Administration's "Healthy Forest Initiative" Promotes More Logging

by Molly Absolon

Fire. The word conjures up images of towering flames working their way toward homes near Jackson or helicopters hovering over blackened hillsides dumping retardant on smoking trees.

Fire: devastation and tragedy. Firefighters are killed, homes burned, billions of dollars lost. Fire: critical to forest health and vital to wildlife habitat.

Fire. Is it good or evil? The truth lies somewhere in between. But the irony of the Bush Administration's recently announced Healthy Forest Initiative is that many of the policies it advocates actually compromise the health of some types of forest - most notably, Wyoming's lodgepole pine forests.

In December, the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a fact sheet outlining the administration's plan to "streamline" environmental studies on fuel-reduction projects, limit public input on thinning and prescribed-burn plans and allow private companies to sell timber logged from thinning projects on public lands.

"America's forests and rangelands are suffering a crisis of deteriorating ecological health," claimed the fact sheet.

According to the Bush Administration, land managers have been hamstrung in their efforts to restore forest health by "excessive analysis, ineffective public involvement, and management inefficiencies that trap land managers in costly procedural quagmires."

On the contrary, say conservationists. They believe that the Healthy Forest Initiative is a backhanded way to allow more logging with less environmental review in our nation's national forests.

Critics of the Bush plan say it oversimplifies the wildfire issue and that the Healthy Forests Initiative is an attempt by the administration to apply a "one-size-fits-all" rule to the nation's diverse forests. They believe that comparing the fire regime of a ponderosa pine forest to that of the lodgepole pine forests that blanket much of Wyoming's high country is like comparing apples and oranges.

"When you look at the forest record, you see that fire is a common occurrence for all forest types," says Karl Brauneis, the forest fire management officer for the Shoshone National Forest. "What varies is the interval between burns. For sagebrush, limber pine and juniper, the fire frequency is once every 40 years or so. For lodgepole pines, fires occur once every few hundred years."

In forests adapted to frequent, low-intensity understory fires - specifically ponderosa pine forests - fire suppression has resulted in excessive accumulations of highly flammable fuels. For these forests, restoring normal fuel loads by thinning undergrowth or through prescribed burns makes sense, according to Norman Christensen Jr., a professor of ecology at Duke University's Nicholas School of Environment and Earth Sciences. But, Christensen adds, "Our fire management policies and protocols should be tailored to the particular conditions of each region…not a backdoor mechanism to increase cuts of merchantable timber on public lands."

In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, ponderosa pines are rare. The dominant tree species between 5,000 and 8,000 feet in elevation in the region is the lodgepole pine. These trees have adapted to infrequent, intense fires that wipe out entire stands of trees - which is exactly what happened with the Yellowstone fires of 1988. For these trees, six or seven decades of fire suppression and logging is not enough time to make a profound impact on the natural fire cycle of the forest. Such an impact would require as many as 300 to 500 years without a fire.

Fire suppression became part of U.S. Forest Service policy in 1910 following a devastating conflagration that burned through the town of Wallace, Idaho and killed as many as 80 people. After World War II, new equipment such as four-wheel drive vehicles, aircraft and bulldozers enhanced the Forest Service's effectiveness at putting out fires. For nearly 50 years, the prevailing wisdom was that fires were bad and needed to be fought aggressively.

Fireweed thrives after Lake Louise fire. Photo by U.S. Forest Service

But as early as 1935, there was an undercurrent of disagreement. Within the Forest Service, forest managers talked about the pros and cons of letting fires burn. But those questioning the wisdom of fire suppression were in the minority and public opinion stood staunchly behind Smokey Bear's mantra, "Only you can prevent forest fires." Fire towers were manned in remote wildlands and every plume of smoke was jumped on until the 70s, when it became obvious that forest health was suffering rather than flourishing in the absence of fires.

The Yellowstone fires of 1988 marked a turning point in public opinion. As the nation watched the park recover from what initially seemed to have been a devastating blow, people began to realize that fires played an important role in maintaining forest health and wildlife habitat.

Nearly 15 years after the Yellowstone fires left many areas of the park smoldering, the park's forests are thriving and most people agree that the fires enhanced wildlife habitat by creating a mosaic of different vegetation and varied-aged stands of trees. Such diversity provides more cover, forage and standing snags for birds, small mammals, ungulates and predators.

According to a report by the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, evidence from the Yellowstone fires indicates that what was considered a catastrophe at the time has, in fact, revitalized both the park and the adjacent forests that also burned in 1988. Furthermore, the report states that active fire management of lodgepole pine forests - such has thinning - does not reduce the likelihood of wildfires.

"Thinning may help ponderosas, but there is no evidence that thinning predominately lodgepole forests suppresses fire," the coalition's report says. "Thinning lodgepole stands may actually aggravate fire conditions by opening up areas and removing moisture from the forest floor, creating a drier forest environment."

The critical factor for lodgepole forests is drought. As long as the West continues to experience prolonged drought, the risk of fire remains high. For this reason, conservation groups argue that fire management efforts should be focused on the urban-forest interface where wildfires threaten property and lives.

The Healthy Forests Initiative's focus on reducing fuel loads forest-wide is at best shortsighted, andat worst a blatant attempt to blindside the public with a seemingly worthy cause - reducing the risk of wildfire - while in reality promoting more logging.

"It is disingenuous to promote increased logging packaged as fuel reduction," says Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club. "If the Bush Administration is serious about protecting communities from forest fire, it should focus resources on real fuel reduction near at-risk communities instead of opening up more loopholes for industry."

WOC board officer Molly Absolon is a Lander writer.