Bush Fires

[Taildragerdriver]

Cedars:

 

The first issue that we need to make the distinction is that many people and possibly yourself don't really distinguish between land owned by private individuals and public lands owned by either state of federal agencies.

 

In most cases if you are on private lands they may be owned by timber companies. They want to make money as does any company. The way to do that with forest land is to cut the trees down as soon as they are of some value and start over and do it again. This produces a forest condition which is not very pleasing to most people. Interstingly these lands are not likely to burn because fuels are very discontinues and it is easy to control fire.

 

If you are on public lands we went through a period where congress mandated we make money too (this was great for congress because they could get money to spend without taxing people). The Environmental Movement came to be interested in forests because the public didn't want our public lands managed like industrial forest lands. So now we have the other extreme we have made it so hard to do anything that we are simply letting the vegetation grow with no managment. This creates huge areas of continuous fuels. So now we see massive wildfires which have some beneifts but because we have lots of people living in or near the woods it is not natural either. We stop the fires when they get close to any human delvelopment. This is very expensive and creates a continued cycle of burn and dense forest and burn again.

 

The native populations figured out thousands of years ago that even they didn't like living in this kind of environment. So we have an opportunity to learn from them. There is good evidence that the native americans produced a kind of mangment that developed open park like forests over most of the US prior to Europeans coming into the North America.

 

We on public lands are starting to make the point we could possibly create a better model that could be desireable to the public and create and environment where we have low intensity fires if they happen at all near human development. This could greatly reduce the cost to the taxpayer for fighting fire as well.

 

So there is a bit of movement in the federal laws to open the doors a bit to demonstrate the value of this kind of management.

 

The main problem is there is a lot of resistance to this by the environment community. The only way to get this work done is to make it possible for forest products to be sold to make money doing this to pay for the work. The taxpayers now have to pay for this work to be done. It is very expensive so we can't do enough to make a differnece. If we could make some money from the products we could pay for it to be done on a larger scale.

 

It is understandable that the environmental community is concerned about these agencies getting back to making an income because they think congress would again push to have our public lands be money makers. We all have to work to make sure that doesn't happen but we need to find a way to manage the land and let the results pay for the work.

 

Hope this expains it a bit.

 

Taildragerdriver

[Jay-qu]

Fire area map with roads, town names and some topography:

Map of Australia

 

See the little town berwick, just to the east of melbourne, thats me

[InfiniteNow]

(yes we have EPA)

What's the NSW then?

[Cedars]

Taildragerdriver:

 

Let me give you a bit more info then. The logging roads I was refering to were in places such as Superior Nat. Forest, Gov. Knowles State Forest, areas in Montana, Wyoming, and S. Dakota. I purchaced maps from various park services to find roads on public lands and I am refering to timber sales and access roads on public lands. I understand timber sales on public lands and the difference between private holdings vs public holdings as I have looked into purchacing tax forecloser properties and was made very aware of the fact that the timber on these lands was a seperate agreement on such sales.

 

If you are on public lands we went through a period where congress mandated we make money too (this was great for congress because they could get money to spend without taxing people). The Environmental Movement came to be interested in forests because the public didn't want our public lands managed like industrial forest lands.

 

I remember a different version of this. As I remember it, the forest service was criticized greatly for mismanagement of the resources, specifically under charging logging companies for the board feet taken and further problems as I mention below with the example of weyhauser and regrowth problems.

 

From this website: US Wood Subsidies and Trade Please note the figures for 1983-1989 average

 

"Nonetheless, these programs constitute an indirect subsidy to the timber industry and have international trade implications insofar as a large amount of this wood is exported."

 

 

Relaxed forest rules revive West's timber wars | csmonitor.com

 

I am also very aware of large tracts of lands owned by Weyhauser in the northwest which were clear cut logged and replanted in the 60s/70s and tree regrowth in those areas is marginal. Their goal was sustainable harvest with the environmental impact a key feature in their experiment with clear cutting and replanting. I also have spoken with locals in Montana lamenting the loss of the forests on some of their mountains, having them point out to me the grasslands that once were forests and their comments about promises by the forestry deptments, "dont worry, the trees will grow back". It had been 20+ years (1992)and the trees were not growing back even to that day. Simply put, clear cutting in at least some areas is not conductive to regrowth of the forests due to the composition of the soils and weather extremes. The old growth is needed to shade/protect the seedlings from the elements for a minimum of 10 years, and probably an average of 20 years to ensure good root base to hold the trees in place from that point on.

 

Additionally, I am not excited about our national forests being exported and keeping our own lumber costs artificially high.

 

So now we have the other extreme we have made it so hard to do anything that we are simply letting the vegetation grow with no managment. This creates huge areas of continuous fuels. So now we see massive wildfires which have some beneifts but because we have lots of people living in or near the woods it is not natural either. We stop the fires when they get close to any human delvelopment. This is very expensive and creates a continued cycle of burn and dense forest and burn again.

