Region Archives: US West

The last time the state Building Code Council crafted rules for protecting homes from the threat of wildfire, city officials criticized them as confusing, expensive and overreaching. Those rules are gone. As the state looks at drawing new wildfire risk maps and implementing new codes, local governments want more say in hopes of producing regulations that are understandable, affordable and help the communities most at risk. …Lawmakers on the state House Local Government committee heard from officials of state agencies and local governments, including Brad Medrud, planning manager at the City of Tumwater, about what must be done to implement new wildland urban interface, or WUI, building codes, and what a new law will mean for cities and counties. …Loren Torgerson of the Department of Natural Resources told lawmakers… the DNR is on track to finalize the map elements by Dec. 1.

…Tree thinning efforts in the Upper Rio De Flag Watershed are part of a larger restoration plan to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire and post-fire flooding. The plan includes six project areas equalling over 12,000 acres, over half of the 21,500-acre watershed. While cutting trees may seem counterintuitive to maintaining a healthy forest, removing smaller trees and low-lying vegetation will prevent high-intensity wildfires and post-fire flooding that can destroy an entire ecosystem. …For decades, the U.S. fire policy was suppression… In more recent years, forest agencies have worked to restore fire as a management technique. …Thinning forests will allow fire to return to the landscape, both naturally through lightning strikes and prescribed burns. That leaves fewer fuels to supercharge the flames to reach the treetops. …Although thinning and burning a forest may seem damaging to the ecosystem, land managers hope residents will reap the benefits of their work.  

ARIZONA — Frustrated Arizona loggers aired a few complaints about the way the Forest Service handles thinning contracts in Arizona, especially when it relies on out-of-state contractors unfamiliar with the ecology of Arizona’s ponderosa pine forests. …The Forest Service is experimenting with a new, high-tech method of marking trees for cutting in restoration timber sales. That includes using computer tablets synced to aerial LiDAR surveys so loggers can determine which trees to cut without the Forest Service marking each tree by hand. …A century of logging, cattle grazing and fire suppression has increased tree densities on millions of acres from less than 100 per acre to more than 1,000 per acre. Now a high-intensity fire can climb up into the lower branches of the tallest trees. …The 4FRI aims to dramatically reduce tree densities across millions of acres in Northern Arizona, making it the most ambitious forest restoration project in the country. 

SOUTHERN OREGON – This summer the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) is using drones to help with multiple aspects of fire suppression and detection. ODF’s state aviation coordinator, Sara Prout said that aerial resources are important every summer, and that drones help expand the department’s aerial capabilities. “The manned aircraft and unmanned aircraft work together, just at different levels.,” Prout said. For years, ODF has utilized planes and helicopters to help detect, observe and fight fires. Drones can operate similarly, with more mobility and access to fires. Drones can provide valuable information during every phase of a wildfire. This includes the time after a fire has been mostly contained and crews are finishing their work. “Firefighters can have really accurate data when they’re doing mop up,” Prout said. “We can get really amazing hotspot identification for the firefighters to use in those efforts to make that process more efficient.”

A documentary, “Rematriation,” about saving old-growth forests, will be shown in Ojai on, June 23, followed by a time for questions and answers with Angela Davidson, aka Rainbow Eyes, whose fight to save 1,500-year-old trees in a Canadian forest is featured. View the promo for the documentary HERE. It is one of three events in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties that will be held from June 22 to 25. A member of the Da’naxda’xw-Awaetlala First Nation, Rainbow Eyes will speak about her fight to protect the old-growth forest of Fairy Creek on Vancouver Island and Knight Inlet. All profits will benefit the Dzunuk’wa Society – Wild Women of the Woods in their efforts to save ancient forests. Rainbow Eyes’ stay in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties will include outdoor Indigenous learning circles, a reception and opportunities for private conversations with Rainbow Eyes and her logging blockade partner, Glenn Reid.

