10/01/2020
Especially this time of year
Hazardous amounts of forest fuel in our forest, is on my mind.
250,000 acres of complete lose in one fire suppression operational period. Lives gone forever, lose of property, lose of a huge portion of forest.
People are blaming climate change on these fires, It plays a roll fore sure.
Please understand, people who have extensive experience and knowledge about forest fires and weather, believe the primary cause for the complete destruction of huge amounts of our forest is due to mismanagement. Forests that are in balance with fire benefit from fire.
We need these forest to combat the climate crisis. The trees hold tons of carbon.
I know blaming sounds negative, I don't care about blame, just want the cause to be known, so we can fix the problem.
Fire suppression has eliminated the historic frequent low intensity wildfires that used to "clean up" all the dead forest material, that we call "Forest fuels".
It is a well known fact, that any given acre used to burn between 15 -30 years, and many acres more frequently than that. We refer to this as a "fire frequency". 99.9% of the western mixed conifer forest has not burned in ~110 YEARS. This means that due to the absence of approximately 15 fire events per acre.
THERE IS SO MUCH DEAD DRY FOREST FUEL IN THE FOREST, AND BILLIONS OF SMALLER TREES GROWING UNDER LARGER TREES. The combination creates the perfect continuity and arrangement of forest fuels for catastrophic fire.
Coniferous trees, especially the pine tree sheds long leaf needles to encourage fire to burn under and around themselves. They have evolved to encourage fire. Western forest are highly adapted for fire, they depend on regular frequent fire.
The low intensity fires stops any of the trees off spring from growing under is's self. This is how low intensity forest fires determine the amount of spacing between trees in the forest. "Forest fire is a forest chaperone, It cleans up and determines who dies."
The historic forest fire suppression management style has stopped the fire from killing the trees off spring, and we are left with a forest were all the tree sapling are allowed to grow under the parent trees. This causes a ladder effect for wild fire. We call the trees that grow under their parent "ladder fuels".
We will always need our fire fighters, I am not saying that we don't need suppression. We also need our frequent forest fires back in our forests. This will make fire fighting safer, more effective and reduce the cost of suppression.
The Native Americans helped nature, and protected their round houses, by burning the forest every fall when the forest was dry, so the fire would carry along way burning underneath the trees.
To regain lost forest fire frequencies and return forest fire balance:
- Cutting the ladder fuel (thinning) and piling it to burn it in the fall,
winter, spring.
- Prescribe fire to burn under the trees that did not get cut.
- Continue to promote low intensity forest fires on landscape scale.
The U.S. Forest Service is very aware of everything mentioned here.
The forest Service has been stopped from managing the forest on different levels, by different groups. One of the most egregious is the Sierra Club "environmentalist" who believe that the Forest Service should not cut a tree in the forest and that no management is the best approach to dealing with the forest. The Sierra Club takes the USFS to court over thinning, piling and burning stopping them from properly managing the forest.
Lets get something clear right now. Once the forest is in balance with fire, FIRE manages the forest. That is as close to no management as you can get. Even fire suppression is a management style.
By the way, people say " there is too much forest to thin, pile and burn, how much would that cost " it cost about $1000 per acre.
Do the math per acre of the fire foot print, for the suppression management style. Then add in lose of life, property, timber, wildlife, extremely poor air quality for months, ect...................
And if we do not properly manage the forest we will only have a very small amount of forest left, maybe then we can save the trees.
