Region Archives: US West

This week, Oregon lawmakers approved a bill that establishes the Elliott State Research Forest on more than 82,000 acres in the coast range near Coos Bay.  The Elliott is a unique tract of coastal forest originally meant to generate logging revenue for Oregon’s K-12 schools. Conservation groups and others long worked to halt that practice and keep the forest intact.  Josh Laughlin, Executive Director of Cascadia Wildlands in Eugene said Senate Bill 1546 preserves the forest for education and research.   …  Oregon State University will lead research on climate, species, and forestry. There will be some logging in designated areas. The forest will remain in public ownership with public access.  The bill was approved by the house Thursday after being passed in the senate Tuesday.  At a press briefing following the legislature’s adjournment Friday, Gov. Kate Brown hailed the bill as one of the top accomplishments of the 2022 session.

A multi-year drought that hit Southeast Alaska before the pandemic had such wide-ranging effects that a group of scientists has just finished studying it.  In 2019, extreme drought was recorded for the first time in Southeast Alaska. But it’s hard to gauge drought in one of the wettest places in North America.  “Drought is relative. At no point did Southeast look like what people often think of as drought — you know, a dried up Kansas cornfield,” said Rick Thoman, a climate specialist for the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.  Much of Southeast Alaska is a temperate rainforest. Ketchikan has about five times the average rainfall as the rest of the state — up to 160 inches per year.  “Southeast Alaska is built for lots of precipitation,” Thoman said.

Overgrown forests are one of the key contributing factors to the current wildfire crisis in the West. The new Forest Service strategy on Confronting the Wildfire Crisis outlines the agency’s plan for increasing fuels and forest health treatments to create healthier forests and reduce the risk to communities. Forest Service science shows that thinning and fuels treatments work. Historically, many western forests were far less dense and extremely variable. Trees often grew in clusters of two to 20, interspersed with several small gaps. Pacific Southwest Research Station Research Ecologist Eric Knapp studies the ecology of western forests in relation to disturbance, particularly fire. He’s especially interested in landscape changes that have occurred in the absence of fire, including how resilient these forests are to drought or wildfire later. …he evaluates the results of forest management alternatives designed to reverse some of these changes, including mechanical thinning and prescribed fire.

An out-of-control wildfire in the Cleveland National Forest 60 miles southeast of Los Angeles on Wednesday may have been caused by U.S. Marines using explosives to blow up small dams, according to area property owners. The Jim Fire, which authorities said started at about 11:20 a.m. in the Holy Jim Canyon area, had ballooned to more than 500 acres by nightfall. A towering cloud of smoke and ash blotted out large stretches of sky through the afternoon and was visible in three counties.  U.S. Forest Service firefighters responded with fire engines, hand crews, and air resources, assisted by the Orange County Fire Authority and Cal Fire resources. The fire started in a drainage bottom and spread uphill, according to the forest’s incident report page, and “is under investigation by Forest Service Law Enforcement. No structures are threatened, no injuries have been reported.” 

The Private Forest Accord passed the Oregon Senate on Wednesday, making its way to a final House vote before the end of the February short session. …The bill would change the way more than 10 million acres of private forests in the state are managed to protect at-risk animals and water quality in rivers and streams. The accord, called Senate Bill 1501, passed with 22 Democrats and four Republicans in favor. It would dramatically change logging rules for private forests established in the Forest Practices Act, 50-year-old regulations dictating various rules, including how close logging can occur to rivers and streams and the use of pesticides. …If the Private Forest Accord is approved by the House, it would form the basis of a Habitat Conservation Plan regulated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service. …The accord excludes forestland owned by the nine Oregon-based Tribes but allows them to opt into the plan.

