment, typified by dry forests, ponderosa pine, grasslands and the like. No other Pacific Northwest national forest has such a widely varying environment, a situation recognized by local land managers but not “experts” locked in a room.

The unavoidable consequence is that the experts who developed and assigned land use designations created habitat designations and requirements that could not be maintained on large portions of the Gifford Pinchot forest. In today’s language, they were — and are — unsustainable.

‘Too aggressive,’ ‘too vast’

Large swaths of the eastern Gifford Pinchot National Forest are designated as spotted owl habitat. Thousands of acres of this habitat is old growth ponderosa pine forest that is now overstocked with white fir that are growing in areas where they cannot survive long-term. Insects predictably invaded the white fir, killing large areas of trees, creating equally large areas of extreme fire hazard. Adjacent landowners hosted the same dynamics but aggressively dealt with the problems as they arose.

Gifford Pinchot forest managers also recognized what was happening and proposed projects over the years, only to have them criticized as, “too aggressive,” “too vast,” “without foundation.” In fact, the proposals were too little, too late but would have helped avoid what we have today: 8,000 acres of scorched habitat adjacent to vast areas of dead trees just waiting to burn. Federal land managers retreated from doing anything other than mostly cosmetic treatments.

This is what happens when local land management professionals are replaced by theoreticians locked in a room with other governmental agencies, which have no responsibility for the consequences of their decisions. It will continue to happen until experienced local land managers are returned to manage the forest.

So, while we argue over commas and periods in multipound environmental impact statements, and while we spend millions of dollars in arcane court battles, we will continue to spend billions of dollars to watch our forests burn. We will continue to watch gracious old ponderosa pines needlessly torched and watersheds immolated by fire.

The solution is simple: Remove politicians, courts and environmentalists from federal land management and return it to professional federal land managers. Charge our land managers with properly managing our forests and hold them responsible for doing so.

They won’t solve the problems overnight, but there is no time like the present to begin the journey. It’s time we started.

Photos of Payette NF and Boise NF Destruction

We posted a letter [here] from Ned Pence, retired District Ranger on the Payette National Forest, reporting on his recent visit to the Krassel District. Over 470,000 acres of the Payette NF burned last year, part of an 800,000 acre holocaust that stretched across central Idaho and three national forests.

Mr. Pence was kind enough to send some photos of the destruction, along with this note:

These are examples of some 200 pictures we took of the results from WFU in 2006 and 2007. Two show the non-maintenance of the former Krassel Ranger Station now a “work center”.

The sedimentation of the South Fork of the Salmon River far exceeds anything that resulted in the logging that Regional Forester Vern Hamre stopped in 1967. If sedimentation from logging damaged spawning habitat for summer run Chinook salmon, the damage from WFU will eliminate the salmon from the SFSR. It will take decades for the sediment to flush out without another catastrophic fire. Please think about the fuel loading that will exist in 20 years when the fire killed timber is on the ground with dog hair regeneration. The second fire will be more intense than the first. Recovery of the SFSR will not occur in my lifetime, probably not in my son’s lifetime.

To allow a lightning fire started in July or August with the current fuel loading is not “natural” or “wise use”. It is abuse. There are better ways of returning to “natural” if that is the objective.

Unfortunately, we must recognize that the Forest Service we loved no longer exists and probably never will. And I feel very bad about that.

Ned

To view the photos click the “Read more” link below.
more »

Forest Service Retirees Question Mt. Hood Wilderness Expansion Plan

Note: We post most news stories we find interesting at W.I.S.E. Forest, Fire, and Wildlife News [here]. This article, however, is more than a news clipping. The voices and positions expressed are extremely important. These commentaries regarding our forests deserve our attention here at SOS Forests.

by Raelyn Ricarte, Hood River News,August 27, 2008 [here]

Two former high-ranking officials from the U.S. Forest Service contend that expanding Wilderness areas on Mount Hood will create numerous management challenges.

Linda Goodman and George Leonard believe that retirement has afforded them the opportunity to speak freely and so they can represent the views of many employees with the federal agency.

Goodman was the Region 6 Regional Forester until this spring and supervised activities in 17 national forests — more than 25 million acres — in Oregon and Washington. Leonard served as associate chief for the federal agency until 1993 and is the current president of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees.

Both administrators have many concerns about the latest Wilderness bill, known as Oregon Treasures. That proposal by U.S. Reps. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., and Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., seeks to add 132,000 acres of Wilderness to the existing 186,200 acres. The legislation is awaiting review by the House when Congress reconvenes in September. A similar plan — calling for 127,000 more acres of Wilderness — has been stalled in the Senate since 2007.

Goodman said 4.5 million people visit Mount Hood each year because of its proximity to the Portland metro area. She said a visitor study undertaken by the forest service within the last several years revealed that 67,000 people each year came to the mountain solely for the Wilderness experience.

The remainder of respondents pursued other recreational interests, such as skiing, mountain biking and camping in developed sites, some of which would be eliminated under Oregon Treasures.

“I think this proposal could be doing an economic disservice to the public and communities around the mountain,” said Goodman.

She said it would be more appropriate for Congress to impose a National Recreation Area designation rather than Wilderness.

She said NRAs provide protection for natural resources but leave camp sites open, accommodate mountain biking, which is prohibited in Wilderness, and allow greater efficiency in maintaining hiking trails. She said chain saws could still be used to clear away trees that fall across pathways. Mechanized equipment is prohibited in Wilderness so cross-cut saws are used to clean up trails.

Goodman said the task of sawing up a downed tree then becomes so laborious that Forest Service employees can’t keep up with the workload. She said there are not enough volunteers to make up for the lack of manpower.

“They don’t have enough funding to maintain the Wilderness they have right now, and this plan will be a real problem for employees,” said Goodman.

She believes the purpose of the 1964 Wilderness Act would not be met by scattering more “small narrow corridors” across the slopes of the mountain. She said the existing Mount Hood Wilderness, at 47,160 acres, and the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness, 44,600 acres, are large enough to serve as a pristine getaway for hikers. If Congress decides to mandate more Wilderness, Goodman said, it should be attached to the larger locations that are already in existence.

