Re: RC: RE: Politics, Fires and Trails

[RDCARRIE@aol.com]

As this is a topic near and dear to my heart, both personally and 
professionally, I'll have to leave lurk mode to comment.  First, I must say 
up front that I work for the U.S. Forest Service, although these are my 
personal comments - I'm a district wildlife biologist in Texas.  Second, I 
must say that I'm the last person who would ever defend the FS 
blindly...those who know me know that my loyalty is 100% to the natural 
resources, not to the agency, and that I've never been shy about speaking my 
mind, regardless of whether others in the FS want to hear me...and that 
includes my district ranger and our Forest Supervisor (the head honcho in 
TX).  Gets some feathers ruffled sometimes. <G>  

One of the biggest problems the National Forests face is the exclusion of 
fire, as the previous articles mentioned.  That blasted bear, Smokey, has 
been way too effective.  Forests used to burn more often, but at low 
intensities.  A classic case is the Ponderosa Pine ecosystem out west...it 
thrived on periodic low-intensity fires that maintained a fairly open, 
largely grassy, understory.  With Smokey's campaign, and the suppression of 
all fires, Lodgepole Pines invaded the ponderosa community.  Dense, doghair 
thick stands of lodgepoles are extremely flammable.  Now, when a fire is 
started in this type of forest all hell breaks loose, as we're seeing.  I've 
been out there in the past, on crews fighting fires, and have seen sights 
similar to what is happening this year.

But another problem, and a big one, is what we in the FS call the "urban 
interface" problem.  As more and more people build houses in the forest, it 
means that more homes are at risk of being lost when we do have these huge 
wildfires.  Firefighters do what they can, but having to protect the huge 
number of structures takes firefighters away from constructing fireline and 
fighting the fires.  Firefighting resources (crews, air attack, etc.) get 
stretched really thin.  Who's to blame when homes are lost?  The people who 
want to live out in the woods?  Heck, I'd like to live out there too.  But, 
people who chose to live in such an area need to realize the risks.  There 
ARE steps one can take to reduce the chances of losing one's home should a 
fire occur.  But people still insist on building log homes with wood shake 
roofs, with the trees growing right up to their back door.  Somehow, there 
has to be a better job done of educating homeowners.  I'm not sure how.

So what to do?  The simple answer, that most agree on, is to reduce the fuel 
load.  "How" to best do that is the million-dollar question.  The problem of 
fuel loads getting so high didn't happen overnight, and it won't be fixed 
overnight.  Prescribed burning is one answer...get fire back into the 
ecosystem to restore the forest to what it once was.  But - the lack of fire 
for so many decades means that it's very difficult to restore the forest with 
just fire, without including more "drastic" means.  That means some sort of 
harvest, preferably directed at reducing fuel loads, rather than just 
harvesting a certan number of board feet of timber.  Has there been 
mis-management by the Forest Service?  Depends on what you call 
mis-management.  Believe me, I have yet to see the day when the FS 
voluntarily errs on the side of not harvesting trees!  But timber harvests 
are somewhat market-driven.  Big trees sell for more $$ than little trees.  
Timber companies generally prefer to bid on sales that have big trees to be 
cut.  And in many areas, it's the little trees (not worth much $$), coming in 
under the more mature forest, that need to be removed (like the lodgepole 
pines coming in under Ponderosas).
Just doing a general thinning in the forest (taking out some of the larger 
trees and/or dead trees) won't protect the forest from these wildfires.  The 
fires now burning in wilderness (no managment) are getting lots of attention, 
but the vast majority of the acres that have gone up in smoke are those acres 
that HAVE been managed by thinning and other harvest methods.  I would argue 
that the Forest Service needs to plan different kinds of harvests - 
specifically aimed at reducing the fuel load, rather than at generating a 
certain number of board feet.  But these things take time.  I think the 
agency is slowly turning that way, but it will take years to change the way 
of thinking of some managers (or wait for them to retire), and to get the 
harvests planned and implemented.  Accomplishing change within this agency 
can be likened to mating elephants...it occurs at a high level, involves lots 
of screaming from those involved, and takes multiple years to get results.

Sorry this is so long..but the problem and solutions are so much more complex 
than politicians make them seem.  Timber lobbyists lean on politicians, 
funding their campaigns, etc., and use crisis situations like we're in now to 
call for more timber harvest...but what they really want is more harvest of 
big trees...not the oftentimes weedy little trees that are the culprits.  
Environmentalists, on the other hand, blame "man" for tinkering with the 
forests and causing the high fire potential.  Neither is right.  And caught 
in the middle is the forest itself, as well as homeowners who are watching 
their homes go up in smoke.

Sorry this is so long...hope part of it makes sense...I'll get off my soapbox 
now...

Dawn in Texas (who wishes she were 100% recovered from shoulder surgery so 
she could be out west fighting fires)