An invasive insect has laid waste to an estimated 100 million ash trees across the U.S. Now Oregon foresters are taking pre-emptive steps to limit the bug’s impact.  The emerald ash borer is a metallic green beetle, and its larvae are destructive to ash trees. Upon hatching, they burrow through a tree’s cambium, essentially depriving it of nutrients and killing it.  Wyatt Williams is an invasive species specialist with the Oregon Department of Forestry. He says through a federal grant, crews are collecting ash tree seeds to preserve its genes.  “We can go anywhere in the state right now and collect seeds,” Williams told KLCC. “We have no restrictions. We don’t have any mortality from emerald ash borer. Our goal is to collect one million seeds from 30 populations across the state.”  …

Kate Brown

50 years ago the new Oregon Forest Practices Act (OFPA) set a standard for forestry operations to protect our soils, water and wildlife. It wasn’t a perfect law, but it was a great first step. Now, 50 years later, we see the need to update the OFPA and bring it into a 21st century where forests are struggling under a changing climate.  The governor asked six conservation groups and six timber industry representatives to study the issue and come up with recommendations. The result was the Private Forest Accord (PFA), now before the Legislature as a starting point to rewriting the OFPA.  …A rewrite of the OFPA should result in a strong forest economy over the next 50 years. Forest economy, not timber economy, because our forests provide much more than timber, including water, soils, wildlife, clean air and more.

COLORADO — There goes Washington again. But will the huge sums Joe Biden recently pledged to spend on national forest restoration and wildfire prevention — $50 billion over 10 years — really do the job? …More funding, if judiciously spent could help, at least at the margins. I’m not suggesting we look this gift horse in the mouth. But if history is any guide, the relief Coloradans desperately seek won’t be found through funding alone. A host of other reforms, policy changes and political dynamics must change if this is to be anything more than an empty gesture and boondoggle. …A similarly “bold” plan was initiated by the Bush administration in late 2003, The Healthy Forests Initiative, as some may recall. It, too, was touted as a “game-changing” breakthrough. …Today, almost every major forest decision is litigated, sometimes repeatedly, often ad nauseam, which is intended to delay or derail any proposal.

To improve forest resilience and reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires in the Interior West, three organizations are receiving a total of $20 million from the U.S. government. The funds are part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act … which will go to enhancing key systems and processes to mitigate the impact of forest fires. The award will be made to the Southwest Ecological Restoration Institutes (SWERI) which includes the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute, Highlands University’s New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute, and Northern Arizona University’s Ecological Restoration Institute. The SWERI were created through congressional legislation… which charged the three institutes with promoting adaptive management practices to restore the health of fire-adapted forest and woodland ecosystems of the Interior West. …The funding is prompted by climate change-driven increases in fire activity and fire season length, continued development in the wildland-urban interface, and interactions between fire and disturbances like pest and pathogen disturbance.

Foresters will now be able to use machines to help clear hazardous brush on slopes of 30-50 percent after policy changes approved by the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency Governing Board on Wednesday. … Prior to the update, Lake Tahoe agencies could use ground-based mechanical equipment on slopes up to a 30 percent gradient, while work on steeper slopes was limited to hand crews, pile burning, and aerial logging to protect water quality from potential erosion. … Steep terrain can be more difficult and resource intensive for land managers to reduce hazardous forest fuels. Research recently completed … showed that the use of newer mechanical equipment in combination with hand crews on slopes of 30-50 percent would not cause significant impacts to the watershed. The research also showed the new policy would increase forest and ecosystem resilience to disturbances such as fire, insects and disease, and climate change.

An alarming new United Nations report warns that the number of extreme wildfires is expected to increase 50% globally by the end of the century, and that governments are largely unprepared for the burgeoning crisis. Even the Arctic, previously all but immune to the threat, faces growing wildfire risk because of climate change and other factors, according to the report, which was published ahead of the upcoming U.N. Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya. The findings likely sound all too familiar to California residents. …The report shines a light on the hard lessons California is learning. In the fire-prone American West and around the world, too much focus remains on response instead of preparation. What’s more, wildfires pose urgent questions about land use and public health that extend far beyond the boundaries of their flames. …In some ways, then, California is already ahead of the curve.

New breakouts of megafires (fires burning in excess of 100,000 acres) have become a seasonal repetition in the Western United States. Wildfires are innate to forest ecosystems, clearing out dead debris and paving the way for new growth, but climate change has elongated dry seasons, increased temperatures, and widened the potential for large-scale wildfires. Beyond weather-related factors, the prevalence of insects like bark beetles damage trees and make them more prone to burning. Invasive vegetation such as cheatgrass also easily burns and contributes to spread. …Despite having nearly 10,000 fewer fires per year on average from 2011-2021 compared to 1983-2010, the average acreage burned by those fires per year has more than doubled. From 1983-2010, the average number of acres burned per year was about 4.4 million. That number has jumped to 7.5 million acres per year for the 2011-2021 time period.