“We all believe in Wilderness but the little spurs in Oregon Treasures don’t meet the intent of the Act to provide solitude,” said Goodman, whose career with the Forest Service spanned 34 years.

Leonard expects Hood River County to face challenges if the bill is approved. He said having the newly expanded Wilderness abut a section of the county’s managed forest near Post Canyon creates the potential for more wildfires.

He said insect-riddled and diseased trees are more at risk during lightening strikes. He said while infested trees can be treated within the national forest, they must be left alone in the Wilderness.

“If I had land that was immediately adjacent to an area classified as Wilderness I’d be pretty concerned,” said Leonard.

“I would expect to have my ability to suppress problems significantly reduced.”

Goodman said even if an exception is made and mechanized equipment is allowed into the Wilderness to combat a fire, there might not be a way to reach the blaze. She said the primitive roadways once used for timber harvest cannot be maintained and some are obliterated altogether.

“Putting equipment in there means that you have to be able to get there; and without a road nearby, you can’t do that,” said Goodman.

She said fires are considered a “natural phenomenon” in a Wilderness area and managed with a lighter touch unless they threaten public safety. She said these fires can burn “explosively” because of the dead and dying trees so they are harder to contain once ignited — and more dangerous for firefighters to battle.

John Marker, a retired forest service employee and upper valley orchardist, believes expanding Wilderness will threaten the most valuable resource on the mountain — its water supply.

“Water is critical to our way of life and the engine for a substantial part of our local economy,” he said.

He said a fire that burns hot enough in the Wilderness to sterilize topsoil creates the potential for erosion since nothing can grow there. He said even rains cannot penetrate the damaged earth and that is not acceptable when Mount Hood’s watersheds provide drinking water for more than one million people — and irrigation water for hundreds of local farms.

“Once a fire gets started in a Wilderness area and starts moving, it will go where it wants to go,” said Marker.

He supported development of a customized management plan for the “urban” mountain that was called for in a 2006 bill co-sponsored by Blumenauer and U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore. That plan would have established stringent rules for protecting resources, recreation and other uses.

Marker, Goodman and Leonard agree that adding more Wilderness to Mount Hood could end up threatening not only resources but recreational opportunities.

Pyne On the Tragedy of Whoofoos

Stephen J. Pyne, World’s Foremost Authority on fire and one this country’s finest writers on any subject, has done it again.

His recent essay Friendly Fire is a compelling review of the Warm WFU (Wildland Fire Use fire) and it’s effect on forests and those who care for forests. For the entire essay, download from Steve Pyne’s Commentaries site [here] (click on  Friendly Fire [pdf] - Wally Covington and the 2006 Warm fire).

For background on the 2006 Warm Whoofoo see [here].

Selected excerpts from Friendly Fire by Stephen J. Pyne:

“If I were the Prince of Darkness, I could not have devised a better way to destroy the Kaibab Plateau.”

Wally Covington, professor, restoration ecologist, and a man who has been around burned woods all of his career, walked through the still-raw scar of a fire that had wiped out nine nesting reserves for the northern goshawk, shut down the only roads to the plateau, including one to Grand Canyon’s North Rim, threatened a substantial chunk of the remaining habitat of the flammulated owl and endemic Kaibab squirrel, may cause a quarter of the old-growth ponderosa pine to die, promoted gully-washing erosion, and rang up suppression costs of $7 million.

To help pay those bills the Forest Service initially proposed to salvage log some 17,000 acres of the burn, which has sparked promises of monkey-wrenching by local environmental activists. When trotted out before cameras after the blowup, the district Fire Staff Officer declared that if he knew then what he knew now, he would have made exactly the same decisions. Fire belonged on the land. This was an inevitable fire, a necessary fire, a good fire.

Wally Covington thought it testified to ideology gone mad, and had the temerity to say so and the clout to be heard.

I was there because I wanted to come home. Forty years before, in June, 1967, I had begun my own career in fire on the North Rim. Only five years previously had the opening salvo in fire’s great cultural revolution sounded. By my second summer the National Park Service had rewritten its policy to encourage more fire on its lands. I wanted to see what that revolution had wrought. …

more »

Revisiting the Payette After the Fires

Note: Last year nearly half a million acres of the Payette National Forest went up in flames. We discussed that tragedy as it happened on SOS Forests (the old version) and have posted about it since [here, here, here, here, and here]. The following letter from Ned Pence, retired District Ranger on the Krassel District of the Payette NF was sent to us this week by Jim Rathbun, retired Forest Supervisor of the Kootenai NF. In it Mr. Pence recounts his impressions of the devastation left by the Payette fires of 2007. Needless to say, it’s personal. That’s how foresters look at the forests they are privileged to manage — personally.

Dear Jim,

We got back an hour ago. We had a good trip. I was surprised to see how much of the old Krassel District and the old Bear Valley District burned in 2007 and 2006. I knew a lot burned from the convection columns but it was a lot more than I could have thought.

The SFSR [South Fork Salmon River] visually has more sediment than it did in 1971 when everyone was all upset over sediment from logging. Of course I have to go from memory of what it was almost 40 years ago. We talked to a couple of ologists who were measuring sediment in a drainage that blew out on the East Fork of the SFSR. They said they were working for the USGS [US Geological Survey] doing the sediment measurements for the FS. They had never heard of Bill Platz and the permanent transects he had established in the SFSR to monitor the changes in sediment, and knew very little of the history of the SFSR. I gave them my card in hopes they will pass what I told them on to their boss.

We could not get through to Warm Lake because they had the road closed, so had to go up the East Fork through Yellow Pine and Johnson Creek to Bear Valley. The damage from the fire on the East Fork was amazing. There were nine major slides, four of which formed temporary dams across the river. That area was never logged due to very steep topography and sensitive soils. It was never considered sedimented before and Johnson Creek was a major salmon spawning area. The fire went through kind of hit and miss but was obviously very intense in places.

