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Larry Caldwell wrote in message
...
In article ,
writes:
Although I didn't see the article(s) to which you refer, Larry, I can
imagine, based upon your saltiness, that there must have been some off
the
wall statements made by the sources quoted.
Thinning of national forests to minimize high intensity forest fires has
been much in the news since last summer. Thanks to virulent attacks by
environmentalist lobbyists in congress, any effort to better manage
federal lands is dead, at least until after the November election.
The more virulent preservationists are claiming that, since only 38% of
the nation's largest fire was totally destroyed, it was really
beneficial.
That's an exaggeration. The majority of that figure fell into the
"moderate severity" range, where tree mortality is expected to
range from 40-80 percent. If the areas that burned with
moderate intensity are as overstocked as has been claimed,
then a 40-80 percent reduction in the number of trees may
not be all that much of a disaster.
16 percent was subjected to severe fire intensity; the forests
there were almost certainly destroyed. Unfortunately, 16
percent of 500,000 is still a *lot* of acreage. The Biscuit
fire almost certainly did do a lot of damage, but given the
weather conditions -- nasty dry-lightning storms + drought
+ extreme summer heat (pushing 110F in Medford) + strong
winds -- the conflaguration was unavoidable. Blaming that fire
on USFS policy is rather less than honest, IMO.
It should be noted that for the wetter, west-side of the Kalmiopsis,
the mean fire return interval is on the order of 70 years. For the east
side, it's more like 40-50 years. So it's possible that the Biscuit fire
is not totally out of the natural range of fire activity there. And given
that much of the land burned in the Biscuit fire has been actively logged
for many years, it is disingenuous to claim that environmental red tape
had much to do with the outcome of this fire.
At the moment, approximately 193 million acres of federal forests in the
west are in need of thinning to prevent catastrophic forest fires.
Perservationists want to reserve fire prevention efforts for areas around
their urban sprawl mountain cabins, and let the rest of it burn. With
our best fire suppression efforts, we lost 8 million acres in 2000 and
approximately the same this year.
Here's a breakdown of the land ownership status of all the
land that burned in 2000.
BLM 1.6 million
BIA 511,000
FWS 349,000
NPS 151,000
USFS 2.14 million
State/private 3.7 million
And here's a breakdown of the land-cover types burned
in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming for the period July 4 - Aug 22,
2000:
Dry Conifer Forest: 190,000 acres (8%)
Montane Conifer Forest: 680,000 acres (28%)
Subalpine Forest: 698,000 acres (29%)
Non-forest: 870,000 (36%)
So it's misleading to say that we "lost" 8 million acres in 2000. Much of
the
land burned was non-forested, or was subalpine/montane forest where
the mean fire return interval is on the order of a century or more. Mean
fire
return intervals for the montane forest lands in the northern Rockies range
from
25 to over 200 years. Mean fire-return intervals for subalpine forests can
most often be measured in small numbers of centuries. The montane forest
forests with short fire return intervals would benefit from mechanical
thinning;
those with long fire return intervals would not. Thinning of subalpine
forest
lands would be a complete waste of taxpayer money. Those forests have
evolved with infrequent, high-intensity fires.
Unfortunately, the politicians who have advocated "streamlining" USFS
logging policies have dishonestly lumped in range (grassland, sage-steppe,
and chaparral) fires in with forest fires to exaggerate the scope of the
problem.
Furthermore, pro-logging politicians have not made any attempt to
distinguish
the forest-types where mechanical intervention would be beneficial
(low-elevation
ponderosa forests) from those where mechanical thinning would be a waste of
resources. Much of the forest land burned in 2000 did not miss a fire
cycle due to 20th-century suppression efforts.
Ask a typical Republican politician to tell you the difference between a
ponderosa
pine and a subalpine fir, and most likely all you'll get is a dumb look.
(detailed info can be found at:
http://www.pacificbio.org/Projects/F.../fire_pubs.htm)