 

We had a fire a few years ago in Carlos Avery WMA that burned 9,000 of the 30,000 acres. Primarily deciduous (I would say 70 -30 deciduous/coniferous) for a forest type visual. This area was both wetland and forest so the fires burned pretty cleanly thru the wetlands without the heat, but once it hit the forests the fire got very intense. Notable after effect was the 20 year old (and younger) trees are the ones that died due to the fire directly or succumed later due to the damage allowing insect/fungus/etc to kill the trees in the following couple of years (now adding to the fuel existing on the forest floor). It was the oldest and tallest trees which survived in a larger percentage (dependent on their location on hills also combined with the direction of the fires path/wind speed). Now that is not to say that if a fire had gone thru there, say 10 years prior that enough fuel would have been spent to reduce the intensity. I cannot remember the last big fire in that area so I dont have that point of reference.

 

Some homes were lost and the pattern seemed to be the ones surrounded by forest (varied age/type trees) suffered the greatest damage. One home in particular stands out in my memory because the woman commented on the trees being 20 years old (pine). She and her deceased husband had planted them. This was not deep forest, it was a few acres surrounded by a mix of pasture, or older forests. The homes surrounded by manicured lawns and few trees were spared along with others with a good canopy of old growth and mowed lawns under them.. Some people saved their homes by refusing to leave and putting out fires as the embers landed on roofs. They were lucky the fire direction did not affect electricity. I know in the pine barrens of wisconsin, many people burn their ditches each spring to reduce the chance of a fire starting from cigs and sparks.

 

So what I am saying is the base for the worst damage here came from growths that were between 10-30 years old, too young to harvest and not old growth.

 

To be continued....

[Cedars]

Part 2 of 2

 

The native populations figured out thousands of years ago that even they didn't like living in this kind of environment. So we have an opportunity to learn from them. There is good evidence that the native americans produced a kind of mangment that developed open park like forests over most of the US prior to Europeans coming into the North America.

 

 

As far as fire as a native american tool, well you can draw your own conclusions.

From this website: Superior National Forest- Welcome!

"The second of three Jesuit priests to serve as a missionary at Fort St. Charles (on a small island in Lake of the Woods--built by LaVerenrye in 1732), Father Jean Pierre Aulneau, wrote to his relative] in France that in 1735 he 'journeyed nearly all the way' from Lake Superior to Lake of the Woods 'through fire and thick stifling smokes' which prevented him from 'even once catching a glimpse of the sun'."

Whether these early fires were caused by the action of Indians, explorers, traders, or the result of electrical storms will perhaps never be known. The fact remains that increasing information is being discovered which verifies the extensive fires of the distant past."

 

Now I am not argueing fires did not exist in forests, but to claim that it was a land management practice in forests by native americans and therefore acceptable is kinda far fetched. I am aware of prairie fire use by native americans, but again, thats a different ballgame than forest management.

 

 

Now back to another point of reference. The WMA I described in an earlier post uses both control burns for native plant management, and selective harvesting. Clear cutting is not used. Nearby public forests do allow clear cutting and will take large patches of growth out leaving pasture like areas (too far north to call them prairies) and these areas begin to thicken up into brush areas, then young forest, then onwards into middle age forest when they are harvested again. If a fire were to start in a bordering, unfelled forest there is no doubt the fire would not take a strong hold in the clear cuts, for a few years. But after about 5 years of growth this variable begins to swing back to a more fueled fire, and after 10-20 years, your talking an area that will light up brightly under drought conditions if a fire is sparked.

 

So the theory of clear cut (assuming a vibrant regrowth) is countered by many years of unharvestable wood accumulating debris as a natural part of the growth process. Additionally, removal of the debris at harvest must be considered as potentially draining the future nutrients of the soils and its impact on the regrowth of these areas.

 

We on public lands are starting to make the point we could possibly create a better model that could be desireable to the public and create and environment where we have low intensity fires if they happen at all near human development.

And this is what I was asking about. What are the points that have been created? What is the new model proposed?

 

The main problem is there is a lot of resistance to this by the environment community. The only way to get this work done is to make it possible for forest products to be sold to make money doing this to pay for the work. The taxpayers now have to pay for this work to be done. It is very expensive so we can't do enough to make a differnece. If we could make some money from the products we could pay for it to be done on a larger scale.

But the Forest Service had 100 years to make money off of the timber sales. This did not happen. What has changed in the forest management idea that will create the moneys to re-invest in the forests, while maintaining the regrowth of the forests themselves? What has changed that will not make the new efforts the same old corporate welfare of the past? And please do not single out environmentalists as being the harbringers of death to these forestry ideas. Hunters, fishermen and a host of other portions of "we the people" have fought over perceived mismanagement of the forests we own as a group. Clear cutting is a horrible solution that should have been abandoned in the 70s as there is plenty of evidence that forest regrowth is more complicated, and does not recover especially well under clear cutting methods.

 

Now I realize your not responsible for every mistake made in the past regarding these issues, and I am kinda direct when I post, so please dont take the post as an attack on you personally, but as a skeptic with some personal experience asking for detail before committing to an idea.

[Cedars]

See the little town berwick, just to the east of melbourne, thats me :)

 

I hope to visit australia someday and I will probably hit you up for info, if thats ok. I HOPE to be able to spend about 3-4 months exploring the continent. Of course I have to do the Reef, and I want to do a couple weeks in kakadu. I need to learn some australian drinking songs before I get there (part of the wildlife watching and camouflage). :)

[Taildragerdriver]

Cedars:

 

Great discussion!

 

I will not have time to address all the issues you bring up at this point but I will take them as they came along.

