Wildfire, Forest Management and Home Loss: Living in Flammable Places

Wildfire Ketchum, ID. Photo Bryan Bird

As sure as the fire season will come, so will the blame be laid. Before the smoke even clears from  fires raging in New Mexico and Colorado people will want to hold someone accountable. So the finger pointing begins.

We all mourn the loss of homes and especially life and are wishing the best for the communities of Ruidoso, NM, Colorado Springs, CO and Ft. Collins, CO this year.

WildEarth Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity are already taking the blame for the Little Bear Fire in NM. As painful as it is, we tolerate this every year just as regularly as the monsoon rains put out the fires. That blame is often shared with the U.S. Forest Service. Thinning or logging the forests seems to be the most often cited solution to the wildfires. But no amount of logging can change the weather.

We are now witnessing, we hope, a paradigm shift in how people live in fire-prone landscapes, just as we did in the 70s with floodplains. We live in highly flammable forests that we simply cannot fireproof. But we can fireproof homes and structures.

Thinning and logging far into the back country wildlands may or may not have any effect on saving communities in the wildland urban interface (WUI). But with changing climate and recurring droughts of biblical proportion, its a safe bet that expensive thinning and logging will not make a difference under these extreme conditions. In fact, it could make the the fire hazard even worse.

When people build and live in the "fire plain"  who's responsibility is it to protect them? Should taxpayers use the federal treasury for expensive thinning of public forests far from home in an unproven attempt to change fire behavior? Or should homeowners be required to to treat their own landscapes and build with fire resistant materials? A practice known as firewise.

Insurers are taking notice and so should county policy makers examine their building codes. A study by Headwaters Economics shows the potential for more development in fire prone landscapes in the west and what this could cost in fuel management and fire suppression.

There are reasonable voices sometimes drowned out by the finger pointing. Peter Goodman is one and Evelyn Madrid Erhard is another. But others continue to want to lay blame and capitalize politically on the suffering that comes with fire season, including New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez and U.S. Representative Steve Pearce.

Fire recovery.

But we can rise above the politics of fear and be rational about forest management.Western forests have burned since time immemorial and this natural process is scary. But we do not have a wildfire problem as much as a people in flammable landscapes problem. Yes, there are forest types where the science has shown we should be taking action such as mechanical thinning and prescribed burning to save those forest and their wildlife, but there are also many thousands of square miles of forests that don't need these treatments. Rather than throw scarce tax dollars at those forests, we need to be precise and take actions we know are effective like the firewise program.

In the meantime we are wishing the best for those suffering now at the hands of Mother Nature.

Update: Government Rejects Guardians Bid for Cow Free Caldera

The Director of the Valles Caldera National Preserve in New Mexico has declined our offer of $35,000 to not graze domestic livestock on the Preserve. We were hopeful this year in the aftermath of the largest fire in New Mexico's recorded history that the Preserve would seek to rest the traumatized ecosystems and still get paid.

Disappointingly we got the notification today that they will not accept our money and will run cows again on the Preserve. The Valles Caldera National Preserve is a treasure and we are very lucky to have it in public ownership, but cows grazing this jewel is not appropriate. Especailly after such a large fire, the grasslands and forests need time to recover with out cattle trampling the sensitive soils and grazing down the new growth.

Not only does the Preserve authorize grazing by domestic livestock, but there have been trespass cattle in the Preserve that come in from the surrounding National Forest lands to gorge on the robust, green grasses. The Preserve staff makes a heroic effort to round up and return the offending cattle, but as soon as they turn around there are more. This problem has to be solved with more vigilance and tougher fines on the owners of the trespass cows.

In the meantime, cows, both authorized and unauthorized, will graze in the magnificent valleys of the Valles Caldera National Preserve. WildEarth Guardians and our volunteers will continue to work with the staff and managers to restore degraded ecosystems in the Preserve and ensure cows remain out of the sensitive streams and wildlife habitats. We have several work days coming up to remove barbed wire and other ranching infrastructure that will ensure the least impact from cows. Join us!

A Deal for the Federal Government: $35,000 For ZERO Cows on NM National Preserve

WildEarth Guardians is offering the federal government $35,000 dollars to not graze domestic livestock on the Valles Caldera National Preserve. Sounds like a good deal, right? Well, if past history is an indicator, the money will be refused.