We did get to Buckhorn Bar above Krassel where the road was closed. The bitter brush on Buckhorn Bar was all burned but most of it is sprouting again. It looked like the fire was very intense in Fitsum Creek and also on Tea Pot Mountain. We talked to a man who was busy parking a big dump truck so no one could get by the road closure. He said that the East Fork was bad but it was worse from Four Mile Creek to Warm Lake especially around Goat Creek. I will have to make another trip to see that, because if it is worse it will be worth seeing.

The old ranger station, now a “work center,” has not been maintained since the last time we saw it. The fence around the old ranger’s house is all rotted out and laying where it fell, and there was a big tree that had fallen across the old equipment shed, breaking the roof. Someone had thrown a canvas over it, but it obviously was not keeping the rain out. There were a couple of people who said they were recreation persons. I asked why they did not fix the fence and roof, and they said no one had told them to do it and the buildings were historical sites so the forest archaeologist had to approve anything they did.

I am afraid I probably lost it when talking to them. There is a whole heli-attack crew who apparently don’t realize they could do some work while waiting for a fire. I asked if they had seen the DFR [District Forest Ranger] and they said they thought he had been out a couple of times from McCall. They said that there are no longer horses and mules at Krassel so the barn that Hickenen built the year before I was DFR has been turned into a storage shed, and the plank fence I built around the pasture has been torn down. They said they thought that there were horses and mules at the Big Creek work center. They said the forest thought the barn was also historical, and I told them it had been built in 1970 but had a lot of history since it resulted in Ed Hickenen being moved to BIFC [Boise Interagency Fire Center] and me becoming DFR.

We then spent a couple of days in Bear Valley. That fire burned all the way from Red Mountain down Wyoming Creek to Bruce Meadows then jumped Bear Valley Creek and burned the whole face south of the old Ranger Station clear to where I sold a timber sale in Cub Creek. The fire actually stopped at the Casner Creek Sale on the south side and the Cub Creek Sale on the west side where it seemed to run out of ground fuel. It was pretty impressive. I will probably get over being upset in a few weeks. We did get a lot of good pictures.

We could hear wolves howling at night. Arleen woke up the first night in Bear Valley and loaded the 20 gauge shotgun while I slept through it, but I could hear them howling farther away when I woke up later. There was a real big wolf track in the road by our camp in Cache Creek.

We saw several people I knew at the old timers reunion. I didn’t recognize some who seemed to think I was Dan. They had a memorial to old timers who passed away the last two years and I knew several. I suppose that in ten years most of us will be gone.

Ned and Arleen Pence

Palin to Run With McCain

This is not a politics blog. I don’t really care who runs for what. Issues are our thing, and natural resource issues exclusively, not personalities. Whomever gets elected, we’ll deal with it when the time comes.

But it is nonetheless a hopeful sign that John McCain picked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate this morning. Sarah Palin is very well respected by conservationists.

Under Palin’s leadership Alaska has adopted non-nonsense policies regarding wolves and other predators. Alaskans understand that predator control is necessary to sustain prey populations like moose, elk, and caribou.

Alaska recently sued to overturn the listing of polar bears as a threatened species. Because they are not threatened. There are three times as many polar bears today as there were forty years ago. See [here].

Alaska is a resource producing state. They are a net giver, not a net taker. That is an admirable thing, although the net taker states don’t like to think about it.

East Coasters are probably scratching their heads wondering who Sarah Palin is, but not around here. We like Sarah. Good choice, John.

Whoofoo Irony

Webster’s Dictionary defines “irony” as 2a: the use of words to express something other than and esp. the opposite of the literal meaning. Irony is the incongruity between the expressed and the actual. Sometimes irony is humorous; other times it is a bitter, not so humorous thing.

For an example of irony, we present excerpts from an article that appeared in the Seattle PI on Aug 20th (a week ago) [here]:

Feds watch as Nevada wilderness burns unchecked for 12 days

By Scott Sonner, AP

RENO, Nev. — While armies of firefighters battle wildland blazes across much of the West, federal crews are watching from the sidelines as a 12-day-old wildfire burns unchecked in a remote wilderness area in the northeast corner of Nevada.

With no immediate threat to people or property, the Forest Service has been content to let nature have its way as the lightning-sparked fire crackles its way through nearly 1,000 acres of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest’s Jarbidge Wilderness Area along the Nevada-Idaho line.

Agency officials continue to monitor the fire that’s 15 miles from the nearest town of Jarbidge, and will step in to fight it if any danger arises, said Linda Slater, a public information officer for the National Park Service who is assisting in the interagency effort. …

But if all goes well, they’re counting on rain or snow to put it out the old fashioned way sometime early this fall.

The management practice called “Wildland Fire Use” is used to manage lightning-caused fires in remote areas where fire is a natural component of the ecosystem, Slater said.

“Right now, they are not putting it out in any place. We have teams in there monitoring the perimeter of the fire and they also fly over it once a day or more to keep track of it,” Slater told The Associated Press. …

So far, the fire in Nevada’s wilderness has burned 950 acres primarily through an area dominated by brush, bug-killed and other dead trees. It’s perimeter is expected to grow, but many pockets of green trees within the perimeter remain unburned, she said.

“It is burning very spotty. It is not black from one end of the wilderness to the other,” Slater said.

The vast wilderness area, home to the threatened bull trout, covers a total of about 195 square miles. The fire is burning within about a 9-square-mile area that has been closed to public entry near the 10,184-foot God’s Pocket Peak. …

“They are not going to let it burn out of the wilderness areas at all,” she said.

What’s ironic about that is, as of last night, the East Slide Rock Ridge Fire was 38,595 acres, had departed the Wilderness Area on Aug 25th, and has been de-whoofoo-ed and declared a suppression fire. A Type 1 IMT has been called in, along with heavy helicopters and airtankers, and the fire will cost many $millions to suppress. A hundred residences are threatened, most in Murphy Hot Springs in the neighboring state of Idaho.

What PIO Slater said and the reality of the situation are polar opposites. Therein lies the irony.