A new machine-learning system developed at the University of Alaska Fairbanks can automatically produce detailed maps from satellite data to show locations of likely beetle-killed spruce trees in Alaska, even in forests of low and moderate infestation where identification is otherwise difficult. The automated process can help forestry and wildfire managers in their decisions. That’s critical as the beetle infestation spreads. The Alaska Division of Forestry and Fire Protection calls the spruce beetle “the most damaging insect in Alaska’s forests.” The identification system by assistant professor Simon Zwieback at the UAF Geophysical Institute was detailed in the ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing on May 18. Zwieback is also affiliated with the UAF College of Natural Science and Mathematics. 

Northern ecosystems are seeing some of the planet’s most sweeping changes from climate warming. For some animals and plants, that has posed a threat to their very existence and, for humans, a couple complicated questions: Can we — and should we — do anything to save them? In Alaska, one area where land managers and ecologists are wrestling with those questions is the boreal forest, home to spruce and birch trees, wetlands and many species of animals. But the boreal is warming more rapidly than anywhere on Earth and seeing more intense wildfires, invasive beetles decimating wide swaths and changing rainfall patterns that’ve caused some parts to shift to grasslands.

New research from a collaborative group of scientists from the USDA Forest Service, Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that frequent, low-severity fire supported owl habitat, but high-severity fire was detrimental. The study is published in the journal Fire Ecology. This finding suggests a potential win-win: forest management activities that can help to return historic low-frequency fires to the landscape and reduce risk of more severe wildfires will likely benefit Mexican spotted owls too. The Mexican spotted owl is a threatened species that inhabits forests and canyonlands in the southwestern United States. These owls often live in forests that are at high risk of stand-replacing fire—and yet at the same time, there is concern that forest management projects that can reduce wildfire risk, like thinning or prescribed fire, could remove or alter important habitat characteristics that owls depend on for their survival.

Coastal martens, also known as Humboldt martens, are small, catlike members of the weasel family that live in the coastal forests of Oregon and northern California. The animals were thought to be extinct due to logging and trapping but were rediscovered in northern California in the 1990s. Today, there are only about 400 coastal martens left in the wild, living in four isolated communities. The animals were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2020 and just last month received federal habitat protections after a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity. The conservation group also recently sued the U.S. Forest Service to enforce habitat protections for martens in the Oregon Dunes.

University of Copenhagen scientists may have found a new explanation for the California wildfires of 2020. Applying AI to detailed aerial photos, they created a unique dataset detailing mortality down to single trees for all of California State. This revealed individual and clustered tree death spread out among the living on a large scale. The new AI-model will increase understanding of tree mortality and give us a chance to prevent droughts, beetles and flames from destroying the world’s forests. …California has been one of the places hit hardest by droughts and wildfires, and saw 4% of its landmass go up in smoke in 2020. Now, scientists at the University of Copenhagen present a new picture of the health of Californian forests, revealing a new account of dead trees in the region, and possibly a new underlying explanation for the extensive fires in a study published in Nature Communications.

About two dozen projects aimed at saving imperiled fish and amphibians are getting a share of $10 million, the first round of grants to come out of Oregon’s landmark agreement on managing private forest lands. For years, conservationists and timber industry groups debated how to protect fish, frogs and salamanders while also logging trees on 10 million acres of privately owned lands. They came to an agreement called the Private Forest Accord, signed by former Gov. Kate Brown in 2022. As part of the agreement, the state would pool money into a grant program for habitat conservation projects around the state. This year, about $10 million were awarded to 25 projects. …In addition, the Private Forest Accord ushered in logging regulations to protect sensitive fish and other aquatic species including increased stream buffers and leaving more trees behind when logging on steep slopes.

NEW MEXICO — As summers become drier and hotter for New Mexico, the state’s National Forests become more vulnerable. In recent weeks, crews have been battling Blue 2 Fire, which was caused by a lightning strike in the White Mountain Wilderness. …According to Douglass Cram, a forestry and fire ecology expert at New Mexico State University, putting out every fire as soon as it appears is not only unrealistic, but it’s also not advisable.  …We’d like to change the fuel structure, so we have stands that are more resilient to fire behavior. So the idea of putting a fire out immediately or letting it burn, sometimes you can dictate that, other times you can’t.” And while climate change continues to drive instances of fire weather, Cram explained that the solution to severe blazes is to mitigate damage with the right type of management, including thinning and prescribed burns.

