Region Archives: US West

EVERETT, Washington — For some in the climate community, any change that occurs in the environment can be blamed on climate change. An example of this is the Feb. 3 commentary in the Weekend Herald, “Fossil fuels throwing gas on wildfires,” by Paul Roberts. Roberts overlooks the major factor, fuel load, concerning the increase in acres burned in recent decades, to focus on a relatively minor factor, a slight increase in temperature due to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. The 900-pound gorilla in the room is the dramatic increase in our nation’s wildlands fuel load. …By implementing commercial and non-commercial thinning operations where needed on federal and state lands and by sponsoring and encouraging the reestablishment of a modest forest products industry we could greatly improve the fire resistance of our nations forest. …I suggest we focus on the crux of the wildfire issue, fuel load, which we have the capability to address.

LOS ANGELES — Southern California Edison will pay $80 million to settle claims on behalf of the U.S. Forest Service connected to a massive wildfire that destroyed more than a thousand homes and other structures in 2017, federal prosecutors said Monday. The utility agreed to the settlement on Friday without admitting wrongdoing or fault in connection with the Thomas fire, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement. Investigations found utility equipment sparked the fire in two canyon locations on Dec. 4, 2017. The Thomas fire, which burned across 439 square miles (1,137 square kilometers) in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, is the seventh largest blaze in California history, according to state fire officials. The settlement is a “reasonable resolution,” said Gabriela Ornelas, a spokesperson for Southern California Edison. …The utility has also settled claims related to the enormous Woolsey fire in 2018. Edison estimated in 2021 that total expected losses for both blazes would exceed $4.5 billion.

Jim Furnish

Amidst all the bad climate and environmental news is a welcome development: the Biden administration’s announcement of a new national policy aimed at protecting old-growth forests. The proposal advances the cheapest, most effective solution we have – leave them standing. …This leads me to note that, while protecting old-growth is a major step forward, the policy is glaringly silent about mature forests. Old-growth emerges from mature forests, and without additional measures to address this void, I fear the Forest Service is squandering this opportunity to increase old-growth after decades of aggressive logging eliminated most of what existed as recently as 1950. The Forest Service has not fully embraced this “conservation moment.” Even as the old-growth protection policy was being announced, the agency was rolling out its plan to amend the Northwest Forest Plan.

A new forestry practice is confounding hikers deep in the woods of Orland. It’s strange. It’s ugly. But it’s working. I recently stumbled upon it while hiking Great Pond Mountain and Oak Hill in Orland, in a swathe of conserved land known as the Wildlands. And all I could think was: What on Earth happened here? Throughout the forest, trees were sawed off a few feet above the ground, leaving thousands of hip-high stumps. …So I reached out to the landowner, Great Pond Mountain Conservation Trust, and was fascinated by the explanation. High-stumping is a forestry method used to get rid of diseased, canker-filled beech trees. “By cutting up high, the root system thinks there’s still a tree up there and doesn’t root sprout,” said Landon Fake, the land trust’s executive director. “It continues to send nutrients up the trunk.”

Randy Moore

U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore spoke Thursday with loggers and others in forestry about forest fires, logging, and sustainability at the 86th annual Oregon Logging Conference in Eugene. Moore gave the keynote address before taking questions from attendees, many of whom were critical of the Forest Service’s management of federal forests in Oregon. After his speech, the newspaper questioned the USFS Chief and didn’t get much for answers, which Moore is well known for. Asked about an escaped RxFire last summer east of Eugene, and another over in Grant County that resulted in the arrest and arraignment of FS burn boss Ricky Snodgrass, Moore said he’s confident the agency has the ability to managed prescribed burns. …Moore was also asked about the planned update to the Northwest Forest Plan, which was developed by Jack Ward Thomas and a small army of experts back in the early 1990s. 

