Region Archives: US West

When U.S. Forest Service officials discover issues after conducting large fire reviews of practices in response to disasters, the agency doesn’t have a clear process in place to solve issues, according to a Government Accountability Office report published last week. The report says federal forest service officials need to figure out how to better learn from past wildfire issues and mistakes. The report analyzed how different federal branches respond to wildfires and found that three agencies in particular needed to improve, including the U.S. Forest Service. The issue with the U.S. Forest Service revolves around the agency’s ability to improve from past issues and mistakes that are found when analyzing their disaster responses in large fire reviews, a method to monitor their work. The report comes after the U.S. Forest Service started the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s history last year by botching two prescribed burns.

Frank Sherman

Juneau, Alaska – The Tongass National Forest welcomes Francis ‘Frank’ Sherman as its new Forest Supervisor. Sherman has been on the job, in an acting capacity, for about six months. He also served as the Tongass Deputy Forest Supervisor for the last four years. He is an accomplished leader with more than 40 years’ experience as a military officer, working in the private sector, and serving the public in the federal government. …As Forest Supervisor, Sherman will oversee the management of 17 million acres of public land in the country’s largest national forest. He leads a steadfast team of professionals working to protect and enhance the Tongass’ ecological, social, and economic values while promoting sustainable resource use.

The Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC) is accepting concept proposals for its 2023 Wildfire Recovery and Forest Resilience Directed Grant Program. The program supports planning and implementation of forest-health projects that promote wildfire recovery and forest resilience priorities in the SNC service area. The total amount of funding available is still to be determined and based on final appropriations from California’s Budget Act of 2023. The funding is part of the state’s historic $15 billion investment focused on protecting Californians from the effects of climate change, including wildfires, drought, and extreme heat. …Preference will go to projects that best address priorities identified in California’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan: A Comprehensive Strategy, as well as SNC’s Watershed Improvement Program.

Native bees in the Oregon Coast Range are diverse and abundant in clearcut areas within a few years of timber harvest but their numbers drop sharply as planted trees grow and the forest canopy closes, research by Oregon State University shows.  The findings are important for understanding the roles forest management might play in the conservation of a crucial pollinator group, the researchers said.  The study, led by graduate student Rachel Zitomer and Jim Rivers, an animal ecologist in the OSU College of Forestry, was published in Ecological Applications.  “The research demonstrates that Douglas-fir plantations develop diverse communities of wild bees shortly after harvest,” Rivers said. “Management activities that promote open conditions and enhance floral resources in the initial years following harvest are likely to promote bee diversity in intensively managed forest landscapes.”

…In 2016, the U.S. Forest Service embarked on a project to thin trees, arguing science supports this type of action, both for fire and forest health reasons. Nearly seven years later, after appeals that made it to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the project is set to remove some second-growth timber near Mount Pilchuck.  The South Fork Stillaguamish Vegetation Management project will commercially harvest from 2,000 to 3,300 acres of timber in scattered plots in the river’s drainage. About 1,000 more acres are slated for non-commercial thinning. …Around 15 months after the Darrington Ranger District approved the project in its Final Environmental Assessment, the North Cascades Conservation Council, an environmental group, filed a complaint in U.S. District Court to stop the tree-thinning in 2020.  …U.S. District Court Judge David Estudillo ruled in favor of the defendants, and in late March of this year, the 9th Circuit affirmed the decision.

Efforts to understand the effects and risks of wildfire smoke have received an $800,000 boost. The money comes from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and will support the University of Oregon’s new Wildfire Smoke Research and Practice Center. The team is building on research already done through the Ecosystem Workforce Program, a joint venture between the UO and Oregon State University. Cass Moseley is a research professor and senior policy advisor for the EWP and will head the new center. She said recent incidents in the region, including the 2020 Labor Day fires, have stepped up the need for this research. Many parts of Oregon were choked with smog for nearly two weeks. …The Wildfire Smoke Research and Practice Center will focus on community and household planning and preparation, ways to best communicate smoke risks and protective actions to the general public, and developing effective planning, preparation, and response during smoke events.

