Region Archives: US West

A long-term Pacific Northwest study of landslides, clear-cutting timber and building roads shows that forest management history has a greater impact on how often landslides occur and how severe they are compared to how much water is coursing through a watershed. Findings of the U.S. National Science Foundation-supported research, led by Catalina Segura and Arianna Goodman of Oregon State University, were published in the journal Earth Surface Processes and Landforms. “The study highlights the importance of land-use dynamics on natural processes such as landslides,” said Justin Lawrence, a program director in NSF’s Division of Earth Sciences. …Probing the factors behind landslide frequency and magnitude is crucial because slides occur in all 50 states, causing an average of more than 25 deaths per year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The USGS puts the total annual average economic damage resulting from landslides at greater than $1 billion.

Beset by wildfires and debris flows in recent years, the Gila County Board of Supervisors at its Feb. 7 meeting approved a new partnership with Salt River Project to thin the forest. The agreement creates a natural alliance. …National surveys show that Pine, Payson and other Rim Country communities are among the most fire-menaced in the whole county. And in recent years Globe, Miami and Tonto Basin have faced a plague of wildfires that have consumed homes and buried roads in post-fire flooding debris. Rim Country and the White Mountains have suffered a disastrous plague of wildfires in recent years, according to a summary in an SRP presentation. Wildfires have charred 3.2 million acres since 2000. Acreage burned went from about 72,000 in the 1980s to 200,000 in the 1990s and then exploded to 1.2 million acres in the 2000s and 1.3 million acres in the 2010s. Just in the past three years, more than 700,000 acres have burned.

For decades, Californians have depended on the reliable appearance of spring and summer snowmelt to provide nearly a third of the state’s supply of water. But as the state gets drier, and as wildfires climb to ever-higher elevations, that precious snow is melting faster and earlier than in years past — even in the middle of winter. That’s posing a threat to the timing and availability of water in California, according to authors of a recent study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, which found that the effects of climate change are compounding to accelerate snowpack decline. “As wildfires become larger, burn at higher severities, and in more snow-prone regions like the Sierra Nevada, the threats to the state’s water supply are imminent,” said Erica Siirila-Woodburn, a research scientist with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and one of the authors of the study.

Oregon’s House Bill 2011 proposes to increase penalties for assaulting parks and recreation employees. It would punish by a maximum of five years imprisonment, a $125,000 fine, or both. …The harassment has been growing as the number of people heading outdoors has skyrocketed, especially during the pandemic. Overcrowding at state parks and sold-out campgrounds have brought frustration, including extreme examples of campers literally fighting over first-come, first-served campsites. …The issue has also been growing on federal lands, often managed by agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service. “Traditionally about 1% of our visitors really struggle with complying to rules and regulations,” Dennis Benson, recreation manager for Deschutes National Forest, said. “Now, we’ve got more like 10% of the population that doesn’t comply or adhere with rules, regulations, those kinds of things, which is lending itself to more problematic behaviors on public lands.”

In the eyes of the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, one big thing is missing from the state’s climate policies. Recent laws don’t allow the state agency to sell carbon credits. …Franz is pushing legislation that would add the state agency she leads to organizations that can freely sell carbon credits and create carbon offset projects. …[which] would save taxpayer dollars and generate money that would fund natural resource investments, like forest health and post-wildfire restoration projects, Franz said. …Those projects also could slow revenues for counties and ports that rely on working forests, said Doug Cooper,VP at Hampton Lumber, at the bill’s public hearing on Friday. The problem with the legislation’s wording, industry foresters said, is it doesn’t account for all the downstream revenues working forests provide. …However, Franz countered that carbon offset projects, such as reforestation and restoration efforts, could expand working forest land.

PORTLAND, Oregon – The Oregon Department of Forestry spent three years collecting more than 900,000 seeds from populations of Oregon ash trees throughout the state.  The ODF employees completed their collection work months after the emerald ash borer was first discovered in the state… on June 30, 2022. This was the first time the insect had been seen on the West Coast. The emerald ash borer is considered the most destructive forest pest in North America and has been detected in 34 other states. These invasive and destructive beetles have killed up to 99% of the ash trees in some North American locations. …Knowing it could only be a matter of time before the insect arrived in Oregon, ODF staff started collecting ash tree seeds before the insect had a chance to wipe the trees out. 