…Over two years, about one-fifth of all giant sequoias have been killed in extreme wildfires in California. The numbers shocked ecologists, since the enormous trees can live more than 2,000 years and have evolved to live with frequent, low-intensity fires in the Sierra Nevada. …After the 2020 and 2021 fires, scientists watched the sequoia groves to see if the next generation of trees is emerging to replace their lost parents. In some places, seedlings are filling the forest floor. In others, fewer are emerging from the burned soil. …So in a historic step, the National Park Service has begun replanting some severely burned areas. …A handful of conservation groups are suing to halt the effort, arguing that such intervention shouldn’t occur in an area designated as federal wilderness… Land managers face a key question: As humans take an increasing toll on natural landscapes, how far should we go to fix it?

When should a road count as a road? Grizzly bears avoid roads — even ones that aren’t used by motor vehicles. So the Flathead National Forest is supposed to limit road density on forest land for that threatened species – and bull trout benefit, too. But a forest plan’s descriptions of roads — as “decommissioned” or “closed” or “impassable” — were one subject of arguments made this week in U.S. District Court in Missoula before Judge Kathleen DeSoto. In the case, conservation groups allege the U.S. Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service are again failing to protect grizzly bears and bull trout by skirting a tried and true way to account for roads. A lawyer for the Swan View Coalition and Friends of the Wild Swan said the agencies haven’t properly considered the displacement of bears or impacts to bull trout in a new forest plan with a new category of road.

U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore talked about forest fires, logging and sustainability practices Thursday at the 86^th annual Oregon Logging Conference at the Lane County Fairgrounds. Moore gave the keynote address at the conference before answering questions from attendees, many of whom were critical of the Forest Service’s management of federal forests in Oregon. The Register-Guard spoke with Moore following his speech about issues impacting Oregon in the age of wildfires. [Moore described using cross laminated timber and biochar technologies to facilitate forest thinning, commented on the challenges of firefighting resources and changes to the Northwest Forest Plan.]

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Forests in the coolest, wettest parts of the western Pacific Northwest are likely to see the biggest increases in burn probability, fire size and number of blazes as the climate continues to get warmer and drier, according to new modeling led by an Oregon State University scientist. Understanding how fire regimes may change under future climate scenarios is critical for developing adaptation strategies, said the study’s lead author, Alex Dye. Dye, a faculty research associate in the OSU College of Forestry, and collaborators with the U.S. Forest Service conducted novel, comprehensive wildfire simulations for more than 23 million acres of forest land west of the Cascade Range crest in Oregon and Washington. …Forests in all of the affected areas are linchpins of multiple socio-ecological systems in the Northwest, Dye said, meaning more fire will likely put pressure on everything from drinking water sources and timber resources to biodiversity and carbon stocks.

Democratic lawmakers approached the February short session intending to create sustainable wildfire funding but their options have narrowed as the state nears another wildfire season with inadequate funding. The Oregon Department of Forestry and State Fire Marshal’s Office currently have $87 million for the next two seasons, compared with the $220 million for wildfire the agencies had two years ago. And now, halfway through the session, only two of three Democratic proposals will move on. House Bill 4133, proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Steiner, D-Portland, would cut the per-acre fees that timber and ranch landowners pay to the state while increasing taxes on timber harvest and two other taxes for the first time in 15 years to account for inflation. …Another proposal, from Sen. Jeff Golden, D-Ashland and Rep. Paul Holvey, D-Eugene, would refer a ballot measure to Oregonians, to tax timber companies on the value of their harvests to help pay for state wildfire prevention and protection.

WASHINGTON, D.C. & SAN DIEGO, Cal. — A federal government effort to “confront the wildfire crisis” in the Western United States is making the Klamath River Basin the largest of 11 new landscape designations for extra support. Today, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack says the Biden Administration is investing nearly $500,000,000 to expand work on the USDA Forest Service’s Wildfire Crisis Strategy. Vilsack says funds from the Administration’s Investing in America agenda will support work to reduce risk to communities, critical infrastructure and natural resources from the nation’s ongoing wildfire crisis. Today’s list of projects include the newly designated “landscapes” such as the Klamath River Basin and existing landscapes getting federal government support in western states. … USDA says that acreage spans across the Oregon-California state line where the U.S. Forest Service manages about 55% of that landscape which “generate 80 percent of the mean annual surface water supply to the Klamath River.” 