In the aftermath of the largest fire in the state’s recent history, WildEarth Guardians submitted its bid on Thursday the 15th of December for a livestock operation on the Valles Caldera National Preserve that would graze no cows. That is $35,000 to keep the Preserve free of livestock. The focus of the bid is recovery and restoration of the Preserve’s

critical habitats after the Las Conchas fire burned through the National Preserve. WildEarth Guardians has made considerable efforts over the past decade to restore the Preserve’s streamside forests and wildlife habitat and believes the fire’s effects will be beneficial but only with rest from livestock grazing.

By law, the Valles Caldera National Preserve was established to protect and preserve the area's scientific, scenic, geologic, watershed, fish, wildlife, historic, cultural, and recreational values. The Valles Caldera Trust was created to carry out the Preserve's mission and to turn a profit. The Santa-Fe based WildEarth Guardians’ bid could do just that: make money while protecting the Preserve. Guardians believes that the best return on the dollar for the federal government and taxpayers is to accept the $35,000 in return for the privilege to keep cows out of the area and return the streamside habitats to their verdant nature. The group offers its expertise in river restoration to the Preserve in addition to the money.

According to climate models, the Southwest has become, and will continue to become, a drier and warmer place. A symptom of climate change and lingering drought will be larger, more severe fires. Nearly 30,000 acres of the Valles Caldera National Preserve burned this past summer in the Las Conchas Fire. Twenty-five percent of that was in the grasslands in the Preserve's majestic valleys. Grazing domestic livestock places additional stress on already strained hydrological systems, rivers and streams. The Preserve is recovering well by all indications, but returning domestic livestock to the valleys could inhibit recovery.

Cattle have been trespassing into the VCNP for several years as documented by WildEarth Guardians and others. Trespass cows are likely gaining access from the Santa Fe National Forest which borders the Preserve on all four sides. If the VCNP were free of cows under the WildEarth Guardians' plan, the Preserve's staff would have a much easier time identifying and taking possession of trespass cows and fining the owners.

The Valles Caldera National Preserve is a gem in a long string of irreplaceable wild places that run from northern Mexico through the Rockies into Canada. With great foresight, the New Mexico congressional delegation set aside the Preserve as protected federal land. The VCNP serves as the headwaters of the Jemez River, a major tributary of the Rio Grande. This system captures and delivers water to untold numbers of municipal, agricultural, and recreational users downstream.

The valleys and forests of the Preserve are simply too valuable to put at risk with a domestic livestock grazing program.

Clean Waters, Wild Forests Westwide Manual

Good News: President Clinton's Roadless Rule was upheld by a panel of 10th Circuit federal judges recently. The bad: there are numerous political attacks being mounted on America's great conservation legacy, including roadless areas on the National Forest System. Until there is a permanent legislative fix protecting roadless forests, they will continue to blow in the political winds.

But WildEarth Guardians is excited to announce the release of a state-by-state, west-wide manual on protecting undeveloped, roadless forests using the Clean Water Act. Until we can secure permanent protection of roadless areas on the National Forest System, the Clean Water Act antidegradation provisions hold a state-level, citizen's tool for protection of waters in roadless areas and in turn the lands that affect the quality of those waters. Although water quality standards vary state-by-state, the antidegradation standard for "Outstanding Waters" is generally quite strong: no degradation. This degree of state-level protection can provide a bulwark against development of wild forests that might lead to degradation of their waters until full federal protection for roadless areas is final.

In this brand new report, "Clean Waters, Wild Forests: A Citizen Manual for Designating Outstanding Waters in the Wild Forests of the Western United States" we've done the work for you of describing in detail the procedures in 13 western states. So, don't wait any longer, get out there and ask your state to give the highest degree of protection to the pristine waters in roadless areas!

See this and other WildEarth Guardians' reports here: http://www.wildearthguardians.org/site/PageServer?pagename=publications_reports
Report

Arizona Wildfire Not As Damaging As First Reported

A new GIS analysis of burn severity demonstrates less harm to forests than commonly reported.

The record setting fires of 2011 in the Southwest were widely reported as disastrous, yet new analysis by WildEarth Guardians shows the fires burned mostly as would be expected and may have long-term beneficial effects, with appropriate follow-up. Unfortunately, people lost homes and other structures in these fires.

