Let the Fires Burn!

Washington Hunter

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I found a good article on the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics web site that Ithaca provided. And I strongly agree with it...I'm curious what other's opinions are on this subject. Here it is:


Ecological Fire Management
Fire is an essential part of most forested ecosystems. Fire recycles forest nutrients, creates browse for native wildlife, deters unwanted noxious weeds, thins out thickets of trees, and rejuvenates forests. Fire creates standing dead trees essential for woodpeckers and the insects they eat and encourages the growth of native plants.


Fire was the forest management tool of choice for Native Americans for 10,000 years. Frequent burning kept wildlife and the forests they lived in healthy and sustainable. Europeans changed all of that. In many forest ecosystems, such as the dry Ponderosa pine forests, putting out fires has led only to even bigger fires burning when they get out of our control. The Forest Service must rethink its fire policies and we all must learn to live with and manage fire, not fight it.


Prevention of Deaths of Forest Firefighters
In FSEEE’s opinion, firefighters are sometimes sent where they don’t belong. In late July 2001, the Forest Service was combating a blaze in an area that should have been allowed to burn. Four young men and women died battling the Thirty Mile fire in the remote Chewuch River canyon of the Okanogan National Forest. Tom Craven, Karen Fitzpatrick, Devin Weaver, and Jessica Johnson were sent by the Forest Service to do a job. They died in the performance of that duty.


But was the job they were doing worth their lives? Did this fire, in a steep, remote canyon that threatened no houses or valuable resources, need to be battled? During its investigation into these tragic deaths, the U.S. Forest Service had better answer these questions.


The Thirty Mile fire started in roadless, backcountry land immediately adjacent to the remote Pasayten wilderness. The fire began in a designated Research Natural Area, at 6,000 acres, one of the largest RNA’s in the nation. This is important in what happened next: It appears fire managers did not even know the fire was in a Research Natural Area. Had they known, they would not have aggressively attacked the fire with aerial retardants and firelines, which are banned in RNA’s. Instead, they would have held back and taken a more cautious approach to fighting this fire -- an approach that sought to allow the fire to mimic natural processes within this fire-dependent ecosystem.


Admittedly, hindsight can be 20-20, but it is worth considering that a more cautious approach to fighting this fire might also have saved lives. The Thirty Mile fire exemplifies the need to take a hard look at our nation's approach to wildland fires. A century of aggressive fire suppression, combined with logging of the biggest and most fire-resistant trees, has damaged ecosystems throughout the West. Continuing to put out every fire in the remote backcountry makes little sense economically or environmentally. We must carefully restore fire to its prominent role as nature's cleansing agent in our public forests.


Last year the Congress allocated a record amount, $1.6 billion, to the Forest Service for its national fire plan. The first priority should be to help private homeowners who live near fire-prone national forests to manage the vegetation within several hundred feet of their houses. That's where the biggest difference is made between a home burning up in a forest fire and a home surviving. The next priority should be to return fire to its natural role in the environment.


Putting out all fires simply puts off the day of reckoning. Burn today or burn tomorrow, the West's forests have burned for thousands of years and will continue to do so. We must learn to live with fire just as we live with the weather. And we must stop sacrificing our best and brightest young people in this futile war against an implacable enemy.

<FONT COLOR="#800080" SIZE="1">[ 02-17-2003 11:57: Message edited by: Washington Hunter ]</font>
 
How do we get back to letting things burn, without the fires getting out of control because of the imbalance of fuel loads from decades of fighting fires? Don't clearcuts work similar to fire in habitat management.
 
You'll probably have to take some pretty severe hits from fires to counteract all those years. Of course, the greens will have problems with the burnt out areas affecting their "outdoor experience".

Don't clear cuts create a totally different ecosystem which puts more pressure of depletion on the land? Plus many species of plants (and I think trees) germinate from fires which, with a clearcut that opportunity wouldn't happen.
Then there's the issue that when a fire does occur the heat from the grasses in the clearcut is much higher creating a sterilization effect.
But , I'm trying to work from memory and am probably over 50% wrong......
 
Ten Bears, that's a good question...I think the problem with logging is that it takes only the large trees, which are somewhat fire resistant anyway. What we need is more controlled burns in the spring and fall when the weather is right, to reduce the amount of fuel in the forests.
 