Additional coverage from the USDA: USDA Announces $500 Million to Confront the Wildfire Crisis as Part of Investing in America Agenda

EUGENE — Getting back to the roots is the focus of the 86th annual Oregon Logging Conference, which will take place Thursday through Saturday in Eugene. “I believe our theme captures the essence of who we are and what we are about,” Oregon Logging Conference President Steve Henson said. …U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore is the keynote speaker of the event titled “Faith, Family, and Forest Management — Getting Back to Our Roots.” Moore will give his speech Thursday morning. He has been with the forest service since 1981. “Our keynote speaker also believes that we need to increase the pace and scale of active management to attack the wildfire crisis that we find ourselves in,” Henson said. “Only together, through partnerships and cooperation will we achieve success.”

Conifers tower across the frigid swaths of land that span North America, northern Europe and Russia in a great ring around the world. Nestled within the photosynthetic tissue of the boreal trees – and within the bountiful cloud-like lichens and mosses that carpet the ground between them – are fungi. These fungi are endophytes, meaning they live within plants, often in a mutually beneficial arrangement. …Older studies have examined the correlation between biodiversity and latitude, which is often used as a proxy for climate. …it’s not that simple when it comes to fungi in the boreal zone. …Betsy Arnold, a professor in the School of Plant Sciences  thinks that the special climate dependence of these fungal endophytes reflects a process of co-evolution with their hosts – or “research and development,” as she put it – as plants find the ideal endophyte partner and flourish despite the distinctive stresses that plants face in these harsh northern landscapes.

Once upon a time, the Navajo, Apache other tribes burned the forest to protect it. The centuries of deliberately set fires helped maintain an open, grassy forest dominated by big trees. …Then came the US Forest Service. And so for the last century, the Forest Service worked to put out every fire it could to save the timber for loggers and the grass for cattle. The result: A forest of tree thickets, mortally vulnerable to giant fires. So it is ironic that the wheel has come full circle. Now the Salt River Project in partnership with the National Forest Foundation has announced a $500,000 plan to thin the tree thickets on some 3,600-acres in Pine Canyon and Deadman Mesa. The Valley utility company will also donate $25,000 per year to Wood for Life, which provides firewood to families on the Navajo and Hopi reservations.

It has been frustrating to read the incomplete media coverage on Sen. Elizabeth Steiner’s wildfire funding bill. While salacious headlines get clicks, the actual story is less scandalous. Here’s the less exciting version: the bill comes from a work group I participated in led by Sen. Steiner. It consisted of six different size and type of landowners… who directly pay taxes to fund the Oregon Department of Forestry’s (ODF) wildfire fighting costs. The goal was to address an affordability crisis related to the growing costs of wildfire. …Sen. Steiner did something no other legislator has done — she invested the time, and pulled in the right experts, to fully understand the system. …We hope Oregonians are willing to look beyond the headlines and listen to the real story, which can be found on the Forestry Smart Policy podcast, where Sen. Steiner explains the origins and process of the work group.

YREKA, California — The U.S. Forest Service says the aftermath of a Northern California wildfire is fueling its own insights into wildfire recovery. It’s providing a side-by-side comparison between natural growth and prescribed burning with mechanical thinning. The USDA U.S. Forest Service says, “Sometimes out of adversity comes wisdom,” citing findings by Pacific Southwest Research Station Ecologist Eric Knapp from the 2021 Antelope Fire. …USFS says because the fire burned for days, they could observe how different fuel treatments performed under various weather conditions as wind and humidity drove fire behavior, which fluctuated between high intensity to moderate. …Data analysis showed areas previously treated with thinning and prescribed burning fared best, with the most living trees. Untreated control areas where no treatments occurred were in the worst shape. …USFS says this finding, “suggests that fuel treatments will be increasingly important as climate change contributes to more extreme fire weather.