 

So we start out and now we know that we are taking about the same thing we are talking about either public lands under one set of mangement rules and private lands under another. If we keep these strait we can make sure our discussion is clear.

 

OK so now we go on to the point about the 1960 & 70 where the Land Mangement agencies were mandated by congress to maximize harvest. Most of your points are ones that I would not dispute. There were some very intersting behind the sceens things that went on. You may not know it but the timber sale contracts and the way sale rules were set up were done by a board of Timber Company representatives.These representatives were picked by congress. The rules were not developed by the Forest Service, BLM and others agencies. This led to the abuses you saw. Most of us working in the agencies had the same problems you do with this rules of the past and as I say we need to see they don't reoccure.

 

I am not advocating clear cutting in any but the rarest of cases. The very early history of fire use by native americans in the area I live in over very long periods of time produces a situation of open park like stands. We can reproduce these kinds of stands in much of the west from the east side of the Cascades all the way to the east slope of the Rockies. I'm not familiar with the ability to do this in the Northwoods of around where you live.

 

Now if you follow up on actual studies of regeneration in western Washington and Oregon most clearcuts were regenetated and are growing well (in both public and private lands) but many were not. I don't support clear cutting as one we should use except in very special cases. The western cascades and coast range are the part of the country where clear cutting may be required to get regeneration but other possabilites exist.

 

The remainder of the west is made up of areas and tree species types that do not require clearcutting for regeneration. So only the desire to produce maximum outputs made for any reason to havest with clear cutting.

 

Now on to the idea of exporting our National Forest to keep our timber prices "artificially high". In fact there has been a law since the 1960's that wood from the Federal Lands could not be exported. That law was enforced but the timber companies worked around it by exporting almost every log that came off of private lands in Oregon and Washingtion for quite a period. The problem was as I always understood it was that the federal timber kept a glut of wood on the market keeping the prices artificially low so small woodland owner could not make money growing trees, but the big timber companies were subsidized because they could get these large timbers sales to cheeply. This allowed them to keep their opperations going while they harvested timber on the lands they owned and were able to export that wood at a much higher price. So they could make money cutting up federal timber in their mills and selling it to americans and they could make lots more money cutting down private timber and selling it mostly to Japan a three or four times the price. A good deel for the timber companies but nobody else.

 

Now to finish this post you and I are on exactly the same page. Your experience with these young stands buring up is exactly what is happening in many areas. There young stand are dense and tourch and crown in almost any case where a fire occures. So the fact that these young dense stand exist creates this recurring situation.

 

So the solution that the native americans found out about was that they used fire and other methods to create what I am calling open parklike stands. Those are stands that have a few large old trees per acre usually less than 50. The undrstory was kept clean by burning. The large old trees were fire resisitant species like Ponderosa Pine, Larch and Douglas-fir.

 

What we need to do is recreate this kind of situation by keeping these young stands thinned out so they don't carry crown fire and grow large areas to these kinds of conditions so fires don't kill all the trees when they burn. That is what you noticed and it is true the old trees need to be preserved in the correct numbers.

 

The one place we disagree is that I am firmly convinced from the work I have done and continue to do with natives such as the Mescalaro, Taos Puelblo, Warm Springs and Yacima Tribes. These people tell me their oral traditions clearly document the burning of forests to maintain good hunting conditions and hucleberry harvests for example there were many more reasons. These burnings produced a kind of condtion that was what they wanted. The major difference was that many of these tribes were nomadic so they could start a fire and leave and not worry because they had moved there summer camp so even if it burned it didn't matter.

 

Enough for now

 

to be continued ...

[Jay-qu]

What's the NSW then?

Are you been fair dinkum?

[Buffy]

What's the NSW then?

Are you been fair dinkum?

You're not bein' fair, mate. He's obviously not had the chance to become fond of Vegemite or make right turns from the left lane...

 

Taking the boat from The Rocks to Luna Park,

Buffy

[Taildragerdriver]

OK Cedars I'm going to continue my post of yesteday.

 

In fact the concepts of the present prescribed burn methods being used today are developed from these Nataive American ideas and in fact I believe the Native Americans were acturally consulted as these methods were developed.

 

So as you can see I think the Native Americans had a pretty good idea. But as you reference in your Superior NF history this idea created a lot of smoke that we probably don't want today. So we need to figure out ways to remove the excess vegetation we don't want and ideally put it to some use. This doesn't mean we don't want to use prescribed burning, we just want to use it carefully in areas where the large concentrations of excess fuels have been removed. Then once these open stands have been developed it is easy to put prescribed fire into the stands and maintain the open conditions and desirable results.

 

OK so the points I am talking about are that in reserarch and new managment practice are to remove these excessive biomass and use it in some way that will help pay for the cost of modifying the fuel load. This includes but is not exclusive to timber harvest of smaller excess trees. There are concepts like chipping the brush and slash and selling it to energy producers or paper mills. Other concepts are being explored for example the reason I got onto this site is due to the fact that I'm working on something called "Terra preta" or the development of charcoal to be incorporated into farmland to increase and maintain soil fertility and reduce or eliminate the need for fossil fuel based fertilizers for many farmers and ranchers. Many more ideas need to be considered but we are on the way to concepts that may produce the things from our forests that humans need to create a sustainable agriculture, products to build our homes with, create great lands to hunt, camp and pick berries in and also protect our important wildlands from the massive fires we have seen this year in the US, and throughout the world.