https://youtu.be/ckYCS3Ps-MI?si=Ekf-PNhUd4UFI72X

WASHINGTON — Bumblebees play an essential role in maintaining the stability and diversity of ecosystems through pollination; unfortunately, eight species in Washington are considered rare and at risk. To protect these vital insects, partners formulated and adopted a new conservation strategy across the state to promote proactive conservation actions for rare or sensitive species. …the Washington Bumble Bee Conservation Strategy, adopted in February of 2023, was developed collectively through a partnership between the USDA Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife, and The Xerces Society. The strategy focuses on eight rare species of bumble bees and identifies priority areas and includes key recommendations for managing land cover, protecting nesting habitat and creating foraging areas. …In the Pacific Northwest, the Forest Service and BLM partnered to form the Interagency Special Status and Sensitive Species Program and are implementing the bumblebee conservation strategy.

About two dozen projects aimed at saving imperiled fish and amphibians are getting a share of $10 million, the first round of grants to come out of Oregon’s landmark agreement on managing private forest lands. For years, conservationists and timber industry groups debated how to protect fish, frogs and salamanders while also logging trees on 10 million acres of privately owned lands. They came to an agreement called the Private Forest Accord, signed by former Gov. Kate Brown in 2022. …This year, about $10 million were awarded to 25 projects in western and southern Oregon, and a couple in northeastern Oregon. …In addition to the grant program, the Private Forest Accord ushered in logging regulations aimed at protecting sensitive fish and other aquatic species. Among the changes, the accord increased stream buffers so timber companies don’t log too close to moving water, and it requires them to leave more trees behind when logging on steep slopes.

Protesters have moved into another Bureau of Land Management project area in southern Oregon after claiming their tree-sitting prevented construction of a logging road in April. A protester is currently camping out around 100 feet above the ground in an old-growth Douglas fir they say is at risk of being cut down to make way for a logging road. The tree is in the BLM’s Rogue Gold Forest Management Project area near Rogue River. …The BLM’s Rogue Gold project includes commercial logging as well as fuels reduction to lessen wildfire risk. Activists claim the plan threatens old-growth trees that have habitat for threatened species like the northern spotted owl. …Tree-sitters declared victory after another proposed road they protested was abandoned in April. It was within the BLM’s nearby Poor Windy Forest Management Project. The BLM did not respond to a request for comment about protests at the Rogue Gold project.

Thanks to recent funding, the Missoula Office of the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation has upped its capacity to provide native pine seedlings to a wide variety of federal, state, tribal and private reforestation projects around the region. On Wednesday morning, in lieu of cutting a ribbon, DNRC Nursery Program Manager Michael Butts carefully peeled a strip of tape off the door of his new greenhouse to reveal its name: “Anaconda.” Those in attendance – other DNRC employees and representatives of the U.S. Forest Service and American Forests, a nonprofit – cheered and then walked through the 4,320-square-foot greenhouse, which was finished last fall and already shelters more than 100,000 Ponderosa pine seedlings. “With the new greenhouse, we’re going to increase our capacity by about 20%, roughly growing 250,000 seedlings annually. That translates to an additional 1,500 acres of reforestation across the state each year,” Butts said.

The Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC) Governing Board has approved a new 2024–2029 Strategic Plan. It will guide the development of programs, policies, and actions it takes to fulfill its mission of improving the environmental, economic, and social well-being of California’s Sierra-Cascade Region. “Climate change, megafires, and Covid have created profound changes in the Sierra-Cascade region since our last Strategic Plan was created 2019, and this plan reflects the ways that we are adapting, and staying the course, to serve this vital and dynamic region,” said Angela Avery, Executive office of the SNC. The Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC) Governing Board awarded a little more than $6 million to four different projects to help with the planning and implementation of forest-health efforts. All four projects will promote recovery and resilience to disturbances, such as wildfire, in the Sierra-Cascade.