Jared Polis

COLORADO — Gov. Jared Polis announced more wildfire mitigation and forest health management grants for Colorado. He was joined by state leaders, legislators, youth corps members, and water providers to announce an additional investment of $6.5 million in grants from Colorado’s Strategic Wildfire Action Program. According to the Governor’s Office, Polis’ administration has committed about $145 million in state funds and leveraged millions more in federal funds for forest health and wildfire mitigation work. “Colorado is becoming a national leader in wildfire mitigation and we need to do more to provide our communities with the tools and resources to prevent and control fires. This work keeps Coloradans safe, protects our air quality, and supports our thriving communities and Colorado’s iconic outdoors,” said Polis.

PORT ANGELES — A program to boost the forest products industry in Clallam and Jefferson counties is moving ahead, with hopes of attracting new businesses and creating new jobs. Last year, the Clallam County Economic Development Council received $50,000 from the state Department of Commerce to set up its Natural Resources Innovation Center (NRIC), with the hopes of boosting a local forest products industry. Now the EDC is getting ready to stand up NRIC as a nonprofit organization to serve as a hub for forest product businesses to connect with other companies, find funding opportunities and access economic and feasibility studies. The group will be industry-led and work to find projects that are collectively beneficial for the industry and support small forest products businesses that may not be able to afford or conduct things like feasibility studies on their own.

ST REGIS — Conservation leaders, logging operators, politicians, and members of the public met with Lolo National Forest leadership at the St. Regis Community Center on Tuesday to hear about the proposed action to revise the forest’s Land Management Plan. The proposed action, which was released to the public earlier this month, revises the current land management plan to bring it up to modern standards. The current plan was signed in 1986 and is required by law to be regularly updated. Once finished, the plan is expected to stay in place for 10 to 15 years. Additionally, the USFS writes in the proposed action that, “Since the land management plan was approved, there have been changes in economic, social, and ecological conditions, new policies and priorities, and new information based on monitoring and scientific research.” A land management plan generally serves to balance the needs of natural resource harvesting, recreation, and conservation.

Adam Switalski

…The Montana hillside on which ecologist Adam Switalski and I now stood was a prime example of an unglamorous yet powerful tool for protecting our biodiversity—road removal, commonly known as road decommissioning. In the early 2000s, the Forest Service brought heavy machinery to this old logging road, ripping it up to permit new grasses, shrubs and trees to sprout from the stirred earth. Waist-high thimbleberry bushes now covered the slope, and Douglas fir seedlings plunged roots deep into the loosened soil. It seemed improbable that 30-ton logging trucks had ever trundled through here along a ribbon of asphalt-hard dirt. …Over the last two decades, Switalski has guided road restoration’s best practices and demonstrated its value for species as diverse as black bears and cutthroat trout. 

The article by Rob Davis of ProPublica and reprinted in The Oregonian/OregonLive does not report what the timber industry currently pays in taxes, (“The Oregon timber industry won huge tax cuts in the 1990s. Now it may get another break thanks to a top lawmaker,” Feb. 2). A 2021 analysis for the Oregon Forest Industries Council by the accounting firm Ernst & Young found that the tax burden on the forest sector was greater than that of other businesses in the state. Even after the reductions in the 1990s, Oregon’s forest industry paid taxes that amount to 5.6% of their gross valued added product, or 6.8% if fire-suppression assessments are included. That’s far higher than the 3.7% paid by Oregon manufacturers and the 4.4% paid by all businesses in the state. Without these facts, readers are left with an incomplete and misleading picture.