Oregon’s solicitor general this week asked the state Court of Appeals to overturn a $1.1 billion award handed to 13 rural counties and local taxing districts in 2019 after a jury found that the Department of Forestry failed to maximize timber harvests on state forests. … The lawsuit has its origins in 1941, when state and county officials cut a deal that eventually resulted in the transfer of some 600,000 acres of logged-over and burned forest lands to the state. Those once-derelict lands now comprise the bulk Oregon’s state forests, and … the state agreed to rehabilitate them, protect them from fire and share a portion of timber revenues with the counties when they became productive again. … At trial … a parade of witnesses testified that timber production was the department’s prime objective in 1941 and remained so until the late 1990s. … when the state Board of Forestry unilaterally changed the deal…

Forest fires can have a significant effect on the amount of water flowing in nearby rivers and streams, and the impact can continue even years after the smoke clears.  Now, with the number of forest fires on the rise in the western U.S., that phenomenon is increasingly influencing the region’s water supply—and has increased the risk for flooding and landslides—according to a UCLA-led study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  Researchers examined streamflow—a measure of water volume over time in rivers and streams—and climate data for 179 river basins. …Using a mathematical model they developed, the scientists discovered that streamflow in the years after a fire tended to be higher than scientists would expect based solely on climate conditions, and that larger fires tended to be followed by larger increases in streamflow.

Every summer, Gwen Trice would pack her tent and drive from Seattle, where she lived at the time, to Oregon’s northeast corner, more than 300 miles away.   …Trice would join others, camping along the Wallowa River and participating in the annual Tamkaliks Celebration, an event organized by the Nez Perce Tribe each July to acknowledge and celebrate its millenia-long presence in the valley. It was during one of these visits that Trice made an unexpected discovery: Her own family also had roots in the Wallowa area. …There she learned that, in the 1920s, her father, Lafayette “Lucky” Trice, had worked as a logger in Maxville, just a few miles from where she stood. …For almost 20 years, Trice has committed herself to documenting Maxville and Oregon’s Black logging history, eventually founding the Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center, located about 40 miles from the actual town site. 

The Oregon Court of Appeals heard arguments Tuesday in a case that has major implications for how the state manages forestland and whether counties can depend on timber revenue from state forests.  The state of Oregon is challenging a 2019 jury verdict that required the state to pay more than $1 billion to a handful of timber counties who say they lost money as logging declined.  Attorneys representing the state and 13 counties traded arguments before the court Tuesday morning.  At issue in the case is whether Oregon breached a contract with these counties by failing to deliver sufficient revenue from harvesting timber on state forestland — and whether such a contract ever existed. …For years, logging state forests factored largely into the budgets of these timber counties and other tax districts and government entities that receive state forest dollars.  …Timber sales dropped as protests, lawsuits and the threat of lawsuits led to tighter restrictions on logging in Oregon.

WASHINGTON — Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley and Representatives Earl Blumenauer, Peter DeFazio and Suzanne Bonamici this week asked the U.S. Departments of Interior and Agriculture to follow congressional intent in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to protect and restore old-growth forests, as well as protect other carbon-rich mature forests in Oregon and nationwide.  The Oregon lawmakers wrote that the U.S. Forest Service’s climate plan and 10-year wildfire strategy of hazardous fuel treatments and prescribed fire to reduce wildfire risks also must recognize the climate crisis and expand to include plans for mature and old-growth forests. …“The important climate and biodiversity values of old growth forests that Congress emphasized in this provision exist throughout the federal forests, not just in those areas most subject to fire, and not just in old growth forests but also carbon-rich mature forests”. 

An expected shortage of seedlings available to replant after the 2020 wildfires is turning out to be not just about supply, but landowners’ readiness to begin reforesting.  Woodlands and fire recovery experts last year noted a shortage of seedlings in the wake of the wildfires that ripped across Oregon in 2020. While it was expected to stall efforts to replace scorched forests, 17 months after the fires, many still aren’t ready to replant.  “We’re not distributing nearly as many as trees as I thought we could have,” Oregon State University Extension Service Forrester Glenn Ahrens said. “The fires were such a devastating event and they have a lot of things to deal with, starting with their homes and their livelihoods, and reforestation of the trees are a bit lower on the list of priorities.”