Personally, I think it's asinine to put people in danger to protect structures. Lives, maybe, but not houses. And it seems that every time there is a major fire that threatens structures, there is a story that comes out about the 'heroic' efforts of firefighters that put their lives on the line to save houses. Stupid! These kinds of stories will cause deaths in the future. As long as the fires aren't threatening PEOPLE, let them burn. If folks want to have a chance of saving their houses, they need to take the preventative measures long before the fires occur. Read this article in today's Denver Post. It shows exactly how houses were saved by doing this.

Foresight saved Durango homes

Here's another one from yesterday that talks about how it will get worse before it gets better, but eventually homeowners will learn to live WITH fire rather than battling it. It will just take a few more bad years with lots of lost homes.

Worst ahead for fires in the west

It's time to stop holding the hands of homeowners who refuse to take preventative measures. Let those homes burn to the ground enough, and people may start heeding the advise given by forest managers.

Oak
 
Ten, "Don't clearcuts work similar to fire in habitat management." No, they don't. In fact, they create even worse problems, and so do the roads in to them. Basic stuff. Do some research!

http://www.defendtheforests.org/foresthealth.html

"The Harris government is currently developing forest management guidelines, called Draft Fire Simulation Guidelines, which would introduce the ludicrous notion that clearcuts emulate natural forest fires."

http://www.peacefulparks.org/press6.html

<FONT COLOR="#800080" SIZE="1">[ 02-17-2003 18:14: Message edited by: Ithaca 37 ]</font>
 
ITHACA, explain this to me.
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> The reality is that most of our public lands are just fine.... <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

http://www.defendtheforests.org/foresthealth.html

Which is it, is the public land healthy or not? This quote is from your reference site not mine. Interesting list of "defender" sites. I'm sure they'd support good forest management, just as soon as somebody developes it.

I believe this was the opposite side in your arguement.
http://www.landscape-ecology.com/Eng/eng_enfd.htm

I simply stated
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Don't clearcuts work similar to fire in habitat management. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
And I can't find much information out there that says they don't emulate wildfires.

What happened to the pileated woodpecker post?
 
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Ten Bears, that's a good question...I think the problem with logging is that it takes only the large trees, which are somewhat fire resistant anyway. What we need is more controlled burns in the spring and fall when the weather is right, to reduce the amount of fuel in the forests. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
There is no market for small trees, yet, not what it takes to make all the things that we all love, live with and enjoy every day..
But there are starting to be some very good burn programs done by very good professionals in the fire industrie, I just had a class taught by one of them that has lit thousands of fires in the Pacific NW..
He has been doing this for some 36 years plus every other job in the fire industrie that is in existance..
There is already programs in the works that have been addressing this very issue. It will take years to right the wrongs of the past, the amount the gov. spent was nothing to what it will spend in the future until a handle gets put back on this stuff..
I don't see any thing I am doing will be in jepordy for years and years..
The forest service is even starting to step back and let the privates and the Indian crews start working on taking the fire industry over..
There is volumes of info on this stuff that I have been learning over the last year..
I will try and keep every one updated on upcomming events and new ideas that are comming down the turn pike..
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Here's the info I was looking for earlier and couldn't find:

"One timber industry advocate said, "I never saw a clearcut burn." Nothing could be further from the truth. Of course clearcuts burn. When long, hot summers dry out the grasses, brush, and logging wastes, they can flare explosively. When they grow thick with closely packed young trees, they present exactly the fire danger we are wrestling with now. The logging roads provide human access that is the source of the vast majority of forest fires. (from Dr. Thomas Power, University of Montana, August 15, 2000)
Two good examples of how fires seek clearcuts and logging roads, and ignore the moister old growth: the Raft River Fire on the Olympic Peninsula, and the Sundance Fire, in North
Idaho--both in 1967. In the former, the fire literally raced from clearcut to clearcut down the logging road, completely skipping the old growth in between. In the latter (70,000 acres), the burned area was entirely in an area laced with logging roads and logging scars, once again largely ignoring the uncut areas."

Fires jumping from one clearcut to another because that's where all the hot, dry tinder is!

http://www.wildlands.org/publands/fire_logging.html

And READ THIS if you wanna know about fires and clearcuts!

