Bringing Habitat, Jobs and Science to Federal Forests
November 2005
When a wildfire destroys a forest, time is of the essence.
In 2001, a wildfire ripped through a state forest near Yakima, leaving only charred, dead trees standing in its wake. The State Department of Natural Resources (DNR), responsible for managing state forests, jumped into action.
Working with the local community, the Yakama tribe and others, the state put together a plan to salvage the timber and re-forest the area in only a few months. Usually, such timber harvests take up to a year to plan. The effort was roundly considered a success, with the state receiving the benefit of the harvest and the devastated area getting a jump-start on returning to healthy, natural forest.
Now the U.S. Forest Service wants to emulate this successful model with the Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act. The bipartisan bill, co-sponsored by Southwest Washington Democrat Brian Baird, who represents a district where there are thousands of family wage jobs reliant on the sustainable use of natural resources, builds on another bipartisan forestry effort, the Healthy Forest Restoration law.
This new proposal reflects a growing consensus on how to deal with catastrophic wildfire.
First, it would speed up harvest planning in forests severely damaged by wildfire or other catastrophic events. Acting quickly has a number of benefits.
When trees are killed by fire, fungus and insects soon move into the trees. In some cases the fungus creates "blue stain," diminishing the value of the trees for commercial use. Harvesting quickly can limit blue stain and ensure that the state and foresters get the best value for the trees - creating jobs and raising money for forest stewardship.
Second, the proposal would take advantage of the best research available on how to quickly return forests damaged by wildfire to a healthy state. Working with universities, it increases the amount of peer-reviewed science (i.e. science that is scrutinized and accepted) used in these circumstances. This ensures that the Forest Service takes the best steps to help forests and leaves a legacy of increased knowledge to help improve our stewardship of all forests.
Finally, it strikes a balance that guarantees public input and the right to appeal, while limiting stalling tactics that are often a tool in the hands of environmental activist lawyers. Furthermore, it requires federal agencies to work with stakeholder groups and other agencies so they can receive and consider their input quickly.
Because time is of the essence, however, it limits stalling tactics that might make the harvest moot because the timber is too damaged to be valuable. This not only ensures that the timber will still have value when it is harvested, offsetting the costs of reforestation, but forces those with concerns to make their best arguments first, rather than running out the clock with a continuous stream of scientifically dubious arguments.
Some environmental activists frequently argue that fire is a natural part of forest ecosystems. Historically this has been true. In fact, forestry science now draws on fire's past role in creating habitat diversity when planning timber harvests today.
Catastrophic fire is different now than it was 200 years ago, however. Today, due to urbanization and other human encroachment, there is less habitat diversity than centuries ago. The environmental margin of error is smaller. Writing off large areas of forest to such fires only puts additional stress on that margin.
Further, due to the forest practices of a century ago, today's forests do not look like they did back then. Today, trees are packed together and are less able to resist wildfire than they were historically. Fires are hotter and larger and can scorch the soils, removing nutrients forests need to grow back. Simply leaving these scorched forests to regrow on their own delays their return to a healthy status.
>In fact, a recent study by the Government Accountability Office found a backlog of more than one million acres that need re-planting and re-forestation.
In the same way that humans make efforts to clean contaminated sediments in waterways, we need to take action to clean up our forests due to poor decisions made in the past.
The federal government has an opportunity to create one more tool in that important effort - a tool that is a winning solution for the environment, jobs and science.