Region Archives: United States

MONTANA — It is not unusual to hear people complaining bitterly about road closures on public lands. A certain amount of resentment is natural, when you encounter a gate or barrier blocking motorized access to what looks like a perfectly good road. What gives? Actually, road closures are not the result of a nefarious plot by evil people who want to take away our freedoms. The Kootenai Forest Stakeholders Collaborative (KFSC) wants the public to be aware that there are some solid reasons why not all forest roads are open to motor vehicles. Many years of research confirm that roads can be hard on wildlife, especially on a number of species that tend to avoid areas with open roads. …Although we also hear complaints that more roads are being closed every year, in fact the miles and percentages of open and closed roads has not changed substantially for several decades. 

…Susan Prichard, a research scientist with the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, along with colleagues from the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station — Paul Hessburg, Nicholas Povak and Brion Salter — and consulting fire ecologist Robert Gray, have created a modeling tool that will allow managers and policymakers to imagine and realize a different future: one where large, severe wildfires like Tripod are once again rare events, even under climate change. The tool, known as REBURN, can simulate large forest landscapes and wildfire dynamics over decades or centuries under different wildfire management strategies. The model can simulate the consequences of extinguishing all wildfires regardless of size, which was done for much of the 20th century, or of allowing certain fires to return to uninhabited areas. REBURN can also simulate conditions where more benign forest landscape dynamics have fully recovered in an area.

More than a century ago, vast forests, logging debris and wooden homes fueled the nation’s deadliest wildfires across the Midwest frontier. Until recently, the country had largely tamed that threat with organized firefighting and better building construction.  But within the past five years, two fast-moving blazes have caused unstoppable devastation in a new era of deadly wildfires: The Camp Fire killed 85 people in California in 2018, and now the death toll in the Maui, Hawaii, fires has surpassed 100 and is expected to keep climbing substantially.  …Large wildfires require dry conditions, strong winds and plenty of stuff to burn. The problem is that those hazards are becoming more and more common, said Michael Gollner, an engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley.  “Those conditions could always happen, but they’re happening so much more often because people are there, the weather is worse, and the fuels haven’t been maintained in many places,” Gollner said.

Kelly Norris

Last month, a new Wyoming State Forester was selected by Governor Mark Gordon to fill the vacancy left by longtime state forester Bill Crapser. Wyoming Public Radio’s Hugh Cook spoke with Kelly Norris about the state of Wyoming’s forests, her plans for the agency to focus on, and being the first woman to fill the position. … I am the first woman state forester for the state of Wyoming, also the first assistant district forester, the first female district forester, and the first woman assistant state forester of operations. …Immediately, we have a capacity issue within our agency, we’re hiring as quickly as we can. That’s a real big focus for us. We’re sitting at [a] 20 percent vacancy rate. We right now have quite a bit of turnover with all of the funding and all the interest going into the forestry profession and the firefighting profession.

These “beetles” are tiny insects that burrow under the bark of mature needle-bearing trees (conifers) and munch on the nutrient layers. In time, they suffocate entire forests and create immense debris fields. Those tiny bugs provide much of the dead wood fueling today’s conflagrations. According to University of British Columbia researchers, the mountain pine beetle damaged 45 million acres of pine forests across western Canada and the northwest United States in the last 40 years. Jeffrey Hicke, a University of Idaho scientist, calculated by the time the enormity of the beetle outbreak came to the forefront in 2012, the creepy-crawler outbreaks affected 30 million acres and killed 6 billion trees. Throughout North America, forests are experiencing some of the worst wildfires in recent history. Correspondingly, insect and disease epidemics starting 40 years ago were the worst ever. Beetle-killed trees only waited for the right conditions to ignite.

The U.S. Forest Service approved a project to harvest timber from an area west of West Yellowstone last week. The plan includes the logging of over 12,000 acres as well as nearly 60 miles of temporary roads.  The agency acknowledged that logging activities would cause short-term impacts to nearby soil, water and wildlife but found that there would be no long-term effects on threatened species like grizzly bears.  Rewilding manager for WildEarth Guardians Adam Ressien said the plan directly opposes a recent executive order to protect old-growth forests and puts threatened species at risk.  “We’ll continue to voice opposition, for sure, and we look forward to doing that both in the public realm and in the courtroom,” Ressien said.

Located in the heart of north-central Idaho, the Nez Perce-Clearwater Forest is known for its wild character. The area encompasses 4 million acres of federal land, ranging from deep, rugged river canyons to steep, jagged mountains. …But this forest’s survival and its future may not be so certain anymore. All of the country’s national forests are required to have a resource management plan, as dictated by the National Forest Management Act of 1976. Among other things, these plans are designed to protect public lands from excessive or destructive logging.  …The Forest Service described four “action alternatives” in the plan. All four would significantly increase industrial activity in the area from 50-60 million board feet to around 260 million board feet of timber. …As a response, Friends of the Clearwater wrote a grant that funded an independent analysis of climate impacts.