SOS Forests

The Douglas County Forest Predicament

by Mike Dubrasich

Yesterday Douglas County Commissioner Joe Laurance delivered an excellent testimony to Congress. I amplify that testimony with the following of my own, which was not invited by Congress, nor delivered to them, but is instead posted here.

Douglas County extends from the crest of the Oregon Cascades to the Pacific Ocean and encompasses the entire watershed of the Umpqua River, over 5,000 square miles. As of the census of 2000, there were 100,399 people, 39,821 households, and 28,233 families residing in the county.

Douglas County is one of the premier timber-producing counties in the nation. Approximately 25-30% of the labor force is employed in the forest products industry. Agriculture, mainly field crops, orchards, and livestock (particularly sheep ranching,) is also important to the economy of the county.

In 2008 approximately 416 million board feet of timber were harvested in Douglas County, less than one third of the historical average. The reason for that is the USDA Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management administer more than 50% of the county’s land, and their combined timber harvest in 2008 was less than 50 million board feet, less than 5% of their historical harvest and less than 1% of the annual growth on those lands.

In economic terms, considering stumpage value, remanufacture value, and the multiplier effect, a million board foot of timber is worth a million dollars and/or ten family wage jobs.

The precipitous decline (from historical levels) in timber harvest from federal lands in Douglas County costs the county’s economy 10,000 jobs per year. That has been the case for nearly 20 years now, since inception of the Northwest Forest Plan, and Douglas County has suffered enormously as a consequence.

As of last October, 23,336 Douglas County residents received food stamps. That is roughly a quarter of the population. The number has risen since.

The federal (USFS, BLM) forestland in Douglas County continues to grow timber at a prodigious rate. Over a half billion board feet are added very year. In other words, less than 1% of the annual growth is harvested each year.

That accumulating biomass has another effect on the economy of Douglas County. It fuels catastrophic fires that damage the watersheds, wildlife, public health and safety, recreation, and all businesses.

Across the West we have witnessed our precious natural resources, forests, range, water and wildlife being destroyed by unnatural catastrophic wildfire.

Last summer was a mild fire season as a mere 40,000 acres burned on federal land in Douglas County, costing some $33 million in fire suppression outlays and inflicting 20 times that amount in short- and long-term damages to standing timber, future timber, water resources (including degradation of domestic water, irrigation, and hydropower supplies), wildlife habitat (terrestrial and aquatic), soils (including decreased soil productivity and increased soil erosion), recreation (including hunting, fishing, hiking, and camping), public health and safety (including long-term effects of smoke inhalation), energy resources (including transmission system damages and loss of biomass energy supplies), and heritage resources (include damages to historic cultural trail systems, ceremonial sites, and sacred sites).

In short, the mild fire season last year inflicted a half billion dollars in damages to Douglas County’s economy. Coupled with the billion-dollar-per-year economic shortfall due to diminished timber harvest from federal lands in Douglas County, the economy is in a tailspin.

These problems are not unique to Douglas County. Across the West forest fires are decimating rural economies. Since 1990 total U.S. wildfire acreage has climbed from an average of 3 million acres per year to nearly 10 million acres per year. Nationally fire suppression expenses have risen 4- or 5-fold, as have short- and long-term damages which now exceed $50 billion per year.

The causes of this increase in forest fire damages are many-fold and subject to some debate, but dominant among them is the increase in biomass on poorly managed federal lands.

Biomass is what burns. Unnatural, a-historical accumulations of biomass are fueling a-historical megafires. In the last 20 years the largest fires in the state histories of Oregon, Colorado, Arizona, Washington, and other Western states have occurred. As Jerry Williams, former Director of USFS Fire & Aviation, pointed out in May at the Inland Empire Society of American Foresters annual meeting in Wallace, Idaho:

Since 1998, at least nine states have suffered their worst wildfires on record. … Large wildfire (LF) incidents account for only about 1% of all wildfires. … 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. …

Large wildfire (LF) incidents account for only about 1% of all wildfires. … 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. …

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. …

Forest fires not only impact the economy, they destroy treasured non-commodity values such as old-growth forests. In a study entitled “The Relative Impact of Harvest and Fire upon Landscape-Level Dynamics of Older Forests: Lessons from the Northwest Forest Plan” by Sean P. Healey, Warren B. Cohen, Thomas A. Spies, Melinda Moeur, Dirk Pflugmacher, M. German Whitley, and Michael Lefsky, Ecosystems (2008) 11: 1106–1119, the authors found:

The [Northwest Forest Plan] amended the management plans of federal lands in the region, and we know that it led to a significant decline in the harvest of older forests on federal lands (Mouer and others 2005).