Another irony is that the USFS whoofoo-ed the Jarbidge Wilderness Area in order to “benefit” threatened bull trout. The reality is that bull trout do not benefit from catastrophic wildfires that pollute their watery homes. Once again, the words used by the USFS were the opposite of their literal meaning. There’s incongruity in that. Ipso facto, irony.

Another related irony: in 1998 the USFS dumped tons of rocks and debris on a county road near Jarbidge to prevent vehicles from traversing it. The USFS justified their closing of South Canyon Road by citing Clinton’s Roadless Plan. The road closure had been previously dumped on by a federal judge, and the Clinton Roadless Plan has been dumped entirely since. Whoops! The judge’s order and the USFS violation of that order were incongruous. Everybody should be able to see the irony in that.

The USFS claimed that vehicles would harm the bull trout, even though vehicles on that road and bull trout in the adjacent stream had co-existed for 80 years. And now the USFS has deliberately incinerated the same area, allegedly on behalf of the bull trout.

Their words are pure bull trout when juxtaposed with their incendiarism. Hence the irony.

Oh yes, and when the USFS dumped the tons of rocks, they sent Elko County a bill for $400,000, as if the county was the beneficiary and so should pay for the illegal closure of their county road. Now Elko County gets a megafire from the USFS and they and all the rest of us get to pay for that, too. How’s that for irony!

Two years later, on July 4 , 2000, 600 citizens calling themselves the “Jarbidge Shovel Brigade” cleared the debris, including the 5-ton “Liberty Rock” and reopened the road despite USFS threats of arrests, fines, and imprisonment. The USFS filed a personal suit against the leader of that effort, local rancher Demar Dahl. Eight months later the suit was dropped and an agreement signed to keep the road open. Good thing, because South Canyon Road has been a handy route for firefighters fleeing the East Slide Rock Ridge Whoofoo-Not-a-Whoofoo Fire.

What would be non-ironic today is if Elko County arrested, fined, and imprisoned the perpetrators of the ESRR Fire, the USFS officials responsible for Letting It Burn. That would not be irony; it would be justice.

Note: thanks and a tip of the hard hat to the Grumpster for suggesting this post.

USFS Recalls $400 Million From Agency Programs

On Aug 22 the USFS formally recalled $400 million from non-fire programs to pay for firefighting costs of this fiscal year. The $1.18 billion allocated for FY 2008 fire suppression is gone. Surplus trust finds are gone. To meet the bills, other programs have been canceled, grants curtailed, and non-fire work discontinued.

The following letter was issued by Asst. Chief Sally Collins on behalf of Chief Gail Kimbell:

Forest Service Partners

As many of you know, the Forest Service is in the midst of a challenging firefighting year which is affecting all of our natural resource and public services programs. In Fiscal Year 2008, there have been two massive fire events in California (Santa Ana’s last fall and widespread lightening [sic] in June), each with a high demand for firefighting resources. This demand has been met by the Forest Service, state and local fire departments, U.S. Department of the Interior, the military, and international help.

We have depleted the $1.18 billion allocated in our FY 2008 budget for fire suppression, but we will continue to fight wildfires through late summer and fall. To make additional funding available for firefighting, the Forest Service has set in motion its legislated transfer authority to recall funding from non-fire programs. In response to your inquiries, I am providing you an overview of our current situation with fire funding and some of the impacts resulting from it. We are monitoring firefighting needs and expenditures daily and will inform you of any changes.

The Forest Service is committed to fighting wildfire safely and effectively through close cooperation with communities, states, and other federal agencies. We are dedicated to examining all possible solutions to the situation we face this fire season and in the coming year. We deeply regret the impacts this funding transfer is having on you and the projects and activities you have been committed to completing with us. The Forest Service values our relationships with all of our partners and the contributions you make to serve people and care for the lands and waters important to us all. We ask that you persevere with us during this challenging time and encourage you to work with your agency contacts if you have questions.

Sincerely,
/s/ Sally D. Collins
ABIGAIL R. KIMBELL, Chief

more »

Nevada Whoofoo Blows Up

Another illegal whoofoo (Wildland Fire Use fire) instigated by the USFS has blown up. The East Slide Rock Ridge WFU Fire was ignited Aug 10th on the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest about 15 miles southeast of Jarbidge, Nevada. Today it is a reported 18,250 acres and 3.5 miles from town.

The Humboldt-Toiyabe NF declared the ESRR Fire to be a whoofoo based on a secret amendment they slipped into their Fire Plan last June without any Environmental Impact Statement. Environmental Assessment, or notice to the public of any kind. Edward Monnig, Forest Supervisor, apparently thinks NEPA does not apply to him!

The ESRR WFU Fire [here] was only 300 acres on Aug 17th, a week after ignition. But by Aug 20th it had grown to 5,000 acres and was threatening 30 historic cabins and the Pole Creek Guard Station.  By Aug 21st the fire was nearly 10,000 acres and had spread out of the Maximum Manageable Area (previously established at 113,000 acres). Even so, the whoofoo designation was retained.

On Aug 21 the ESRR WFU Fire grew to 11,250 acres and the wind was blowing. Wiser heads prevailed and the whoofoo designation was scrapped. A Type 1 IMT (the big boys) was requested to suppress the fire.

Yesterday the fire had grown to 14,500 acres and was out of control. Forty mph winds forced the Type 1 IMT Incident Commander (Summerfelt) to pull the 300+ fire personnel from the line in all divisions in late afternoon. All aerial resources, including heavy helicopters and airtankers, were grounded.

This morning the Elko Daily Free Press [here] reported the ESRR Formerly a Whoofoo Fire to be 18,250 acres and roaring towards town. The Elko County Commissioners held an emergency meeting:

Jarbidge fire causes concerns

By Jared DuBach, Elko Daily Free Press, Monday, August 25, 2008

ELKO - County Commissioners ordered an emergency meeting today to discuss the East Slide Rock Ridge fire, which started Aug. 8 in the Jarbidge Wilderness.

According to a statement from County Manager Rob Stokes, the meeting was ordered because the fire is at a point where there is a potential threat to the safety of those living in Jarbidge and the surrounding area.