Though the size of the individual fires broke all records for New Mexico and Arizona and fire behaved uncharacteristically in ponderosa pine – the fires mostly burned as expected. Where it burned unexpectedly hot highlights the need to focus scare resources on forest restoration in these vegetation types.

The results, based on preliminary data, reinforce the facts that fire is a natural process in southwestern forests and will present challenges for communities that live in and nearby these forests. In addition, where the fires did burn abnormally, attention is needed on those particular forest types in the form of thinning and controlled burns.

Key findings:

· Wildfires in Arizona and New Mexico account for 17% of all acres burned in 2011 and that figure jumps to 37% if Texas is excluded.

· New Mexico and Arizona had 1,445 wildland fires to date, burning a total of 1,310,861 acres.

· The Wallow Fire (AZ): Over 64% of the area within the fire perimeter burned at low severity or not at all, while just 16% burned at high severity and 20% at moderate severity.

· The Horseshoe II Fire (AZ): Nearly 58% of the area within the burn perimeter burned at low severity or not at all, while just 12% burned at high severity.

· The Las Conchas Fire (NM): Nearly 20% of the fire area burned at high severity, 29% at moderate severity and 39% at low severity.

· The Pacheco Fire (NM): Almost 37% of the burn area burned at high severity and another 27% at moderate severity.

· Of the 11 western states, New Mexico has the 8^th and Arizona the10^th largest area of undeveloped, forested private land bordering fire-prone public lands.

· New Mexico has 600 square miles of undeveloped, forested private lands adjacent to fire-prone public lands and Arizona 400 square miles.

· New Mexico is 7^th and Arizona 8^th among western states in the amount of forested land where homes have already been built next to public lands.

Fire is a natural and inevitable force of nature. Though the fires of 2011 were big, they behaved mostly as we would expect. Forests are flammable and we must learn to live safely with this awesome force of nature.

The GIS analysis, performed by Bird’s Eye View GIS, demonstrates that four fires, each very different in region and the vegetation types burned were large, making up almost 40% of all the wildland acreage burned in 2011 outside of Texas. The 7.5 million acres burned in wildfires this year is above the 10-year average of 6 million acres, but still far below the 145 million acres that burned on average prior to 1800.

Fire in the vegetation types that typically experience long return intervals, but high severity behaved normally, for example the spruce-fir forest types and wetter mixed conifer forests. In drier, forest types that typically experience short fire return intervals and low to moderate severity, the fires behaved mostly as expected with one exception: ponderosa pine forest that experienced uncharacteristic “hotter” fire. Larger, hotter fires in this dry forest type are predicted by scientists and result from forest management practices such as livestock grazing and fire suppression in combination with drought and climate change. Restoration and fuel management will be a high priority in the future for these dry forests.

With limited financial resources, national forests must be managed strategically. We know how to fire proof homes but we cannot fireproof forests in the West. Therefore, we need to spend money on a reasonable combination of controlled burning and thinning immediately around human communities.

The report concludes that the fires likely did more good than harm in controlling fuels built up over years of fire suppression, but that maintaining the lower fuel conditions with controlled burns and other management will be critical. It also concludes that development of housing in the wildland urban interface must be more tightly controlled in states like Arizona and New Mexico that still have significant development potential in fire-prone ecosystems.

Congressman Steve Pearce Is Barking up the Wrong Tree

Congressman Steve Pearce plans on cutting trees down on the Lincoln National Forest as a part of Otero County’s emergency tree cutting stunt scheduled on September 17, 2011. But it is a mystery what exactly the emergency is and what Otero County and Congressman Pearce are protesting. They appear to be under the impression that the Lincoln National Forest is not managing hazardous fuels and thus failing to address fire risk. But they are dangerously deluded.

A quick look at the numbers immediately puts the Congressman’s fears to rest. In the past 10 years (2000-2010) the national forest has treated forest-wide nearly 3 times more acres for hazardous fuels than in the 20-year period during 1980-1999. Congressman Pearce can now go back to his job in Washington and stop inciting hysteria amongst his constituents.

By cutting trees without a permit, the Otero County Commissioners and Congressman Pearce risked arrest and charges of violating federal law for stealing and/or damaging government property. (See for example 18 USC 371; 18 USC 641; 18 USC 1852; 7 CFR 3017.305; 7 CFR 3017.405; 36 CFR 223.48; and 36 CFR 261.6). However, it seems the Forest Service in Albuquerque will bend over backward to accommodate their political theatrics. According to the Alamogordo Daily News, Otero County Commissioners have negotiated a deal with federal attorneys in Albuquerque. An agreement that allows logging on one parcel of land in the forest was signed through the U.S. Attorney's office.