Juneau, Alaska  – The USDA Forest Service is looking to local tribes, Alaska Native corporations, communities, partners, and the public to help shape the future of forest management on the Tongass National Forest. That is the agency’s hope with a planned Southeast Alaska Sustainability Strategy – Forest Management public engagement effort, where once again it will work from the ground up to gather needs, expectations, and project recommendations, this time related to watershed and wildlife habitat restoration, sustainable young-growth harvest and old-growth harvest for cultural uses and small sales to support local communities. “We want to know what Southeast Alaska wants … to prioritize work for the next 10 years,” Acting Tongass Forest Supervisor Frank Sherman said. “Instead of commenting on a plan we present, we’re asking folks to help develop it.” 

ALTADENA, California — Nonprofit Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program said it would graduate 45 newly-trained wildland hazard mitigation specialists and wildland firefighters on Saturday in Altadena. The Program is a nonprofit organization that trains and provides employment opportunities to formerly incarcerated individuals interested in careers in wildland firefighting. The program was founded in 2019 in response to the growing need for wildland firefighters in California. …Upon completion of the program, graduates are eligible to apply for full-time positions with fire agencies across California. …The Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program said its mission addresses three serious challenges facing California: criminal justice reform, workforce training, and climate change. As of 2022, there were more than 1,600 incarcerated people who received training while in prison and were fighting fires to protect California’s wildlands, filling critical employment gaps for regional fire agencies.

The Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest is accepting comments on a proposal to change the impact of wildfire and other disturbances on forests and communities through prescribed fire, mechanical treatments and hand treatments. Forest Supervisor Emily Platt said prescribed fire is the most important action the Forest Service can take to effectively change how wildlife will burn across landscapes. People can share their ideas and concerns about how the Forest Service can be most effective. …Recent public and congressional support for aggressive action to address large wildfires and their impacts led to the Forest Service’s 10-year wildfire crisis strategy and a call to dramatically increase the amount of work necessary to reduce the impacts of large-scale, high severity fire on landscapes and communities. Forest officials said they need to be able to act more nimbly and adapt to opportunities and challenges quickly.

MEDFORD, Ore. — An Oregon-based group have a complaint filed against the U.S. Bureau of Land Management about some of its plans to allow timber harvest. Today a coalition of conservation groups filed a legal complaint challenging the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) “Integrated Vegetation Management” (IVM) program that they say, “would aggressively log forest stands located within Late Successional Reserves, areas purportedly set aside for forest conservation.” The groups include Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands, Cascadia Wildlands and Oregon Wild. They sid the IVM authorizes forest “gap creation” and “open seral” logging prescriptions within mature and old-growth forests that are fire-resilient and provide important habitat at risk wildlife species. …The BLM project is called Late Mungers Integrated Vegetation Management Project. It includes prescribed fire, fire fuel thinning and selection harvest actions. BLM said during the next decade it expects wildfire fuels reduction work on about 7,500 acres.sp;

Ashland is the unexpected home of the country’s only full-service forensic laboratory devoted to tracking illegally transported animals and plants. Now the lab is employing a new strategy to get forensic tools to U.S. ports to stop the illegal timber trade.  On a recent day, Ed Espinoza stood inside a 30-foot-long trailer next to a whirring machine about the size of a commercial photocopier.  …The trailer – a horse trailer-turned mobile lab – was parked outside the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory in Ashland. Staff here help the Fish and Wildlife Service solve crimes by doing DNA analysis on illegally sold plants and animals. Espinoza said the mobile lab was a new attempt by forensic scientists like him to help get scientific instruments to the places where they’re most needed.

In the U.S. Forest Service, we often talk about using prescribed fire at the right place at the right time and at the right scale. …“We start with, ‘What does the land need, and why?’” said Frankie Romero, USFS fire use branch chief. “What are the benefits?” Often the benefits are multiple: Mitigating wildfire risk to nearby communities and supporting ecosystems, wildlife, water quantity and quality. …Other benefits are not so obvious. When a wildfire severely burns an area, all tree and ground cover is removed, which reduces an area’s natural ability to hold and store water. …Erosion in areas devastated by extreme wildfire is another issue. …It can take three to 12 months from the beginning of the planning stage to the start of the prescribed burn. …“Prescribed fires only become wildfires about 0.13% of the time – about 1 out of 1,000 fires ignited,” he said.”