Stokes told the Elko Daily Free Press the fire is in the area of Sawmill Canyon Ridge, which is 3.5 miles east of the town. All of northern Nevada is under red flag weather conditions today and wind gusts are projected up to 40 miles per hour.

The wind direction is from the southwest, which would push the fire away from Jarbidge.

“Our concern is with the possibility for a wind shift,” Stokes said. “We’re just trying to be prepared. The Type 1 team is doing a good job and we really appreciate their work and effort.”

The fire was last estimated at about 18,250 acres.

The fire grew from its initial stage as a wild land use fire by the U.S. Forest Service as a means to naturally reduce fuel loads of dead or diseased trees. Now, the fire has 10 crews and four helicopters working on controlling the blaze.

“They should’ve put the damn thing out,” Assemblyman John Carpenter said Friday after reviewing the fire’s status. “When you get a fire going in northeastern Nevada in August, you put it out or it’s going to get away from you.”

The USFS was hot to burn. They thought they were going to instill forest benefits by incinerating the public domain. It was “natural” but not “legal” because the laws of the USA require federal agencies to follow NEPA before inflicting treatments with significant impacts, beneficial or not.

Edward Monnig, Forest Supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe NF, is very aware of NEPA but thumbed his nose at it. Now he has engendered a disaster. Over $1 million has been spent suppressing his illegal fire so far, but the final total will be many millions of dollars. The USFS may have burned down their own Guard Station, too. Private homes and ranches are threatened, as well as the town of Jarbidge.

That kind of eco-terrorism perpetrated by government functionaries operating in defiance of the law in unconscionable and intolerable. The Elko County Commissioners should order the County Sheriff to arrest Ed Monnig and lock him up until his trial on charges of criminal arson can be held.

God forbid anyone gets hurt or killed by Ed’s whoofoo, in which case the charges should be ramped up to negligent (or deliberate) homicide.

It seems to me that if we prosecute, convict, and incarcerate in federal penitentiaries a few of these criminal USFS Forest Supervisors, the other ones will catch on to the notion that obeying the law is preferable to breaking it.

Until then there appears to be no stopping the USFS from their insane Let It Burn (actually Burn It On Purpose) forest incineration program.

Gunbarrel Goes Gunnybag

The Gunbarrel Whoofoo Fire has blown up. The northern Wyoming “Wildland Fire Used For Resource Benefit” is no longer benefiting resources apparently, and the Shoshone NF has bagged the Let It Burn Plan.

The Gunbarrel Fire was ignited by lightning east of Yellowstone Park on July 26. Shoshone NF Supervisor Becky Aus, pictured [here], decided to Let It Burn in a grand but totally illegal whoofoo. As of midnight Saturday the Gunbarrel Whoofoo had consumed 50,000 acres and $6.5 million of the taxpayers’ dough, but what’s more interesting is the fire is now bearing down on 420 residences, 11 commercial buildings, 149 outbuildings.

Airtankers and helitankers are attempting to slow the growth in the eastern portions of the fire. High winds may ground the air attack Monday, however. A Red Flag Warning has been issued for high winds and low humidities.

Just last week fire managers and USFS officials were gushing all over themselves for their new fire philosophy. From the Cody Enterprise [here]:

The Shoshone Forest is poised to implement a new firefighting philosophy that says there’s more than one way to manage a single blaze. …

During a meeting with the public last week, Gunbarrel Fire Incident Commander Don Angell told North Fork cabin owners and year-round residents they have the “largest wildland use fire in the history of the Rocky Mountain area.”

Mapped at more than 41,000 acres, the Gunbarrel Fire drew the interest of six officials from the forest’s regional office in Denver.

Shoshone District Ranger Terry Root said the half-dozen top officials, which included Deputy Regional Forester Tony Dixon, came to Cody Tuesday to observe the fire and the way Angell’s team was handling it.

That’s because his team is on the cusp of a philosophical transition in firefighting the Forest Service plans to make by next summer, Root said.

Instead of being merely “suppression teams” of various levels, whose only purpose is to stamp out all forest fires in the true Smokey Bear tradition, every firefighting group in the future will be more oriented to multi-tasking, Root said. …

Stepping back and allowing forest fires to clean out dead and dying trees is known as “fire use” or “beneficial use,” Root said. …

Shoshone Forest Supervisor Becky Aus agreed that “fire management is changing,” adding, “In my view, that’s a good thing.”

Change will be nationwide, but the Shoshone is on the cusp partly through luck and partly through management, she said. …

Aus said the Shoshone paved the way for this thinking in June by amending its Forest Plan to allow wild fires outside wilderness areas to burn once all conditions had been evaluated.

“We’re ahead of the curve” in that, Aus added.

She said the Gunbarrel “has been an exciting fire to deal with” because of the learning curve that has gone into its management.

And partly through gross malfeasance and criminal avoidance of the National Environmental Policy Act. The Shoshone NF did not prepare any Environmental Impact Statement or engage the public prior to making the decision to apply their “new philosophy.” They simply declared that Burn Baby Burn was “beneficial” and sat back on their fat cans while the Gunbarrel Whoofoo fire ripped through public forest unimpeded.

The fire could have been contained, controlled, and extinguished for pennies in July. Now the forest is destroyed, unknown $millions will be spent, and hundreds of homes could be incinerated.

No word yet on evacuations.

The crackpots at the USFS are engaging in illegal holocausts to the detriment of forests, communities, and the US Treasury. The USFS Fire Budget is already hundreds of $millions in arrears and active management has been shut down nationwide. That happened before Becky, Don, and Terry declared their whoofoo. No matter, burn baby burn is the new philosophy.

It’s sure bet that Becky, Don, and Terry won’t be reimbursing the US Treasury for their criminal SNAFU, nor will they be reimbursing the homeowners and private landowners who get burned out. The Federal Government holds itself harmless for major disasters our public servants instigate.

The original intent of the Gunbarrel Whoofoo was to burn 416,112 acres! That’s 650 square miles of land, both public and private. But now they have called it quits at a mere 50,000 acres. And just a day or two after breaking their arms patting themselves on the back for their criminal idiocy.

