<\/p>\n
As the West contends with a big wildfire season, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke urged his staff to take aggressive action to prevent wildfires. His memo calls on managers to \u201cthink differently\u201d about reducing the accumulation of dense vegetation. He wants vegetation cleared if it encroaches on roads or buildings, and dead trees removed if they can spread fire to valuable property or beyond the boundaries of parks, refuges or other Interior Department lands.<\/p>\n
Forest fire experts say Zinke gets some things right in his memo but caution that its goal\u2014 to stop and prevent forest fires \u2014 is unattainable and not even desirable. They say Zinke\u2019s memo and accompanying press release perpetuate the public\u2019s misperception about fire by suggesting that by thinning forests, forest managers can avoid or snuff out forest fires.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been failing at that for 120 years,\u201d says Andrew Larson, associate professor of forest ecology at the University of Montana. \u201cZinke is a smart guy; he picks battles he can win. It surprises me he\u2019s making a promise I don\u2019t think he can deliver on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wildfires have burned more than 8 million acres this year, far exceeding the annual average over the last ten years. In Montana, Zinke\u2019s home state, drought-fueled wildfires scorched nearly 1.3 million acres, about four times the average over the past decade. Fire severely damaged a historic dormitory in Glacier National Park\u2019s Sperry Chalet.<\/p>\n
Zinke\u2019s memo states: \u201cIt is well settled that the steady accumulation of vegetation in areas that have historically burned at frequent intervals exacerbates fuel conditions and often leads to larger and higher-intensity fires.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s accurate, Larson says, but what\u2019s missing is the reason that forests are choked with vegetation. \u201cThe problem with fuels is that we\u2019ve suppressed fire,\u201d Larson says. \u201cIt\u2019s a problem we\u2019ve created for ourselves.\u201d Zinke\u2019s memo advocates limiting fire in the future, which will continue this problem.<\/p>\n
More aggressive thinning in low-elevation forests near communities could limit the damage to homes and other structures, Larson says. It also could minimize the severity of future fires in those areas, so that more trees survive those fires.<\/p>\n
But the thinning can\u2019t prevent fires in those areas. And the vast majority of the acreage burned in Montana this year is in higher elevations and wilderness areas, where thinning wouldn\u2019t be practical or appropriate, experts say.<\/p>\n
There are more omissions from Zinke\u2019s memo. For example, the memo doesn\u2019t mention the best tool forest managers have to minimize fuels and restore forests: prescribed burns. And the biggest factors fueling Western wildfires \u2014 weather and climate \u2014 were entirely absent: \u201cThe scientific community knows with such great certainty the overriding importance of weather and climate as the primary drivers of Western forest fire regimes,\u201d says Larson. \u201cFuels are important too. But if we\u2019re only focused on fuels we\u2019re missing the big driver.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also absent from Zinke\u2019s message is the major role climate change plays in Western forest fires. In a groundbreaking study published last October, scientists estimated that nearly half of the acreage burned in Western forests over the last three decades could be attributed to human-caused climate change. Under climate change, summers in the West are projected to become increasingly warmer and drier, increasing the frequency of severe wildfire years. Philip Higuera, an associate professor of fire ecology also at the University of Montana, says: \u201cIf our policies don\u2019t acknowledge the role that climate plays in driving these large wildfires seasons like we\u2019re seeing this year, the policies we develop are going to be misguided.\u201d<\/p>\n
The professors also take issue with Zinke\u2019s characterization of fire in the West as \u201ccatastrophic.\u201d Many Western species have life cycles that are dependent on fire. For example, at higher elevations, the cones from lodgepole pines don\u2019t open without fire, meaning the trees can\u2019t propagate themselves.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no question that fires can be catastrophic when they\u2019re close to communities and destroy homes or buildings. \u201cBut when they\u2019re not doing that, they\u2019re doing a really important service and playing an important function in ecosystems,\u201d Higuera says. \u201cIf we value landscapes that include national processes, we have to learn how to live and work with having fire in the landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n
One important role that fire plays might resonate with Zinke, a hunter who is determined to make public lands more hospitable for sportsmen. Hunters often complain when smoke and flames keep them from their favorite hunting areas. But Larson takes the longer view. His favorite elk hunting spot in Montana\u2019s Bob Marshall Wilderness is within the area burned by the Rice Ridge Fire, and Larson won\u2019t be able to hunt there this fall. But in coming years, as the forest regenerates, elk will be lured to that very place because tasty forbs that elk love will flourish in the bright sunlight. \u201cAfter a few years, fires give us great big game habitat,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
This article was first published on High Country News.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ignores major drivers of West\u2019s fires<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":103471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,44,13,549,84],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-103470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-dolores","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-united-states-forest-service","tag-wildfire"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103470"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=103470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}