Michael Hunter slammed a mallet onto a hand-held drum.  Bam! Bam! …Hunter is tribal chairman of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, and on this sunny Sunday, dozens of people clamored around him. Across Highway 1, nearly 50,000 acres of stately redwoods rose like a chorus of elders: Jackson Demonstration State Forest, the Pomo people’s ancestral land.  …Hunter was kicking off a series of demonstrations here along the Mendocino Coast to protest the redwoods’ destruction from state-sponsored logging and research.  …Those who oppose logging call it a greed-fueled operation that runs contrary to climate goals. Supporters see it as pragmatic management of a renewable resource.  Now, Native American tribes indigenous to the area have joined the fray, demanding a say in the fate of their ancestral homeland. And state officials are listening.

Joanne S. Marchetta

…The Lake Tahoe Region is being whipsawed by a confluence of climate impacts. …The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) is organizing basin partners … to build climate adaptations into every sector. With last summer’s fires still fresh in our minds, bringing climate resilience to Lake Tahoe’s forests is a top priority. Heavily overstocked and untreated forest stands are a wick waiting for a match. TRPA is advancing a key policy change this month aimed at helping fire managers increase the pace and scale of forest fuel reduction projects. …As a founding member of the Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team, TRPA worked with scientists from the USDA Forest Service and the University of Idaho to draft science-based policy changes that will maintain environmental protections while allowing for increased use of low-impact ground-based mechanical equipment on slopes between 30 and 50 percent. 

LYONS, Oregon — The Beachie Creek Fire burned nearly 200,000 acres in 2020. About 16,000 acres in the Santiam State Forest also burned along with millions of trees. But now there are big efforts to restore the landscape and replant trees. A crew of 12 people covered a lot of ground Thursday as they planted about 120 trees an hour, or roughly two trees a minute.

State officials have filed a lawsuit against Pacific Gas and Electric Co., seeking reimbursement for nearly $33 million in costs to fight the 2020 Zogg Fire, which in 2020 killed four people and destroyed 207 buildings in Shasta and Tehama counties. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has calculated down to the penny its suppression, accounting, investigation, administrative and collection costs related to the fire, according to the lawsuit filed in Shasta County Superior Court earlier this month. …Cal Fire says a tree fell onto electrical lines along Zogg Mine Road in western Shasta County, sparking the blaze in September 2020. While the electricity had been shut off in some other areas in the county, in an effort to prevent fires being started by trees and limbs being blown by the wind into electrical lines, the power remained on in the area where the Zogg Fire started.

INYO COUNTY, California – A forest fire continued to burn actively Thursday in the remote Owens Valley of eastern California, but firefighters have so far prevented it from harming small communities, authorities said. The fire, called Airport Fire, is estimated to have burned more than 4 square miles and posed a threat to 150 structures, according to the California Department of Forests and Fire Protection. The fire broke out Wednesday near the Eastern Sierra Regional Airport outside the city of Bishop, and winds blew it south toward Big Pine, where evacuations were ordered to the east side of the community. …More than 430 personnel, 66 engines, six aircraft tankers and a helicopter were assigned to the fire, which remained under investigation.

Groups that have long been at odds on forest management issues have reached a consensus on … how the U.S. Forest Service drafts land management plans on three national forests in Northeastern Oregon and Southeastern Washington. [The] access subcommittee of the Blue Mountains Intergovernmental Council (BIC) submitted its final rule and desired conditions to the full council. The Forest Service formed the BIC, made up of county officials, tribal members and other stakeholders … after the agency’s proposed 2018 management plan revision fizzled in the face of intense public scrutiny. The three national forests covered by the management plan … make up a third of Oregon’s national forest land. … [The] desired conditions will form a foundation for the broader guidelines surrounding key issues such as forest access, elk security, forest health and grazing when the Forest Service begins the process of revising its management plan for the Blue Mountain Forest.