Fire in [large diameter forests] increased dramatically in the last decade. The impact of fire on federal [large diameter forests] increased both in absolute terms (from 6,800 ha/decade from 1972 to 1992 to 45,300 ha/decade from 1992 to 2002) and in relation to the area removed by harvest ([large diameter forests] area lost to fire on federal land was 1/27th the area lost to harvest before 1992 and 2.2 times greater afterward.) …

Meanwhile, major fire events in older forests following the NWFP exceeded the scope of previous fires in number and area. [Large diameter forests] losses to fire were concentrated on federal lands in the drier East Cascades and Klamath provinces, where increased disturbance by fire outweighed decreased disturbance by harvest.

The accumulation of biomass and the continuity of that accumulation are driving horrendous megafires that are hugely debilitating to rural economies now and for decades into the future, and are destructive of non-commodity values as well. The threat is increasing every year.

The forest condition, after several thousand years of active management (by fire) of the land by American Indians and prior to the habitation by European settlers, had only a tenth of today’s accumulated biomass. As Jerry Williams pointed out last May:

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.

Historically, many of our Western forests were open and park-like, with widely spaced trees. Historically and ecologically, human beings administered the key partial disturbances that maintained sustainable forests: frequent, regular, seasonal, human-set fire.

The forest development pathways of pre-Contact eras were not punctuated by catastrophic stand-replacing fires but instead were the outcomes of frequent, seasonal, lightburning fires in open, park-like forests. Those fires were largely anthropogenic (human-set by the indigenous residents). Because the fires of historic eras were frequent and seasonal, they gently removed fuels without killing all the trees. The widely-spaced trees thus survived repeated burning and grew to very old ages.

In the absence of anthropogenic fire, and indeed in the absence of sufficient management of any kind, thickets of second-growth trees have invaded the formerly open old-growth stands. Biomass accumulations are today five to ten times the fuel loadings of 150 to 200 years ago. Those dense fuel loadings are reflected in the Fire Regime Condition Class ratings and constitute an extreme hazard to forests and natural resource values as well as rural economies.

What can be done?

Experienced forest scientists recommend “forest restoration.” In 2007 Drs. Jerry Franklin and K. Norman Johnson testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests:

Our definition of “restoration” is the re-establishment of ecological structures and processes on these forests where they have been degraded and, simultaneously, restoration of economic and other social values on these lands. One product of this restoration will be substantial reductions in uncharacteristic fuel loadings. We emphasize restoration activities in which ecological, economic, and other social goals are compatible…

We will lose these forests to catastrophic disturbance events unless we undertake aggressive active management programs. This is not simply an issue of fuels and fire; because of the density of these forests, there is a high potential for drought stress and related insect outbreaks. Surviving old-growth pine trees are now at high risk of death to both fire and western pine beetle, the latter resulting from drought stress and competition…

Without action, we are at high risk of losing these stands–and the residual old-growth trees that they contain–to fire and insects…

The National Association of Counties has adopted a resolution urging Congress to enact legislation to direct and enable federal forest management agencies to reduce Fire Regime Condition Class 3 (FRCC 3) to the standard of FRCC 1 in all federal forests by the year 2030, and to reduce FRCC 2 to the standard of FRCC 1 in all federal forests by the year 2050, through the means of active landscape-scale management, fuels reduction, and immediate post-fire rehabilitation.

Removing the excess fuels in an ecologically sensitive manner will benefit Americans by protecting and restoring:

1. Heritage and history
2. Ecological functions including old-growth development
3. Fire resiliency and the reduction of the size and severity of catastrophic fires
4. Watershed functions
5. Wildlife habitat protection and enhancement (including spotted owl habitat)
6. Public health and safety
7. Jobs and the economy

Forest restoration is active management to bring back historical cultural landscapes, historical forest development pathways, and traditional ecological stewardship to achieve historical resiliency to fire and insects and to preclude and prevent a-historical catastrophic fires that decimate and destroy myriad resource values

Forest restoration begins with the study and elucidation of forest history. Douglas County is engaged today in a forest history analysis of the South Umpqua watershed on the Umpqua National Forest. The project is funded by the County through the Southwest Oregon Resource Conservation & Development Council.

The objective of the project is to describe the forests of the early 1800’s, before pioneers crossed the Oregon Trail and settled in the region. Preliminary findings are that the South Umpqua forests were indeed open and park-like, with oak savannas, berry fields, and other human-maintained features – a cultural landscape best described as an anthropogenic mosaic.