 

Now to your comment about the Forest Service did not make money off timber sales is in fact incorrect. In the 1960s and 70's the land mangement agencies primarily the Forest Service but others as well were second only to the Internal Revenue service in contributions to the US treasury. The problem was the income didn't go back to the agencies they went directly to the treasurey then Congress did what they wanted to with it. Then congress decided what money to give back and they funded the parts of the agencies that cut more timber much better than they funded the parts that took care of the land. So as an example in the 1970's the Willamette National Forest harvested about a billion board feet a year. The income to the treasury in those years was approximately $200 billion from that forest alone. The budget for that forest during that time was far less than $2 billion a year so less than 1% was returned to the land.

 

Fortuantely due to the influence of the Envornmental Movement new laws are being passed which in some but not all cases put the money made from recreation and other practices right back to the exact trail or site where the money was spent. So this concept can help us reinvest where the work is done. I am not critical of the Envronmental Movemets results in the past, I am just critical of there current status of trying to stop every managment activity that makes money and their appeals of every project when in most cases they have never been to the site and have no idea if the project is good or bad. In fact the appeals I have seen are often not even relevent. So there primary effect is just to increase cost and slow the work needed to help our wildlands get maintained in a more healthy state.

 

I'm not offended at all by your post in fact I think you have a pretty darn good understanding of the past. But we need to find a new way to work toghether and my experience is we need to start a dialogue that will help us move to a new middle ground. We shouldn't let the folks that want us to do nothing continue to dominate the dialogue with continued reference to problems of the past we all can and need to change what we do and how we do it. If we don't this cycling of fire in most of the public lands will continue and increase. We should also guard against those who want to turn public lands back into the kind of industry like managment of the past.

 

Thanks

 

Taildragerdriver

[Taildragerdriver]

One more thing I want to add is related to my points about the Enviornmental Community. I have been kind of presenting this like it is a one organization.

 

In fact it is not. I work often with people from the Nature Conservency. These folks are very mangement oriented and are helping to work towards the concepts I have been talking about.

 

The primary concerns for me are what people call Radical Envornmental groups who mostly are just obstructionist. In other words their only program is to stop progress. We need to somehow limit or engage these kind of groupes.

 

Thanks

 

Taildragerdriver

[Cedars]

OK so now we go on to the point about the 1960 & 70 where the Land Mangement agencies were mandated by congress to maximize harvest. Most of us working in the agencies had the same problems you do with this rules of the past and as I say we need to see they don't reoccure.

 

I had forgotten the issue of the above behind the scenes things going on, and remembered them as I read the above paragraph. But you have avoided the question of "what has changed?" Because it is the same politics as before, with the Bush admin negating safeguards put in, Clinton trying to please everyone but pleasing no one, Reagan appointing people who never had a tan from a hard days work in the sun, etc... An article on n.Wisc here.

Logging Threatens Midwest Old Growth - The NewStandard

 

Clear cutting is still going on currently, and now I have some answers on the clear cuts I was talking about in W. Wisc (recently as one to two years, clear cuts near the "Scenic St Croix River/ Wild River fed area")

 

Reviewing the above article reminded me of a trip I took in 95 to the UP of Michigan with a friend who had spent many weekends up there in the 70s. Her input on what once was there compared to what I saw was like being in two different places. The timber companies made their money and the UP lost out on my future tourist dollars. I do tell people when asked where the best spots are to visit Lake Superior for the most natural experience. Hands down its the North Shore. Working with a native from International Falls, she came back from a trip back home, 3 years ago and lamented over the lost forests (private holdings). Her words "depressing". And depressing is the exact words I would use describing areas of clear cuts I have encountered on my trips thru public lands that had been clear cut.

So my point is on the Fed Level, the prospect of well managed forests is still only a pipe dream and clear cutting is still going on, in forest areas that are not simply aspen/popular forests, these clear cuts I am talking about are in the pine forests.

 

I am not advocating clear cutting in any but the rarest of cases. The very early history of fire use by native americans in the area I live in over very long periods of time produces a situation of open park like stands.

 

But clear cutting is still the policy of the forest dept, and weasling around on the agreements is the newest example, only because of the efforts of concerned parties that have been undertaken since enviromentalists have been winning in the courts (remember 70% of 'we the people' do not want clear cutting, appreciate and respect the idea of roadless areas in our public lands, and place a high dollar value on wilderness).

John Muir Project - News & Press Room - Duncan Canyon

 

I am not arguing that fire is not a part of nature and there are benefits to some control burns. It is true there is a burst of ferts released via fire, those same nutrients are also time relased (so to speak) by the natural decomposition of the biomass and are as critical for a healthy forest as sporatic (and infrequent) burns are.

More on this later.

 

Now if you follow up on actual studies of regeneration in western Washington and Oregon most clearcuts were regenetated and are growing well (in both public and private lands) but many were not.

Some studies indicate one result, others convey different data.

"Donato and five Oregon State University and U.S. Forest Service scientists concluded that logging in the Biscuit Burn in southern Oregon damaged seedlings growing back on their own and littered the forest floor with tinder that could fuel future fires.