A criminal charge was dismissed Wednesday against a U.S. Forest Service employee arrested in 2022 by a rural Oregon sheriff after a prescribed burn on federal land unexpectedly spread to private property. In February, a grand jury indicted Ricky Snodgrass, on a reckless burning charge, a misdemeanor. The case later moved to federal court, and last month Snodgrass’ lawyers had asked a judge to dismiss it. Grant County District Attorney Jim Carpenter did not oppose that motion, and the judge approved it this week. “Mr. Snodgrass was charged because the State — or more precisely, the local sheriff — took issue with the Forest Service’s decision to conduct the prescribed fire,” defense attorneys for Snodgrass said. “But the State cannot charge Mr. Snodgrass with a crime simply because it disagrees with the Forest Service’s decision. The (U.S. Constitution’s) Supremacy Clause controls, and Mr. Snodgrass is immune from prosecution. This case must be dismissed.”

State officials on Tuesday announced awarding about $6.3 million in grants to businesses, nonprofit groups and school districts around the North State to find solutions to reducing forest waste that pose a fire risk from thick and overgrown land. The money is designed to help businesses purchase equipment to process forest waste that typically can’t be milled into lumber. The money also will be used to train people to do forest thinning and prescribed fire and other logging and natural resource jobs. The state has set a goal to annually thin out and treat 1 million acres of overgrown and dense forests to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires that have devastated communities and forests across the state over the past 10 years, said John McCarthy, the California Department Forestry and Fire Protection’s program manager for wood products and bioenergy.

In 2021, lightning struck on a ridge top in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in California and ignited the Tamarack Fire. …The Tamarack Fire brought scrutiny to the initial fire response strategy, designed to limit risks to firefighters. Many members of the public attributed the negative outcomes to an unofficial Forest Service “let burn” policy that takes advantage of lightning-caused fires to restore fire-adapted landscapes rather than immediately suppress them. Led by researcher and fire management specialist Brad Pietruszka, a group of researchers at the Rocky Mountain Research Station examined incident reports from wildfires like the Tamarack… Their research questions whether data support public perceptions represented in the “let burn” narrative and offers insight into how managers balance competing objectives during wildfire response. …This research offers a baseline for risk analysis and could inform the agency in evaluating future wildfire events. 

Across the North American West, ancient whitebark pines grow along mountain ridges. Although these trees have been known to thrive for hundreds of years, they have faced an accelerated decline for nearly a century. …According to a 2018 study conducted by the U.S. Forest Service, the tree’s population has declined by up to 90 percent in certain areas, including on the lands of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. The whitebark pines are a keystone species in high-elevation ecosystems. Over 100 species rely on the tree for food, shelter, and habitat. The trees also contribute to ecosystem stability by preventing soil erosion and regulating water flow. Maintaining the trees is vital. And on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana, which contains some 110,000 acres of whitebark pine habitat, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes are fighting to protect and restore this iconic and ecologically important species, ensuring its survival for future generations.

In the Pacific Northwest, Douglas firs, one of North America’s most important tree species is dying at an alarming rate. …Experts blame insect attacks, drought and increased temperatures caused by climate change. Decades of fire suppression have exacerbated problems. …The crisis in Oregon shows the critical importance of forest management as climate change alters the natural world. Foresters say that, in many cases, they need to cut down Douglas firs, whether dead or alive, in order to minimize wildfire risk, promote forest health and help ecosystems adapt to the shifting climate. Their plans include selling some salvageable timber. …The B.L.M. is proposing a multiyear project called the Strategic Operations for Safety plan, known as S.O.S., to log both living and dead trees. …As forests become less healthy, researchers say, leaving them undisturbed will in many cases make them more prone to severe wildfires and more vulnerable to drought stress and disease. [A subscription to the New York Times is required for full access to this article]

The giant sequoia is so enormous that it was once believed to be indestructible. High in California’s southern Sierra Nevada mountains, the oldest trees – known as monarchs – have stood for more than 2,000 years. Today, however, in Sequoia national park, huge trunks lie sprawled on the forest floor, like blue whale carcasses stranded on a beach. Many of these trees were felled by a combination of drought and fire. But among the factors responsible for the rising toll is a tiny new suspect: the bark beetle. …“This is a global phenomenon but it is also a complicated story,” says Prof Diana Six, a forest entomologist at the University of Montana. …“If the beetles kill a bunch of trees and they grow back, it’s not such a big deal,” she says, but adds: “If the conditions won’t allow regeneration, that is not just serious for carbon sequestration – think about the wildlife that’s going to go: a big extinction.”