The U.S. Forest Service wants to burn tens of thousands of acres over the next decade in the Santa Fe National Forest to decrease the severity of future wildfires. Prescribed burns have escaped there in the past, and the forest sits close to where some of New Mexico’s most massive wildfires occurred. …Under the Santa Fe Mountains Landscape Resiliency Project, the U.S. Forest Service would burn 38,000 acres, thin 18,000 acres and conduct riparian restoration in 680 acres over the next 10 years. …Matthew Hurteau, a fire ecologist and University of New Mexico professor said this project is necessary to keep the Santa Fe National Forest healthy and prevent out-of-control wildfires, especially amid climate change. …Other environmental advocates don’t feel the same. They say the project’s excessive burning and thinning measures could have catastrophic consequences, both for the environment and the health of the people living near the forest.

MISSOULA, Montana — Art and science relating to the natural world will come together at the Missoula Public Library this month during the “Old Growth Forest Celebration.” The art portion comes from painter Eric Jensen, an MFA candidate at the University of Montana’s School of Visual and Media Arts. He’ll share his thesis paintings, which include abstract landscapes rooted in western Montana, including old-growth forests such as the western red cedars of the Kootenai National Forest. The science comes with expert talks by Diana Six, a UM professor of forest entomology/pathology and Joan Maloof, founder of the Old-Growth Forest Network, plus activities in the SpectrUM Discovery Area for families.

CALIFORNIA — Ponderosa pine forests in the Sierra Nevada that were wiped out by western pine beetles during the 2012-2015 megadrought won’t recover to pre-drought densities, reducing an important storehouse for atmospheric carbon. “Forests store huge amounts of atmospheric carbon, so when western pine beetle infestations kill off millions of trees, that carbon dioxide goes back into the atmosphere,” said Zachary Robbins, a postdoctoral at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Robbins is corresponding author of a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science. “We also found that because so many trees died during the megadrought, there’s much less risk of another huge die-off this century because the bark beetles will have fewer host trees,” he said. It’s a mixed bag, however. Western pine beetle outbreaks driven by climate change will continue to occur, limiting forest regeneration after the drought.

ARIZONA — The government’s misleading you. The Forest Service is dawdling. The towns and counties are in denial. And the wildfire danger’s growing. Once the lush grasses of a wet winter dry out – we’ll be back to… another frightening fire season. A cascade of new research and investigation has once again underscored the stubborn failure of the Forest Service, towns, counties and the state government to adapt to the new era of high-intensity, forest-replacing, town destroying wildfires. …So the Forest Service has largely embraced the need to thin the forest and returning the natural fire regime. Congress has upped the budget for forest restoration projects – and the Forest Service puts out frequent reports on the number of acres thinned and the acres treated with of prescribed burns and managed fires. But you can’t really believe the numbers, according to the federal auditor general – and an investigation by NBC news.

Whitebark pine is an important focal point for thinking about the real effects of climate change and the role that different biological parts play in holding an ecosystem and the animals that inhabit it together.  It’s been a topic of intense research focus and one of the leaders out front has been Dr. Diana Tomback, professor of integrative biology at the University of Denver. Tomback delivered a gripping overview at the Draper Museum of Natural History in Cody and she has been an advisor to a pair of new short videos, one focused on the Clark’s nutcracker, that recently premiered at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.  …Whitebark are threatened by a number of factors—blister rust, wildfires, drought and outbreaks of beetles that experts also link to warmer temperatures… After the past two to three summers of heat domes and pervasive drought, all signs point to an outbreak so it’s going to be a critical year. 

The latest assessment of forest health in Colorado shows the Aspen area is experiencing a steady spread of infestation from Douglas fir beetles, but Pitkin County overall is faring much better than most other mountain counties in the state. The Colorado State Forest Service and U.S. Forest Service both recently released reports on forest health based on aerial surveys and field work conducted in 2022. Amy Lockner, a U.S.Forest Service entomologist captured a photo in the Fryinpgan Valley of a large stand of rust colored conifers, mostly Douglas fir. A map in the U.S. Forest Service report is colored-coded to show where different types of beetles have been detected. The entire lower Fryingpan Valley is speckled with Douglas fir beetles and the densest patch is on the south side of Ruedi by the dam. The area north of the length of Ruedi is splotchy too.