The Donato study was politically inconvenient because the Bush administration and Oregon Republican Rep. Greg Walden used the Sessions-Newton study as the basis for Walden’s latest amendments to the "Healthy Forests Act" of 2003. "

"Franklin and his many colleagues learned that reality was just the opposite. It was newly sterilized and replanted clear-cuts that were the biological deserts, while an old-growth forest was the most biologically diverse. Franklin has never been forgiven by some of his colleagues. Yet Franklin’s findings are the foundation of today’s forest management. "

Full article here: High Country News -- February 13, 2006: Oregon’s academic food fight in the cafeteria of ideas

 

In fact there has been a law since the 1960's that wood from the Federal Lands could not be exported. That law was enforced but the timber companies worked around it by exporting almost every log that came off of private lands in Oregon and Washingtion for quite a period. A good deel for the timber companies but nobody else.

You have again avoided the question of "what has changed?" What is the new plan to avoid the mistakes of the past? I will say from the study I posted in a previous link, Oregon and Washington states did manage to get a higher dollar per acre for the Nat. Forests in the 80s, but it was offset by the states who garnished a whole .30 an acre.

Heres another article lamenting the attempts to grab the last of the old growth forests in the NW.

High Country News -- June 26, 2006: Cooking up a whopper on federal land in Oregon

 

If there is only 10% - 15% of old growth left on public lands, and public lands are a small percentage of former old growth in these particular states, we are talking a remaining old growth percentage of the original at 1-3% of the NW old growth forests are we not? The total of old growth forest is like 1-3% of its former position. And the majority of the remaining old growth is on public lands (public being held by 'we the people') Is the Forestry division of the Dept of Agriculture working for us as a whole, or them (corporate timber)? Let them (timber) selectivly harvest in younger forests and leave enough that growth will eventually achieve the status of "old growth". Thats management.

 

Heres one talking about Clinton and efforts disguised as protection really meaning more and more public timbers auctioned off to corps:

Transcript: Public Lands, Private Profits: Logging in U.S. National Forests

 

There young stand are dense and tourch and crown in almost any case where a fire occures. So the fact that these young dense stand exist creates this recurring situation.

 

So the solution that the native americans found out about was that they used fire and other methods to create what I am calling open parklike stands. Those are stands that have a few large old trees per acre usually less than 50. The undrstory was kept clean by burning. The large old trees were fire resisitant species like Ponderosa Pine, Larch and Douglas-fir.

 

What we need to do is recreate this kind of situation by keeping these young stands thinned out so they don't carry crown fire and grow large areas to these kinds of conditions so fires don't kill all the trees when they burn. That is what you noticed and it is true the old trees need to be preserved in the correct numbers.

 

 

 

A better approach is to hold the homeowner/contractors more responsible for minimizing the conditions on their property that contribute to the spread of these fires and create the damage to their homes. There is no reason local zoning cannot complete this process during the development phases. Fire lines created around these developments would minimize the potential for catastraphic fires during the heights of fire seasons and create last stand positions for those attempting to stop the lines progress. As I said the areas with least impact during the fires were the ones with mowed yards and old or very young and sporatically placed trees. There is no reason that developments cannot implement these safeguards to aid their self protection rather than attacking the trees/forests as the root of the problem.

 

Living in a formerly rural area (encroachment of the yuppies has changed the landscape greatly) one battle our volunteer fire dept had was when house/barn fires occured, there wasnt enough water for the trucks. Tanker trucks had to run back to the nearest water (sometimes 10+ miles) the local solution was putting in pumping stations every few miles. Some pull water from local lakes, some are wells drilled. The most expensive one I know of was $9000. Having a pumping station close to you lowers homeowner insurance. Now I know there are some problems in some areas with deep wells being needed.

 

The forest service could mandate a 150 foot line between its forests and the edge of public roads. Clear cut that area and use your burns there to manage a good and sustainable fire break, without building roads miles into territorys that are 'virgin' forest. Let the communities profiting from development take responsiblity for fire in their areas. Only YOU can prevent forest fires. ;) Why isnt the position of the forest service just that simple?

 

I also want to point out the native american use of fire had nothing to do with a solution for wild fire, and was entirely wrapped around hunting/gathering of foods. Trying to combine this idea with the issue of wildfire is misleading in that your not going to torch enough of the forests in enough of the areas to protect all of the settlements and developments that have occured since the last of the huckleberry gathering Yakima Indians camped on the sides of Rainer.

 

Devestating (and I use that term loosely) forest fires happen because of drought conditions. At that point, everything is fuel.

 

 

The one place we disagree is that I am firmly convinced from the work I have done and continue to do with natives such as the Mescalaro, Taos Puelblo, Warm Springs and Yacima Tribes. These people tell me their oral traditions clearly document the burning of forests to maintain good hunting conditions and hucleberry harvests for example there were many more reasons. These burnings produced a kind of condtion that was what they wanted. The major difference was that many of these tribes were nomadic so they could start a fire and leave and not worry because they had moved there summer camp so even if it burned it didn't matter.

 

I did look up the tribes you mentioned (half from new mex areas) I did find this on the Mt Rainer tribes:

Mount Rainier National Park: Wonderland:An Administrative History (Chapter 1)

"Park officials long recognized that Indians who annually visited the Mount Rainier area made it their practice to set fires as they left the area each fall. "

 

Key note: As they left. Each Fall. With snows coming and the harvest completed. This approach was limited to certain gathering areas in specific areas. The Indians did not burn down Mt. Rainer, rather they burned small areas (comparitively) to promote specific growths of types of plants that were already present (huckleberry for example). This is not forest management for harvest, this is preventing forest growth. And it does create a forest area that sustains a different kind of life than old growth does, so I understand what you mean by wanting to create 'park like' areas to promote plant/animal diversity.