A Redding man was sentenced on Monday for setting 11 fires in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest in one year, according to U.S. Attorney Phillip Talbert. Eric Michael Smith, 41, was sentenced to two years and six months in prison for serial arson, Talbert said. He was also ordered to pay $19,071 in restitution to the U.S. Forest Service. Smith set at least 11 fires on national forest land between June 2019 and July 2020, according to court documents, Talbert said. He used “virtually undetectable ignition sources” including cigarette lighters and handheld torches to start wildfires in remote areas. Smith also admitted he abandoned at least 11 campfires on national forest land during the same period, Talbert reported.

Forest thinning is the latest fantastical idea floated to rescue the Great Salt Lake. But research published last year shows thinning trees in the watershed won’t help the lake refill. In some cases, it could make things worse. Even from a practical perspective, substantial mechanical thinning of Utah’s forests is nearly impossible. …The forests largely cover mountains with slopes too steep for the needed machinery. …The Uinta Mountains, however, had a natural thinning event more than a decade ago when bark beetles ravaged the national forest. …And even with all that thinning, the lake has continued to shrink. Studies published after the massive die-offs across Western forests show it didn’t lead to surges in stream flows. It ran counter to prevailing beliefs at the time. …“Most of the studies were done in wetter places,” Sara Goeking, a biological scientist with the U.S. Forest Service said.

Timber groups and rural counties say an Oregon Department of Forestry plan for managing 600,000 acres of state forests needs to be overhauled amid concern about it leading to declining logging and revenue. The Oregon Forest Industries Council, a trade association representing forestland owners and forest products manufacturers, said ODF used inaccurate data in crafting its Forest Habitat Conservation Plan that will manage the state’s forests for the next 70 years. Their main concern was that ODF originally said its plan would allow the harvest of 250 million board feet of timber annually but has revised it to 173.5 million board feet for the next two years. Counties are worried that amount would stay in place over seven decades, reducing by $30 million revenue per biennium for ODF’s budget and more for counties that depend on it.

SALEM — New restrictions on killing beavers wouldn’t apply in Oregon’s exclusive farm use zones under proposed changes to a landmark timber management law passed last year. The Private Forest Accord, a compromise struck between timber and environmental groups, imposed new logging setbacks along streams and increased protections for beavers, among other provisions. Critics say the new beaver control limits were inadvertently extended to some farmland when the agreement was incorporated into forestry statutes in 2022. The legislation defined forestland too broadly by including trees growing in farm zones, even if they’re not harvested for commercial purposes, said Lauren Poor, vice president of government and legal affairs for the Oregon Farm Bureau. …Tim Miller, who owns 1,000 acres near Siletz, Ore., said the riparian buffers have effectively taken about 20% of his family’s harvestable forestland out of production.

Malloree Weinheimer

PORT TOWNSEND — Jefferson County officials should look into expanding the county’s land base to continue with its forest management program, according to the forestry company contracted to develop the county’s program. Speaking to Jefferson County commissioners on Monday, Malloree Weinheimer, principal and forester at Chickadee Forestry, LLC, said many of the county’s forest lands are small, non-contiguous parcels of 5 or 10 acres, which make forest management difficult. …The county contracted with Chickadee in 2018 to create a forest management strategy for county-owned lands. Weinheimer presented commissioners on Monday with a potential strategy for the next five to 10 years. The county currently owns 1,800 acres across 300 parcels, most of which are less than 10 acres, Weinheimer said, and managing those scattered parcels can be difficult and expensive. Forest lands need to be managed to promote forest health, mitigate fire risk and promote local uses including recreation and timber harvests.

California has experienced the driest and warmest years on record since 2020, which, among other things, is bad news for the state’s forests: On Feb. 7, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) announced that officials had identified approximately 36.3 million trees that died in California in 2022 on federal, state and private lands. …The climate change-exacerbated threat to the state’s—and the county’s—forests isn’t expected to relent anytime soon in the absence of sustained precipitation. “Even with the recent storms from atmospheric rivers, increased tree mortality should be expected in forests until precipitation returns to normal or above normal for a few years,” the USFS said. The USFS adopted a national “Wildfire Crisis Strategy”. …Those efforts include thinning trees and spraying insecticide on high value trees. Additionally, Gov. Newsom signed a budget that included $1.3 billion over two years to increase forest health and wildfire resilience.

SALEM, Oregon — A bill that could restrict logging on some Oregon forestlands hasn’t raised objections from timber groups, so long as the actions to protect watersheds in it aren’t mandatory. Under House Bill 2813, lawmakers would allocate $5 million for grants to help communities buy the sources of their drinking water, which are often within forests. Aside from purchasing such properties, cities and other water suppliers could buy conservation easements that impose limits on the land to prevent water contamination. …By helping water suppliers to wholly or partly acquire watersheds, HB 2813 would guard against development while still allowing some forest management, Kruse said. Communities could use the bill to retain “natural infrastructure” — since forests filter impurities from water. …“Provided these are strictly transactions with a willing buyer and seller, we support communities and landowners partnering on strategies related to forest health,” said Michael Eliason of the Oregon Forest Industries Council. 