What, you may ask, has the USFS been drinking? The answer is that the Wildland Fire Leadership Council has been on the take from The Wilderness Society and The Nature Conservancy. TWS and TNC bought seats at the WFLC and paid off the heads of the USFS, BLM, NPS, BIA, and USFWS. Then the WFLC ordered every National Forest and BLM District in the country to alter their Fire Plans, illegally, and incorporate Whoofoo as the Prime Directive.

The very same BINGO’s that routinely sue to enjoin the USFS for every pro-active fuel reduction project have taken over the outfit in Washington DC and are busy incinerating our federal lands with impunity and in direct contempt for the very laws they routinely sue under.

Right? All the suits are NEPA suits (and APA suits, the Administrative Procedures Act) but they encourage, collude, bribe, and extort our federal land management agencies into gross, arbitrary, and capricious violations of those exact laws, with supremely malicious intent.

I have written at length about eco-Nazis and their arsonistic ways. Every day reality confirms my words. The latest catastrophe disaster on the Shoshone NF is just the most recent manifestation. Last week it was the Bridge Creek Whoofoo in Oregon. In June it was the Clover Fire in California. Last year it was central Idaho and Montana. The year before that it was the Kaibab NF in Arizona. And there are dozens more I could name.

Illegal, arbitrary, and capricious megafires that are being perpetrated on our forests, homes, and communities by a federal government run amok, totally corrupted, and at war with the citizens of this country. GW Bush is not the anti-terrorist President; he is the chief terrorist waging war on America today. Mark Rey, Gail Kimbell, Becky Aus, the US Congress, and all the rest are insane generals and lieutenants in a terrorist war being waged against us, the citizenry.

The wholesale destruction of our public and private assets and resources done in an illegal fashion by our own public employees is a horrendous thing. I suggest that as patriotic Americans we must speak out against these travesties.

To remain silent any longer is unacceptable. I am tired of putting my name and reputation on the line alone. I call upon the Society of American Foresters and every other professional environmental organization to step up and be heard. Now.

This is your country, those are your forests, that is your government, too.

Enough is enough.

NorCal Fires Approach 1,000 Square Miles

Northern California wildfires this year have burned 635,535 acres, almost 1,000 square miles. That’s just the NorCal federal fires west of Interstate-5. These are the large fires on the Klamath, Six Rivers, Shasta-Trinity, and Mendocino National Forests. The calculation does not include the Butte, Cub, Corral, Canyon, Jack, or the other fires east of I-5.

To date, approximately $384.3 million dollars have been spent on the NorCal federal fires west of I-5. Twelve firefighters have lost their lives on these fires.

Most of the westside NorCal fires were ignited by the lightning storm of June 20-21. Many are still burning. Little or no direct attack has been utilized. Instead, massive backburns have been taking place all summer long.

For a commentary by Felice Pace entitled Smoky ‘burnouts’ are worse than original fires see [here].

The following fires were included in this calculation. The information was gleaned from W.I.S.E. Fire Tracking [here].

Mendocino Lightning Complex Fires
Mendocino NF
Size: 54,817 acres
Percent Contained: 100% on 07/17/08
Costs to date: $53,300,000

Lime Complex Fires
Shasta-Trinity NF
Size: 98,715 acres
Percent Contained: 100% on 08/12/08
Costs to Date: $58,609,654

SHU/Shasta Trinity Lightning Complex Fires
Shasta-Trinity NF
Size: 86,500 acres
Percent Contained: 100% on 07/25/08
Costs to Date: $56,171,112

Mad Complex Fires
Six Rivers NF
Size: 3,705 acres
Percent Contained: 100% on 07/15/08
Costs to Date: $5,478,347

Hells Half Complex Fires
Six Rivers NF, Shasta-Trinity NF
Size: 15,146 acres
Percent Contained:100% on 07/28/08
Costs to Date: $13,761,193

Ukonom Complex Fires
Six Rivers NF
Size: 52,945 acres (north 23,154, south 29,791)
Percent Contained: 82%
Costs to Date: est. $25 million

Soda Complex Fires
Mendocino NF
Size: 8,652 acres
Percent Contained: 100% on 07/27/08
Costs to Date: $17,563,075

Bear Wallow Complex Fires
Klamath NF
Size: 14,752 acres
Percent Contained: 35%
Costs to Date: $10,860,090

Panther Fire
Klamath NF
Size: 24,848 acres
Percent Contained: 75%
Costs to Date: $14,435,958

Siskiyou Complex Fires (with Blue 2)
Klamath NF
Size: 79,762 acres (Siskiyou 67,404 acs, Blue 2 12,358 acs)
Percent Contained: 78%
Costs to Date: $57,889,383 (Siskiyou $43,825,365, Blue 2 $14,064,018)

Yolla Bolly Complex
Mendocino NF, Shasta-Trinity NF
Size: 89,994 acres
Percent Contained: 100% (reported 08/19/08, but 85-90% actual)
Costs to Date: $16,100,000

Iron Complex Fires (includes Alps)
Shasta-Trinity NF
Size: 105,325 acres
Percent Contained: 94%
Costs to Date: $68,905,255

Slinkard Fire
Klamath NF
Size: 374 acres
Percent contained: 75%
Costs to Date: $2,200,000

Court Throws Out Sierra Nevada Forest Plan Amendment

In a bitter and overtly cynical decision issued Aug 19, US District Judge Morrison C. England threw out the 2004 Sierra Nevada Forest Plan Amendment.

The suit was brought by Marxist-Fascist panderer Bill Lockyer, former Atty General of the State of California, on behalf of the Pipple and Worldwide Communist Domination. Despite the absurdity and malicious destructiveness expressed by raving pyscho nutwad Lockyer, Judge England was forced to rule against all logic and rationality because Judge Pol Pot Noonan of the Ninth Communist Circuit Court had a Commie arsonist brain failure last May [here].

The entire Aug 19 England decision is [here]. In it Judge England carefully lays out all the arguments barfed up by Lockyer and rips them to shreds.

By way of background, Judge England describes the process and reasoning that led to the creation of the 2004 Sierra Nevada Forest Plan Amendment.