 

This also occured at a time period when there were great distances between settlements of people whether they were native americans or newly planted euro-imports. Most troubling forest fires occur in the summer months and often, it is the cooler weathers and snows that put them to rest. How exactly is burning going to stop fires? It doesnt work in the WMA which I spoke of in earlier posts. When drought conditions occur, fire is always a potential in any area of this WMA that has not been burned in the previous year.

 

We are mixing multiple issues here within this thread no doubt, and there are many issues to consider, but they are all wrapped around the issue of public lands and the best use of them.

[Cedars]

But as you reference in your Superior NF history this idea created a lot of smoke that we probably don't want today. So we need to figure out ways to remove the excess vegetation we don't want and ideally put it to some use. This doesn't mean we don't want to use prescribed burning, we just want to use it carefully in areas where the large concentrations of excess fuels have been removed. Then once these open stands have been developed it is easy to put prescribed fire into the stands and maintain the open conditions and desirable results.

 

OK so the points I am talking about are that in reserarch and new managment practice are to remove these excessive biomass and use it in some way that will help pay for the cost of modifying the fuel load. This includes but is not exclusive to timber harvest of smaller excess trees. There are concepts like chipping the brush and slash and selling it to energy producers or paper mills. Other concepts are being explored for example the reason I got onto this site is due to the fact that I'm working on something called "Terra preta" or the development of charcoal to be incorporated into farmland to increase and maintain soil fertility and reduce or eliminate the need for fossil fuel based fertilizers for many farmers and ranchers. Many more ideas need to be considered but we are on the way to concepts that may produce the things from our forests that humans need to create a sustainable agriculture, products to build our homes with, create great lands to hunt, camp and pick berries in and also protect our important wildlands from the massive fires we have seen this year in the US, and throughout the world.

 

The problem with removing the biomass is you are also removing the fertilizers from the forest. There is little difference between this and the slash and burn on weak soils in the amazon. What you end up with is a forest floor drained of nutrients and stunted growth. Charcoal is only a part of the puzzle of terra preta.

 

Now to your comment about the Forest Service did not make money off timber sales is in fact incorrect. In the 1960s and 70's the land mangement agencies primarily the Forest Service but others as well were second only to the Internal Revenue service in contributions to the US treasury. The problem was the income didn't go back to the agencies they went directly to the treasurey then Congress did what they wanted to with it. Then congress decided what money to give back and they funded the parts of the agencies that cut more timber much better than they funded the parts that took care of the land. So as an example in the 1970's the Willamette National Forest harvested about a billion board feet a year. The income to the treasury in those years was approximately $200 billion from that forest alone. The budget for that forest during that time was far less than $2 billion a year so less than 1% was returned to the land.

 

Translate that into acres and the public gets a better idea of the faults of forest management with this approach. It takes approx 40 years for a pine forest to regenerate from seedling to harvest for timber as I remember the equasion. And thats not old growth forest either. I question your numbers being as the rough translation is you got $200 dollars a board foot and the best numbers I could find for the NW area was numbers from the 80s and they translated into under $6 an acre (which were the highest reported in the nation). Are you combining all forest aspects including revenue from hunting/fishing/camping and all the other activities or is this just timber harvest? Every website I checked came up with approx the same numbers regarding timber sales and profits and they were a losing proposition each time.

"The federal logging program operates at an increasing loss each year. In 1997, the US taxpayers lost $1.2 billion logging their forests (source: John Muir Project, verified by Congressional Research Services). Taxpayers, not industry, pay for administrating the timber sale program, constructing logging roads, replanting trees, and restoring degraded habitat."

"national forest logging" and "profit" - Google Search

 

And as I understand it, recreational use of these areas is the real money maker for the forests.

 

Fortuantely due to the influence of the Envornmental Movement new laws are being passed which in some but not all cases put the money made from recreation and other practices right back to the exact trail or site where the money was spent. So this concept can help us reinvest where the work is done. I am not critical of the Envronmental Movemets results in the past, I am just critical of there current status of trying to stop every managment activity that makes money and their appeals of every project when in most cases they have never been to the site and have no idea if the project is good or bad. In fact the appeals I have seen are often not even relevent. So there primary effect is just to increase cost and slow the work needed to help our wildlands get maintained in a more healthy state.

 

Could you post some of these appeals that are not relevant? Yes, there are some groups out there fighting every move they become aware of, and they also do not have the resources to fight every fight either. I am glad there is the abilty of private persons to fight efforts of the government on every level and I dont exactly trust the powers that be to have my concerns properly addressed when political contributions in the form of campaign support counts for so much in the minds of career minded politicians. I dont go to wilderness/public land areas of Wyoming, N. MN, Wisc. Montana, etc to view depleted landscapes, I go there for the forests and views of spectacular sights. And so far I have found no evidence of logging public lands being a profit for anyone but the timber companies.