The U.S. Forest Service is seeking new recruits nationwide, with extra focus on filling positions in Alaska. But recruiters say economic conditions are making it hard for them to recruit and retain employees who come from out of state. Now, the agency is turning its attention to the local workforce. America is in the grip of a widespread labor shortage. According to the latest data from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, there are over 10 million job openings in the U.S. — but only 5.7 million unemployed workers. The U.S. Forest Service has not been spared from the shortage. And recruiters say it’s especially hard to bring people to Alaska. Toby Bakos is a wildlife biologist for the Petersburg Forest Service District. He helped set up for a local hiring event on March 2. He said it’s part of the biggest hiring frenzy he’s seen in his decades-long career with the Forest Service.

SEATTLE — Small logging farmers in Washington state are waging a battle with the state Forest Practices Board that controls logging on private land. It involves state regulations enforcing excessively large buffers that the farmers are required to maintain next to area streams. Buffers stabilize riverbanks, hold back sediment and farm chemicals, and protect fish and other animals. A parallel battle is taking place against efforts by Gov. Jay Inslee to impose new and similarly large mandatory buffers on agricultural farmland statewide. The Washington Farm Forestry Association, which represents thousands of small tree farmers and forestland owners, spent eight years building its case that well-managed 50- to 75-foot buffers, rather than the state required 90- to 200-foot buffers, will be just as effective at protecting fish and water, while allowing farmers access to more of their land for harvesting. …Landowners who don’t plant and maintain buffers would face fines of up to $10,000 per day. 

TILLAMOOK, Oregon — In February, the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) dropped a bomb on my community. They announced their draft Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) for state forests would result in a 34% reduction in harvests beginning next year—a reduction that would likely last for the next 70 years. On March 7, I travelled to Corvallis to make sure the Board of Forestry understood just how bad the proposed HCP would be for me, my family, and our business. …Kottre Tree Farms logs almost exclusively on state land. The current HCP will likely destroy our family business and leave people unemployed. …All politics aside, the government’s goal isn’t to destroy livelihoods, increase wildfire frequency or severity, or contribute to raising housing costs. We have a lot of middle ground between protecting endangered species and maintaining our timber economy. The Board of Forestry just needs the will to find it.

For most Californians, the sight of aircraft spewing neon pink liquid over flaming trees and brush has become a hallmark of aggressive wildfire suppression campaigns — if not a potent symbol of government’s struggle to control increasingly destructive forest fires. But as the use of aerially delivered retardant has soared in recent years, some forest advocates say the substance does more harm than good. They claim wildfire retardant drops are expensive, ineffective and a growing source of pollution for rivers and streams. …Now, a federal lawsuit in Montana that seeks to stop the U.S. Forest Service from dropping retardant into water could reshape how the agency battles wildfires throughout the western United States. …“This is going to destroy towns and many communities in California, if they allow this to go through,” said Paradise Mayor Greg Bolin, whose town was razed by the Camp fire in 2018.

…Just outside of Coram on the Flathead National Forest independent contractors have gathered for a logging operation under a contract with Weyerhaeuser.  Forests have a life cycle, according to Paul Donnellon, a supervisory forester with the Flathead Forest who is visiting the site on this day. Trees grow, and they compete with each other — some die, some live, some fall, some burn.  The Lake Five area, where the operation is located, is a prime example of the cycle of forestland life.  …The land itself near Lake Five is a part of the wildland urban interface, which means it is a mix of private land, houses, businesses and national forest land. The Forest Service, while looking at long-term management goals for the forest, assessed that a logging operation would be beneficial in the area, Donnellon said. 

The state Department of Natural Resources is planning to torch more than 2,100 acres this spring in an aim to prevent more severe wildfires as things heat up this summer.  Lawmakers in 2021 earmarked $500 million for wildfire prevention and forest health treatments such as these prescribed burns. After evaluating weather and wind patterns, fire risk and ecological benefits, DNR officials zeroed in on seven sites in Klickitat, Kittitas, Okanogan and Spokane counties that could provide the biggest bang for their buck this spring.  …Other areas targeted for prescribed burns include those that were recently thinned, a process of removing some trees in a forest stand to reduce density. Research has shown that combining mechanical thinning with prescribed fire tends to do a lot better than just one or the other for both long-term resilience and for how that landscape will interact with a wildfire, said Will Rubin, a DNR spokesperson.