The Sierra Nevada contains some 11.5 million acres of National Forest Service land with eleven National Forests and encompasses “dozens of complex ecosystems each with numerous, inter-connected social, economic and ecological components.” SNFPA 1920. In the late 1980s, the Forest Service began developing a comprehensive strategy for managing the myriad resources found within the region. In 1995, the Regional Forester for the Pacific Southwest Region of the Forest Service issued a draft Environmental Impact Statement (“EIS”) outlining its management proposal. SNFPA 229.

After extensive public participation and the preparation of a Final EIS (“FEIS”) responding to public concerns, the Regional Forester issued, in 2001, a Record of Decision (“ROD”) which adopted management objectives in five major areas: old forest ecosystems; aquatic, riparian, and meadow ecosystems; fire and fuels; noxious weeds; and hardwood ecosystems on the lower westside of the Sierras. Id. at 231-35.

Among the thorniest issues confronted by the ROD was striking the appropriate balance between balancing the excessive fuel buildups occasioned by decades of fire repression and conserving key habitat for wildlife species dependent on old forest environments. …

In order to protect old forest conditions within its specific areas of emphasis, the 2001 Framework generally prohibited logging that would remove trees over 12 inches in diameter or logging that would reduce canopy cover by more than 10 percent. SNFPA 328.

Even within the “general forest” areas, the 2001 Framework prohibited logging of trees over 20 inches in diameter. SNFPA 336. It was only within the intermix zones that no canopy restrictions were imposed and logging of trees up to 30 inches was permitted. SNFPA 333, 315.

Although the Forest Service ultimately affirmed adoption of the 2001 ROD despite receipt of approximately 200 administrative appeals, it nonetheless directed the Regional Forester to conduct an additional review with respect to specific concerns like wildfire risk and the Forest Service’s responsibilities under the Herger-Feinstein Quincy Library Group Forest Recovery Act (“HFQLG Act”), a congressional mandate which established a Pilot Program for fire suppression through a combination of fire breaks, group selection logging and individual logging. SNFPA 1918. A management review team was assembled by the Regional Forester for this purpose.

In March 2003, the team concluded that the 2001 ROD’s “cautious approach” to active fuels management had limited its effectiveness in many treatment areas. The management review team further found that revisions to vegetation management rules would decrease flammable fuels while protecting critical wildlife habitat by guarding against the risk of stand-replacing wildfire. See SNFPA 1918, 1926. …

Following receipt of the team’s findings, the Regional Forester ordered that management strategy alternatives in addition to those considered in the 2001 FEIS be considered. A draft supplemental environmental impact statement (“DSEIS”) was thereafter released to the public in January 2004. While the same five areas of concern were targeted in the DSEIS as in its 2001 predecessor, in 2004 a new action alternative was identified (Alternative S2), in addition to the alternative selected by the 2001 Framework (Alternative S1) and the seven alternatives that had previously been considered before adoption of the 2001 Framework (Alternatives F2-F8).

Following the public comment period after dissemination of the DSEIS, the SEIS in final form also included response to various issues raised, including comments by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, by California resources protection agencies, and by the Science Consistency Review (“SCR”) team.

By adopting the SEIS on January 21, 2004, the Regional Forester replaced the 2001 ROD with its 2004 successor and amended the forest plans for all eleven national forests situated in the Sierra Nevada. SNFPA 2987-3061. The 2004 ROD reasoned that the 2001 Framework “prescribed technical solutions that do not produce needed results, or offered methods we often dare not attempt in the current Sierra Nevada.” SNFPA 2995. The 2004 Framework reasoned that the methods as adopted in 2001 fail to reverse the damage, and growing threat, of catastrophic fires quickly enough.

To review, the USFS, as directed by Congress, created a plan to save Sierra Nevada forests from catastrophic incineration. That plan was originally issued in 2001 and amended in 2004 after extensive scientific research and public involvement. Despite the fact that eco-Nazi holocausters sued over 200 times, the Plan was found to pass every legal test imaginable. All proper procedures were followed and all standards met.
more »

The Gordon Meadows Project

SOS Forests is pleased and excited to report that the Gordon Meadows Restoration Plan has been completed and officially released for public distribution. The Cover and Mission Statement is [here] (2.2 MB) and the Plan itself is [here] (13.2 MB).

The Gordon Meadows plan is one of the first in a series of major, landscape-scale restoration projects proposed for Oregon forests by a consortium of interests including lead organizations on this project Oregon Websites and Watersheds Project, Inc. and the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.

Gordon Meadow is a mountain meadow (an ancient cultivated camas field complex) in the South Santiam watershed of the Willamette National Forest. The area was home to the South Santiam Molalla Indians (and the Kalapuya, Klamath, Chinook, and Paiute Indians) for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years prior to Euro-American arrival in Oregon. It is an ancient landscape, populated by human beings from time immemorial.

The Gordon Meadows Project is intended to restore a significant portion of the South Santiam and Blue River headwaters to a cultural landscape pattern representative of Santiam Molalla people at a time prior to the arrival of white occupation. Such a landscape pattern would feature a network of historical ridgeline and riparian trails, stands of old-growth conifer and hardwood trees, and a vast complex of prairies, berry patches, brakes, and meadows teeming with native wildlife, wildflowers, grasses, ferns, fruits, berries, shrubs, and saplings of all varieties.

The Project is designed for 1,900 acres, or about 3 square miles, but the South Santiam Molalla landscape extends for over 45,000 acres or 70 square miles. The ultimate goal is to restore it all to heritage conditions.

The primary purposes of the Gordon Meadows Project are:

1. To restore and maintain Santiam Molallan cultural landscape patterns.

2. To re-create traditional Molallan hunting, gathering, and resource management practices.

3. To reduce wildfire threat to local communities and native wildlife populations.

4. To protect historic old-growth tree populations.

5. To develop local and Tribal employment opportunities.

6. To enhance forest aesthetics, traditional spiritual sites and values, and local recreational opportunities.

The Gordon Meadows Project will achieve those purposes through active stewardship, including removal of excess second-cohort trees and fuels; application of anthropogenic (prescribed) fire intended to protect old-growth trees, reinstate old-growth development pathways, and enhance ancient camas, beargrass, and huckleberry fields; reinvigoration of active harvest of native foods and fibers; and inspiration and active engagement of the local community, Indian and non-Indian alike, in landscape restoration and maintenance.