Wildfires have a multitude of impacts on an ecosystem. While many are negative, some animals thrive after fire, from the charred remains serving as shelter for insects and small animals like the black-backed woodpecker and spotted owl. In a study published February 6 in the journal Molecular Ecology, researchers from the University of California, Riverside (UCR) examined how the 2018 Holy Fire in California’s Orange and Riverside countries affected bacteria and fungi over time after the flames were extinguished. The fire burned more than 23,000 acres of land and destroyed 24 structures. Over the next year, the team visited the scar nine times, comparing the charred earth with samples from unburned soil found nearby. The mass of microbes dropped between 50 and 80 percent and didn’t recover during that first year post-fire. But some species found a way to live on. 

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A new report from the Forest Service says 36.3 million trees died in California in 2022. The high mortality rate is due to a multitude of factors, with the drought being the foremost issue affecting tree health. The ongoing drought and overcrowded forests exacerbate the likelihood of trees succumbing to disease or becoming infested with beetles. Even with the recent storms from atmospheric rivers, increased tree mortality should be expected in forests until precipitation returns to normal or above normal for a few years, according to the Forest Service. …The survey is conducted via the Aerial Detection Survey program. True firs species were the most impacted, especially in the Central and Northern Sierra. 2021 saw the death of 170,000 Douglas firs while 2022 saw 3 million Douglas fir deaths. …The Forest Service estimates over $500 million total funding for wildfire-related projects in California through 2026. 

Dr. Andrew Barton

FARMINGTON — Dr. Andrew Barton, professor of biology at the University of Maine at Farmington, and a team of five other forest scientists received a $597,000 grant from NASA to further investigate whether thinning in Arizona ponderosa pine forest increases water supplies for wild ecosystems and human communities alike. In addition to Dr. Barton, the three-year project involves scientists from Wesleyan University and Northern Arizona University, including the team leader, Dr. Temuulen Sankey. The ponderosa pine forests in the western United States have been greatly altered by 20th century fire suppression policies leading to dense stands of trees vulnerable to wildfires. At the same time, fossil fuel burning has led to warmer and drier conditions. This mix has led to catastrophic wildfires and severe drought. The goal of the NASA-funded grant is to first document the impact of thinning on local forest stands and then to employ space instruments to extrapolate to the entire state.

GEORGETOWN, Calif — High up in the Sierra, just outside of Georgetown, lies the UC Berkeley Blodgett Experimental Forest. That’s where you’ll find researchers like Ariel Roughton, a research manager with Berkeley Forests. Last September, the Mosquito Fire burned through a portion of Blodgett, and UC Berkeley researchers were eager to see the aftermath. The wildfire hit a densely packed section of trees that was only 20- to 30-years-old. As it burned through this stand, the Mosquito Fire killed everything from the forest floor to the canopy. But when the fire moved into a stand managed via manual harvesting and prescribed burn – the behavior changed. “It still killed some of these trees along the edge,” Roughton was quick to point out. “But then it dropped to the ground and became more of a surface fire. And this is where they were able to put a containment line, where we had treated with prescribed fire.”

The Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) has a big problem on its hands. Last week it became clear that the 70-year State Forest Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) ODF spent years developing will decimate the agency’s budget, do significantly more economic harm to surrounding communities than was previously reported, and shutter many large and small forest sector businesses in the process. While the counties, taxing districts, and local forest sector businesses like Hampton have been sounding the alarm for years, the Board of Forestry has allowed this process to continue based on ODF’s unrealistic promises and inaccurate projections. Whether or not they admit it publicly, ODF is encountering a troubling reality; their proposed HCP isn’t delivering what they claimed it would. …ODF is asking for public comment on the proposed harvest levels and implementation plans that are a direct result of this flawed HCP.  If you share our concerns, make your voice heard…

Structure loss is an acute, costly impact of the wildfire crisis in the western United States, motivating the need to understand recent trends and causes. We document a 246% rise in West-wide structure loss from wildfires between 1999-2009 and 2010-2020, driven strongly by events in 2017, 2018, and 2020. Increased structure loss was not due to increased area burned alone. Wildfires became significantly more destructive, with a 160% higher structure loss rate (loss/kha burned) over the past decade. Structure loss was driven primarily by wildfires from unplanned human-related ignitions (e.g. backyard burning, power lines, etc.), which accounted for 76% of all structure loss and resulted in 10 times more structures destroyed per unit area burned compared to lightning-ignited fires. …Our findings highlight how fire regimes are fundamentally social-ecological phenomena. By resolving the diversity of Western fire regimes, our work informs regionally appropriate mitigation and adaptation strategies. 