Nick Smith

The U.S. Forest Service has proposed amending all 128 land management plans across the nation to establish a “consistent approach” to conserving old growth forests on federal lands. Is such a broad stroke really the most effective way to address the complexities of sustaining the oldest and largest trees in different parts of the country — from Montana to Florida? The proposal is rooted in President Biden’s 2022 Earth Day executive order that, in part, directed federal agencies to define mature and old-growth forests on federal lands, complete an inventory and make it publicly available, identify threats to these forests, and develop policies to address these threats. …The analysis confirmed previous reports that wildfire, insects and disease, not logging, posed the most significant threat to older forests. …Rather than imposing top-down directives, a better approach is to empower local land managers and stakeholders to implement practical, on-the-ground actions that provide real results.

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif.  — A man whose family’s gender reveal photo shoot sparked a Southern California wildfire that killed a firefighter in 2020 has pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, prosecutors said Friday. The El Dorado Fire erupted on Sept. 5, 2020, when Refugio Jimenez Jr. and Angelina Jimenez and their young children staged gender reveal at El Dorado Ranch Park in Yucaipa. A smoke-generating pyrotechnic device was set off in a field and quickly ignited dry grass on a scorching day. …Charles Morton, leader of the elite Big Bear Interagency Hotshot Squad, was killed on Sept. 17, 2020, when flames overran a remote area where firefighters were cutting fire breaks. …Refugio Jimenez Jr. will serve a year in jail. His sentence also includes two years of felony probation and 200 hours of community service. Angelina Jimenez was sentenced to a year of summary probation and 400 hours of community service. The couple was also ordered to pay $1,789,972 in restitution.

The new film “California’s Watershed Healing” documents the huge benefits that result from restoring forests to healthier densities. UC Merced’s Sierra Nevada Research Institute partnered with the nonprofit Chronicles Group to tell the story of these efforts, the science behind them, and pathways that dedicated individuals and groups are pioneering to scale up these urgent climate solutions. “California’s forests are at a tipping point, owing to both climate stress and past unsustainable management practices that suppressed wildfires and prioritized timber harvesting,” explained UC Merced Professor Roger Bales, who was involved in developing the film. Covering over 30 million acres – nearly a third of the state – these iconic ecosystems provide water, recreation, habitat, carbon storage and serve other needs. But they now contain too many trees, packed too closely together. …The film explores how scaling up promising investments can ensure a more sustainable future.

Crook County is calling for the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) to rethink its plans to amend every national forest land management in the nation to create one overall strategy for managing old-growth forests. In a comment letter signed by the county commissioners last week, the county criticizes the one-size-fits-all approach and the USFS’s failure to include local governments in the process. “Upon reading through it, it will affect all the National Forests in Wyoming, which includes the Black Hills; it will also include Thunder Basin National Grasslands,” said Dru Palmer, consultant for the county, at a special meeting on Thursday. …“I think treating old growth different to the rest of the forests is self-defeating anyway, because if you save all the old growth, guess what’s going to burn first,” he said. “They’re swimming upstream there, I think.”

Additional coverage in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle: Gordon slams ‘top-down’ approach to old-growth forest management

Natasha Majewski

Old-growth forests provide all of us with so many benefits… But it’s no secret that our forests are in trouble because of threats associated with climate change, including drought, pests, disease and risk of wildfire…. These threats are especially prevalent in Lake Tahoe and the Sierra Nevada. …That’s why I’m thrilled that in late December, the U.S. Forest Service announced an historic plan to protect older forests and encourage adaptive management to ensure old-growth forests survive and thrive for generations to come. …Mature and old forests need our help. If they are to persist and flourish, we need to adopt smart policies to steward these irreplaceable resources. I applaud the Forest Service for taking this long overdue action, and the Nevada Wildlife Federation looks forward to working with the agency and with Tribal and local leaders to safeguard our forest lands for the benefit of all of us.