Those forests were fire resilient. Frequent, seasonal light-burning fires gave rise to the old-growth habitat we value today. In the absence of tending by human beings using traditional ecological knowledge, fuels have built up to catastrophic levels, threatening severely damaging megafires.

Addressing and mitigating that threat through forest restoration is the solution to both the ecological and the economic problems. Restoration enhances forest resource protection and creates family wage jobs in rural communities.

Congress has been mindful of both the problems and the solution. Two key restoration bills have been enacted: the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 and the Forest Landscape Restoration Act of 2009 (Title IV of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009). Those Acts add forest restoration to the statutory mandates of our federal land management agencies.

Yet those Acts have not been funded at the levels required. Nor has the USDA Forest Service fully embraced forest restoration, and too many impediments with conflicting federal laws invite paralyzing lawsuits.

Congress meant well by enacting the HFRA and the FLRA, but has not been vigorous or comprehensive in the approach. Significantly more funding is needed, and legal impediments mitigated.

The FRLA, now called the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, was funded at $10 million per year. That is a pittance considering the magnitude of the threat to America’s forests from megafires and the magnitude of the economic suffering in rural communities.

The FRLA was passed without a single hearing in either the House or Senate, without examination, debate, or amendment, and without significant elucidation of the will of Congress. As a consequence a number of localized forest restoration bills have been offered that seek to establish “local forests” managed under separate laws and overseen by duplicative advisory panels, yet financed with federal dollars and staffed with federal employees; that supplant current statutory mandates for planning and management processes with prescriptive language that violates NEPA and NFMA; that propose management guidance that is unscientific and unworkable; that do not protect (increase risks to) vegetation, habitat, wildlife, water, air, soils, and other ecological values; and that do not protect (increase risks to) heritage, utility, resiliency, sustainability, public health and safety, private property, and other human values.

This dithering is especially frustrating to counties with significant federal land ownership. We are beset by risk to ecological, economic, and social values that emanate from the unrestored forests in our watersheds. We look to Congress to provide leadership, we are hopeful and have expectations that Congress understands those unbearable risks and economic malaise rural counties face every day, we applaud your foresight in making forest restoration the statutory mandate, yet we are profoundly impatient and frustrated by the lack of diligence and effort on the part of Congress to follow through.

The National Association of Counties resolution regarding the reduction of Fire Regime Condition Class 3 (FRCC 3) to the standard of FRCC 1 is yet another expression of impatience and frustration. We do indeed urge Congress to adopt the standards NACo recommends.

However, adoption of standards alone is not sufficient. We humbly request that Congress fund forest restoration fully, that Congress gives ample direction for forest restoration to federal land management agencies, and that Congress removes the impediments to implementation of forest restoration.

Full funding means that land management agencies have the wherewithal to plan and implement landscape-scale restoration projects as mandated in the FRLA. Full funding means study of forest histories, greater understanding of forest development pathways, respect for heritage, and comprehensive understanding of how historical forest resiliency may be achieved today on public lands.

The investment in restoration will be returned many-fold by the creation of rural jobs, by our citizens becoming engaged in the ecologically sensitive removal of excess biomass, and by the utilization of that biomass in wood product and energy industries.

Removing the impediments means review and adaptation of the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA), and other laws that litigious groups use to subvert the will of Congress – litigation that does not significantly protect the environment and/or actually increase risks.

The question before this Subcommittee today is how might Congress create rural jobs with America’s public lands. That question is deeply intertwined with a number of other issues including the prevention of megafires, respect for heritage, ecological protection and enhancement, public health and safety, watershed maintenance, and capital investment.

The answer to these questions boils down in all cases to effective, scientific, historically informed, landscape-scale forest restoration.

Dr. William Wallace Covington of the Ecological Restoration Institute in Coconino County Arizona testified before the US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in 2002:

We are at a fork in the road. Down one fork lies burned out, depauperate landscapes—landscapes that are a liability for future generations. Down the other fork lies health, diverse, sustaining landscapes—landscapes that will bring multiple benefits for generations to come. Inaction is taking, and will continue to take, us down the path to unhealthy landscapes, costly to manage. Scientifically-based forest restoration treatments, including thinning and prescribed burning, will set us on the path to healthy landscapes, landscapes like the early settlers and explorer saw in the late 1800s.

Our rural economies are hurting. Our landscapes – forests, wildlife habitat, watersheds, homes, and communities — are imperiled by catastrophic fires. We can and must address those intertwined issues through unwavering and dedicated commitment to restoring our forests and thereby restoring our rural economies.