Chuck Roady

MONTANA — I believe Montanans want our kids to have the same opportunities we’ve enjoyed. To hunt, fish, hike the forests and climb the same mountains we have. …We all want to do what’s best for the land, our citizens and our communities to pass on to future generations. We need to accomplish two things to make this vision a reality: we need continuous active management of our landscapes, while at the same time we need to provide access for our families to enjoy these lands long into the future. …We have developed excellent tools to provide for the continual access and active management of these lands. These include conservation easements, to preserve traditional uses of the lands while limiting development that otherwise might preclude opportunities for forest management and public access. …Today, every major timber land owner in Montana has conservation easements as part of their strategies.

JUNEAU, Alaska — The Biden administration released a long-awaited study that recommends allowing a major oil development on Alaska’s North Slope.” The move — while not final — drew immediate anger from environmentalists who saw it as a betrayal of the president’s pledges to reduce carbon emissions and promote clean energy sources. …Even as the land agency released its report, the U.S. Interior Department said in a separate statement that it has “substantial concerns” about the project. …Opponents have raised concerns about the impacts of oil development on wildlife, such as caribou, and efforts to address climate change. …Federal agencies have within the last week made two major decisions around resources in Alaska. Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it was reinstating restrictions on road-building and logging on the country’s largest national forest in southeast Alaska, the Tongass National Forest.

In related coverage: Alaska’s Tongass National Forest Spared (Again) from the Chopping Block

Mike Crapo

Washington, D.C.–U.S. Senators Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) teamed up to introduce the bipartisan Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration (CFLR) Program Reauthorization Act of 2023.  This legislation would reauthorize and expand the CFLR program, which helps fund collaborative and community-based forest management.  The CFLR program has a proven track record of improving forest health, reducing wildfire risk, and supporting rural communities. “Shared, active forest management plays a vital role in reducing the risk of wildfires and fire suppression,” said Crapo.  “Ensuring long-term reauthorization of the CFLRP will promote Idaho’s forest health, encourage the responsible stewardship of our public lands and foster resilient, rural economies.  Reauthorizing the CFLRP results in stronger relationships on the ground, more effective projects and a decreased risk of conflict and litigation.”

Laura McCarthy

…Forestry Division of the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department recommends specific actions that could lessen the impact of future extreme weather events on the state’s forests and communities. They include: Updating the Forest Conservation Act to clearly delineate the Forestry Division’s authority to carry out tasks … that contribute to the long-term health of forested watersheds; Creating a minor exemption to the State Procurement Code to streamline the process of securing federal funds for wildfire prevention and forest management; and Providing funding for hot-shot firefighting crews to boost our chances of suppressing wildfires at the earliest possible stages. …Finally, catching wildfires when they start and while they are still small is essential. New Mexico can increase its capacity for “initial attack” with more firefighting crews. …These crews could put their expertise to work restoring forests when not actively fighting fires—doubling the value to the state.

To better understand fire emissions under worst-case climate scenarios, scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory first taught a machine to predict the past. That artificial intelligence is helping scientists better understand wildfire emissions in the Northwest.  The scientists input climate change components into an explainable artificial intelligence model. Then, they trained the model to learn patterns.  When the AI model could predict what happened in previous fire seasons, the scientists knew they could trust it to predict the future, said lab fellow Ruby Leung.  “Advances in machine learning now allow us to really focus on a large number of factors and also they’re complex, non-linear relationship,” Leung said.   …The study found wildfire emissions could increase in the West by up to 186% over the coming decades.

In the wake of wildfires, floods and droughts, restoring damaged landscapes and habitats requires native seeds. The U.S. doesn’t have enough, according to a report released Thursday. “Time is of the essence to bank the seeds and the genetic diversity our lands hold,” the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) report said.  …But the report found that the country’s supply of native seeds is already insufficient to meet the needs of agencies like the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which is the largest purchaser of native seeds and which commissioned the study in 2020. That lack of supply presents high barriers to restoration efforts now and into the future.  “The federal land-management agencies are not prepared to provide the native seed necessary to respond to the increasing frequency and severity of wildfire and impacts of climate change,” the report concluded.