"Clearcuts, touted by the timber industry as a fire control measure, also failed to perform as predicted. Having grown back into dense, single story brush fields and plantations, many cut over units we reviewed had burst into flame rather than halted fire. Slash from these heavily logged units also transferred heat and fire into adjacent forest understories and canopies. It was easy to see how, historically, logging’s leftovers have fueled America’s most lethal forest fires."

http://westbynorthwest.org/artman/publish/article_38.shtml

<FONT COLOR="#800080" SIZE="1">[ 02-17-2003 21:46: Message edited by: Ithaca 37 ]</font>
 
"The Big Lie: Logging and Forest Fires"

"The fact is, commercial logging doesn't prevent catastrophic fires; it causes them. In the latter part of the 19th century, this was common knowledge. Relentless clearing of forests in the Great Lakes region left huge areas largely devoid of the cooling shade of trees, replacing moist natural forest microclimates with the hotter, drier conditions characterized by stump fields. Flammable logging "slash debris" covered the landscape."

http://yeoldeconsciousnessshoppe.com/art6.html

"Any clearcut is an ugliness, even one done by a careful company with a long-term perspective -- and there are such companies. There are also liquidators, folks who are in it for the quick payoff. They grab the resource and move on, leaving behind economic devastation that they blame on environmentalists or government regulators. In the national forests they bribe politicians to subsidize their destruction with public funds."

http://iisd1.iisd.ca/pcdf/meadows/something.htm

Here's pages and pages of articles on fires and clearcuts:

http://www.google.com/search?q=forest+fires+clearcuts+&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&start=0&sa=N

<FONT COLOR="#800080" SIZE="1">[ 02-17-2003 21:59: Message edited by: Ithaca 37 ]</font>
 
Whether some like it or not, logging is a very necessary thing humans thru history have utilized. Every one of us, I mean every one of us, uses the products "every day" from logging. It is very easy to decry something that one either doesn't want to see or doesn't see in person, there are other methods of logging that I see as far better, controlled thinning for one. Controlled burns thru the area will keep the forests cleaned up as is natural but in a more controlled way than just letting them burn. There is new machinery that really does a very nice job of logging out the trees and still leaving a very good bunch of every thing else with out making the area look totally devastated and devoid. While I don't believe for a minute that there is only one simple cut and dry solution, there are ways to make it better for all and still get all of the objectives accomplished. It may not make all of you happy, but it will have to do. You can't just leave one area of all of this alone and just expect it to manage itself if we are all still going to reap the benefits of what we have...
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Cant we just stay on topic. The debate was whether or not clearcuts do and cause the same thing as fire, not whether or not we need forest products.

The short answer, along with all the proof provided above, is NO clearcuts dont accomplish the same thing.

Ithaca, I agree, we dont need to manage all public lands for timber production, etc.

<FONT COLOR="#800080" SIZE="1">[ 02-18-2003 09:01: Message edited by: BuzzH ]</font>
 
One big difference between clearcuts and fires is the amount of nutrients (especially nitrogen) that is removed from the site. these are pretty nutrient poor soils to begin with.
 
No BUZZ, the original topic had very little to do with clearcuts. I said:
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>How do we get back to letting things burn, without the fires getting out of control because of the imbalance of fuel loads from decades of fighting fires? Don't clearcuts work similar to fire in habitat management. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Very little information was found in reference to my original question, but you guys jumped all over the simple statement at the end, and even it was contorted. Let me ask again, rephrased, since you never answered the first question.
How does fire and clearcut (or shelter wood cuts, select cuts....) differ from each other in habitat management? Especially after the cut site has been burned over after the harvest?

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> The reality is that most of our public lands are just fine.... <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I love that quote after hearing about all the abuses.

POINTER, are you saying all timber harvest sites are on low nutrient soils? What about nitrogen fixing plants that come in after a site is logged?

<FONT COLOR="#800080" SIZE="1">[ 02-18-2003 13:49: Message edited by: Ten Bears ]</font>
 
Well, the ORIGINAL post didn't say a thing about logging, except removing vegetation from around houses. I guess I responded to that post. I didn't realize we were actually discussing logging.
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Oak
 
No, I didn't mean to imply that. But, many mountain forests are on slopes and very young geologically. Young soils on slopes have a tough time collecting and holding on to nutrients. Sure, some nitrogen fixers will come in, but once the trees start growing the bulk of the nitrogen (in addition to LARGE amounts of carbon) will be 'locked up' in the boles, which are removed during logging and usually left after fires. Leaving the slash helps, but many soils supporting coniferous trees are of relatively low nutrient content. That's why many plantations used for producing food in the SE have gone back to trees, because of the loss of nutrients.

Nutrient cycling is not nearly completely understood in most ecosystems.
 
I have heard that many of the nutrients left after a fire are washed away with run off, and that the loss is similar to that of nutrients removed through logging. I don't have any solid information on that just industry talking.
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