 

 

 

But we need to find a new way to work toghether and my experience is we need to start a dialogue that will help us move to a new middle ground. We shouldn't let the folks that want us to do nothing continue to dominate the dialogue with continued reference to problems of the past we all can and need to change what we do and how we do it. If we don't this cycling of fire in most of the public lands will continue and increase. We should also guard against those who want to turn public lands back into the kind of industry like managment of the past.

 

Agreed. But I am not seeing a middle ground. I am not seeing anything in action but the same old, same old, with a new wrapper. I went to Yellowstone in 92 and listened to others commenting on how many more animals they could see. How many wildflowers were growing. I listened to park rangers talking about how great the fires had been, their fears while they forest burned, and what they were learning about cycles of fire and nature. I watched the pictures on TV of the walls of fire and listened to the lamenting of the great loss as newspeople speculated on the future impact. I didnt see any bad effects of the past fires (and I had a red sun in the sky during those fires here in MN). I had to deal with a smoke smell two summers ago from big fires in canada. When the BWCA finally ignites from the blow down 5 years ago, I will probably be able to see the red horizon at night. If the winds are out of the north, I wont be able to see the sun. Oh well. Its a temporary condition and most of us will live thru the temorary inconvience of nature doing what nature does.

 

Fun debate none-the-less!

[Cedars]

One more thing I want to add is related to my points about the Enviornmental Community. I have been kind of presenting this like it is a one organization.

 

In fact it is not. I work often with people from the Nature Conservency. These folks are very mangement oriented and are helping to work towards the concepts I have been talking about.

 

The primary concerns for me are what people call Radical Envornmental groups who mostly are just obstructionist. In other words their only program is to stop progress. We need to somehow limit or engage these kind of groupes.

 

Thanks

 

Taildragerdriver

 

 

And here we will disagree totally. There is no difference between the extremes of obstructionist tree huggers, and the extreme of chop and run timber corps. Both sides (well all three including the forestry dept) have to deal with the courts to resolve the issues and I will not sacrifice any of these parties freedom to pursue their objective to make one parties life easier. You cannot show me that every effort of these extreme tree huggers is ill-founded. Inconvenient for the forestry dept? Too bad. Thats the price you pay when working for we the people.

[Taildragerdriver]

Cedars:

 

First let me state I'm not the Forest Service or any land mangment agency. I speak for myself and speak about what I know we are doing and trying to do and what I believe. I have spent and still spend my life on the land and got into this work because I love the land and am committed to leaving the wildlands of this country better for each future generation unfortunately I can't accomplish my goal but I'm not going to quit trying. I work on many forests across the west each year and what I see makes me very sad.

 

I tell you this as a basic concept so you understand it. I don't have a specific agenda except the concept above. I do look at our forests and I didn't like what was going on in the 60s and 70s and was very supportive of the Environmental Movment at the time. I see what is going on now and the consequences are much worse. We are loosing old growth as you state, millions of acres of it each year to fire. The amounts we are loosing may be 10 times what we were loosing to logging in the intensive mangement days. We are loosing habitat for endangered species faster today then we ever have in recoreded history. So as far as I'm concerned something has to change and if we don't change all the information I have indicates we are on a road to much worse conditions than we ever had in the past even before the Land Mangement Agencies came into existance. Obviously we don't have the inventories to prove these numbers but these are what I see as I go from place to place. I somethime think these numbers may be conservative. Most of us don't fly low elevation over our wildlands but I do a lot and I can't go very far anymore with out flying over burned over lands.

 

I can't speak to what forests are doing across the country but as far as I know the forests I work with in the Intermountian West do not clear cut it is not an option we consider.

 

So let me talk abit about your reference to the Biscuit Fire. I fought fire on the majority of that land in the 1980's on a fire that burned 1.2 million acres called the Silver Fire. I can't remember the exact year. I have flown this landscape before and after the Biscuit Fire and much of it was comming back with naturally regenrated trees. But due to the the long process required to be able to harvest trees on the Silver Fire very little of the dead wood was removed and vertually all of the Silver Fire reburned in the Biscuit Fire killing the vast majority of that regneration. Many scientists can be refrenced for many issues and many concepts can be supported that relate to a specific case. The issue is what are the real consequences on the land. So we kill a few seedings reducing the fuel loading so we have a chance of not haveing another reburrn, that could be a good choice.

 

So what are the consequences of a reburn. It has not been long enough on the Biscut Fire yet to be able to judge.

 

But lets take another example. To the North East of this fire there is another area near a mountain lake called Waldo Lake. There was a fire north of that lake that burned in the middle 1960s that was apporoximately 40 thousand acres. This land was not logged because it was many miles from access roads and could not be reached in time. This land regenerated with healthy trees and in the early 1990's the majority of this fire reburned. Now I have flown and looked at the reburn area, the results are much worse to me than any logging or treatment ever done. I have walked over about 10,000 acres of the reburn. There is less than 1 tree per acre of any kind on these acres and what is worse there is probably less than 1% of the ground on which a plant of any kind is growing. It unfortunately is a vast black area of little vegetation of any kind. The soil is erroding and is effectively dead. The agencies learned lessons about reburns from examples like this, that we need to do something because the public and the congress doesn't want this happening and I don't want it either. What is our recourse on this land now. Hopefully as the snags fall and decay they will provide nutrients for the soil and we will slowly get the forest back in the future 100 to 150 years. In geologic time nature will repair this landscape and as far as nature is concerned erosion and these other losses are repairable. So what I'm portraying here is there is a pretty big falicy in the sudo-science commons that fire is not a problem and we should let burned over areas alone. We have to evaluate that in real terms in each case not in generaliities.