Collaborators include ORWW, the Grand Ronde Tribes, the US Forest Service, private landowners, and a variety of civic and community groups. Additional collaborators are being encouraged and will be formally invited as the Project proceeds.

An earlier restoration project, the Jim’s Creek Savanna Restoration Project [here], will serve as a demonstration and model for South Santiam forest landscape restoration. Historical research in anthropology, landscape geography, ethno-botany, wildlife ecology, forest science, and fire science will accompany the active stewardship actions. Harvesting of commercial products including sawlogs, biomass for energy, and “wild” foods and fibers will help to fund the Project.

The Gordon Meadows Project represents a refinement of the traditional USFS mission. It will produce commodity and non-commodity values and enhance multiple resource values, but it also advances the more modern mission of restoration forestry. The concept that restoring heritage conditions can and does protect, maintain, and perpetuate all forest values is the new paradigm in forestry.

Stewardship is the practice of meeting current needs while protecting the essential productivity of the land to produce future needs. Utilizing time-honored and tested traditional stewardship methods promotes a sustainable future because it is informed by a sustained past.

Congratulations are extended to all those involved in the Gordon Meadows Project research and planning effort, and especially Dr. Bob Zybach of ORWW and David Lewis of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.

We look eagerly forward to a wider collaboration in and implementation of the Gordon Meadows Restoration Project, and to the expansion and replication of this and similar projects across Oregon forests and other Western landscapes. Restoration is the wave of the future in environmental management. So many of our current environmental problems, including catastrophic megafire, will be solved through active restoration. That door is opening now. We hope all environmental scientists, practitioners, community leaders, and residents will embrace the new vision, because it promises so much for all of us.

‘Let It Burn’ Isn’t Right

But before we get to solutions, we are pleased to post this guest essay by Dan Adair that appeared in the Trinity Journal today, Aug. 20, 2008 [here].

I was very interested in the article in last week’s Journal regarding the effect of the forest fire smoke on the grape crop. Many of us in the county have been scratching our heads for weeks, wondering why tomatoes which were supposed to ripen in July are still showing only tiny, green fruits. It’s kind of amazing when you think about it. The Forest Service , with their “burn, baby, burn” policy has actually managed to create their very own ecological disaster.

The story gets even more bizarre as you continue to look into it. The leading proponent of the let-it-burn policy is an organization called The Wilderness Society. They’ve got a national membership of about 365,000 and their stated goal is to have as much land as possible declared wilderness areas. To that end, they’ve spent $2.5 million lobbying politicians over the last few years and have worked extensively with our own Barbara Boxer.

Now, the snag in turning all of this land into wilderness areas is that we don’t have the money to maintain them. The solution that they came up with is the let-it-burn policy. Rather than aggressively jumping on fires, we should simply let them burn themselves out, thus saving a large amount of money in fire-suppression activities.

To that end, they have some interesting proposals. One is to offer financial incentives to fire managers who let it burn. In other words, the more acreage you burn up, the more you get paid. Another is to allow the Forest Service to claim burned acreage as credits toward their fuel-reduction budget. In other words, rather than having to actually go out and clear that pesky brush, the Forest Service can simply burn it up and say they’ve fulfilled their budgetary obligations for clearing.

No one really seems to know the extent to which the Forest Service is implementing these ideas. We do find in their 2008 budget that they want to “promote the increase of wildland fire use, consistent with land and resource management plans and public and firefighter safety and report these acres annually in future Budget Justifications.” And in discussing the previous year, they state that they “emphasized increased wildland fire use in land management planning with the long-term objective to increase the utilization of wildland fire use to accomplish resource objectives.”

Of course, our local Forest Service press officers deny that they’re just letting it burn. Which is technically true, I guess. They’re not just letting it burn; they’re actively setting it on fire. Your tax dollars at work, folks.

Restoration Forestry Is the Answer

Let us rise above all this whoofoo madness. Instead, let’s discuss the SOLUTION to our forest management difficulties.

Our forest resources are being destroyed. That includes timber, wildlife habitat, watershed values, heritage, soils, air quality, recreation opportunity, scenery, and public health and safety, with damages compounding and accumulating every hour, day, and week, year after year.

Our priceless heritage forests, are being consumed by fire and converted to brush. Something must be done.

Let It Burn, whether by whoofoo (WFU, or Wildland Fire Use), non-suppression “suppression” fires, or deliberate “containment” backburning that extends fires for months across vast acreages, are policies and practices that destroy forests.

Fire “exclusion” is all but impossible, nor is it particularly healthy for forests. Instead fires should be at the right times, in the right places, and done in the right way. Forests also need to be prepared to receive those properly timed, located, and administered fires.

Need a useful phrase to describe all that? Try “restoration forestry.” That’s the term the pros use.

The whole and complete idea of restoration forestry also includes:

1. Heritage landscape renovation
2. Managing for fire resiliency and old-growth development pathways
3. Watershed protection
4. Protecting and enhancing wildlife habitat
5. Active stewardship with positive economic returns
6. Compliance with environmental laws

Restoration forestry is the ticket out of the mess we are in. Restoration forestry does NOT include Let It Burn megafires that ravage entire watersheds, landscapes, and regions. Restoration forestry is about responsible stewardship, not incineration.

We have discussed restoration forestry before on this blog. W.I.S.E. has an entire Colloquium subsite devoted to the topic [here].

The avalanche of bad news has robbed us of the time to fully develop that topic and Colloquium, however. We mean to rectify the situation. For the next few days we intend to discuss restoration forestry in greater detail, and present some exemplary case studies.

If we fail to blog about all the developing forest catastrophes in a timely way, that’s why. We are rededicating this blog to the solution. The catastrophes never seem to end, so to heck with them. It’s the solution that must be presented and discussed. There is no more time to waste.