However, the commissioners and Congressman Pearce still need sawyer’s certificates, insurance and bonding to be allowed onto the logging site. Logging is inherently hazardous and requires experience, safety training, and safety equipment. If OSHA decides to make an inspection of the logging event, participants will have to be fully compliant with federal law or face citations and steep fines.

The Congressman’s theatrics demonstrate just how far outside of the mainstream he is. Fuels treatment programs on the national forests in New Mexico are ongoing, including thinning and controlled burning. The Forest Service Southwestern Region treated 202,414 acres (76,661 in NM and 125,753 in AZ) in 2010 for high hazardous fuel loads and to date 87,438 acres (35,208 in NM and 52,230 in AZ) in 2011. George Ellinger, owner of Ellinger Logging in Alamogordo, N.M., told the Alamogordo Daily News on April 24 that Pearce is misinformed. “There’s a misconception that there’s no logging going on,” he said. “Pearce came down and did a big talk with everybody, but he’s not talking to anybody who knows anything.”

Rather than rabble-rousing vigilante behavior, the Congressman should join conservationists, forest practitioners, the forest service, and the forest products industry in working on forest management programs that have been agreed upon and are scientifically defensible, for example the Collaborative Forest Restoration Program. But this takes time and energy as well as commitment to compromise, which seems outside of Congressman Pearce’s playbook.

Pearce’s desire to return the logging industry in New Mexico to its glory days is simply anachronistic and ignores free market economics. Housing starts and the lumber industry have reached historic lows in recent years, without demand logging and milling make no sense. However, controlled burning and strategic thinning does make sense and generates jobs and income. The Congressman should support the programs that facilitate these activities. He’s welcome to join us in the zone of agreement anytime.

Forest Restoration or Logging

Yesterday I went on a field trip with a group of students and professors from the University of Vermont. Here in New Mexico for a week as part of a graduate level natural resource management course, the students were intelligent, inquisitive and thoughtful. Eytan Krasivlovsky of the Forest Guild invited me to participate in a day of site visits and discussion of southwestern forest restoration and fire ecology.

We first visited a ponderosa pine savanna restoration site on the El Malpais National Monument where the fire management officer, Dave Dukart, explained his objectives and how he accomplished his restoration project. The "bad land" monument is a series of lava flows and cinder cones in central northern New Mexico with patches of ponderosa pine savanna and pinyon-juniper woodlands throughout. Dave's work was impressive taking mostly small trees, leaving the larger pines and piling the cut material for later burning.

We then drove the group up Zuni Canyon southwest of Grants and high into the Zuni Mountains of the Cibola National Forest. The Zunis are a small range but with a wide diversity of forest types and a deep cultural history and significance. As we parked the vehicles in a ponderosa pine restoration project, the sight was vastly different than what we had seen on the National Monument. See the photos above. Resembling a high-grade type timber sale, most of the larger trees had been cut and "decked" for sale and what was left standing were all small trees in the 5-12 inch diameter range. Both my colleagues and I were startled at the severity of this forest service restoration treatment and my experience simply reiterates that what the forest service may call restoration is often not much different than a good old fashioned timber sale and that we cannot give up our vigilance in monitoring the agency's proposals.

The particular stand we were viewing was marked by the U.S Forest Service and was based on the Ecological Restoration Institute's pre-settlement tree replacement model and the USFS regional goshawk guidelines. The ERI did not mark this particular stand. The pre-settlement model prescriptions for ponderosa pine forests have been criticized as too rigid and attempting to recreate a snapshot in time rather than a range of variability that can withstand natural disturbances such as wild fire. WildEarth Guardians prefers a more moderate approach to thinning in ponderosa pine that removes the very small trees first and creates clumps of larger trees with interlocking crowns for wildlife: nudging the system back into balance where fire can once again be the dominant force.

My day in the Cibola National Forest only reinforced my strong conviction that we have to continue to participate in these forest restoration projects to ensure that wildlife and other resources are given equal consideration to the production of timber commodities like biomass. Thanks again to Forest Guild and the University of Vermont for getting me out in the woods.