 

So is the Biscut fire going to be like that. I don't know but I'm pretty sure some of it will, I will keep watching, there are places I know that are looking like they will be like that. So do we want to leave the dead wood on the landscape to reburn a third time and make it worse. Not me but we may not have a choice. If the slow process in the courts keeps work from being done. This is where I feel the process is a problem the result is "if you stall in the courts long enough even if the apelants loose they win" that is why even many democrats voted for the emergency releef bill that allows for a quicker relistic process after fire and other occurances that require salvage.

 

Next we can disagree on the Native Americans fire methods. Mt Rainier is west side forest and it is well known these tribes didn't use burning in the same way the interior tribes did.

 

Also the concepts I propose of reducing biomass can easily be done is a way that both maintains and improves the fertility of the forest sites and provides for much lower fire intenity on the landscape. So if there is a fire the majority of the nutriants are not burned off.

 

A little clerifacation of the Willamette calculations the forest got $200/thousand board feet. That is after prurchaser costs for logging and hauling were removed the prices were somewhere between $300-700/thousand bid. My Math was in error but the forests did contribute a considerable amount of money to the Treasury. But as I say that isn't the point. The point is the current process of fighting things out in court is not even really my issue. It is as I state above we can continue to work this way the unfortunate outcome is the conditions of our wildlands is deteriorating for all of us.

 

Within 10 air miles of where I live this last year 40 thousand acres burned, some of it was old growth, far more old growth was killed in these fires than all the old growth havested in the area. In the last 10 years about 10 thousand acres a year has burned and the rate is increasing every year. That is true thoughout much of the west. I understand it is a natural process many of these are started by lightning.

 

A little removed from the point by point discussions but at least this post is more of a statement of what I beleive and what I see. We can talk anicdotes for a long time and not get to the point. I just want to state more specifically what I see happening and what I beleive. It is more to the point. I am very unhappy to see this happening. You may not be but that is your choice. I hope we as a nation will come to our senses we are not caring for our wildlands, we are letting our cities expand removing large areas of habitat and the results are not at all what we though the envromental movement of the time would produce.

 

The one great concilation to me is that over great amounts of time nature is very resiliant in a general sense. All the lands will recover, many species will be lost but others will take their place. The question for me is does it have to be that way. We are letting lots of people get their fingers into the process. It seemed like a good idea at the time but maybe it really isn't. That is not for me to say but over time we as a nation will have to judge.

 

Thanks

 

Taildragerdriver

[Taildragerdriver]

OK So Now "What is the rest of the story"

 

I wanted to take a minute to close the discussion out if we want to. It is a lot of work keeping this going and I have another main focus.

 

As you can see from my last post I have a set of beliefs about what is happening on the land on a large scale. We can talk examples for ever. There are many cases which demonstrate almost any case. In the many millions of acres of wildlands in this country a lot of things happening good and bad if humans are involved or not.

 

So the real work I do is to try to work with people to get the big answers. In fact the actual number of acres in any condition is never well know. So the big question is are thing getting better or worse depending on what we judge to be defined as better or worse. For example the area I described in the last post that was reburned seems bad to me but to some species it might be good. Those species might find a great habitat and some rare species could do better than ever there. The same could be true for failed clear cuts we talked about earlier. The fact is we just don't know. But as long as there is a lot of diversity it may well be OK

 

So the question is how much of the land is covered with any specific habitat or condition and are important conditions missing or in very short supply. For example we know most of us think there is not enough old growth. But how do we know.

 

The project I run that works across the land management agencies first works to develop detailed or fine scale vegetation maps and attempts to quantify just how accurate they are. This is done by expanding the sampling data that we collect into detailed landscape data we can use to answer these kinds of questions. This is a very difficult process because we can't just go out and sample each place on the landscape with all the acres these agencies have responsibility to manage.

 

I'm lucky to get to work with real smart people from places like Los Alamos National Lab, MIT, Texas A&M and many others in management and research to develop the methods that will help us develop and easily maintain these fine scale vegetation maps. We can then look at what is on the landscape and define my view of say old growth and test to see how much there is under that definition. Then someone else can do the same and we can then find out how much there is under that definition. This is done with a method of spreading these sample around using big statistical programs with a relationship to landsat images.

 

There are landsat images that are as much as 40 years old I believe. So when we have this method well tested and defined we could run the same kind of questions against conditions 40 years ago and see how much it has changed.

 

You can read more about this at our website

 

Informs Software

 

So the exciting thing about this is if I can't change what is going on out there on the landscape. We can and will disagree on what it good or bad or what example is the proof of our point.

 

But if we can all start from a common basic example of what is really there on the land. We have a chance to at least have our discussions from a point of real information. If I can't affect the land directly as I used to, at least I can possibly leave a legacy of knowing what is on the land.

 

We have a lot of work to do to get this right but we are lots smarter than we were a few years ago. With continued work and in a few years we hope to be able to keep up to date maps of all the lands managed by federal land mangers and make it available to anybody who wants to know.

 

Thanks for the discussion it has been fun.

 

Taildragerdriver

[InfiniteNow]

Thanks for the discussion it has been fun.

Thank you. :phones: