In recent years the issue of wildfires in our nation’s forests has become a hot topic, pun intended. Due to decades of fire suppression, some forests have become so densely overgrown with small trees and brush that any ignition could cause a catastrophic fire. Meanwhile, other forests continue to see little positive impact from fire control efforts.

Many people now recognize large wildfires as unhealthy and dangerous, as well as costly. The Southern California fires last fall destroyed some 3,000 buildings and killed 22 people, costing more than $250 million. Oregon’s Biscuit Fire in 2002 burned 500,000 acres, including almost all of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness.

New legislation under the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, signed by President Bush on Dec. 3, 2003, attempts to maintain healthy forests on federal lands.

But what is a healthy forest? When does fire become catastrophic? And when should it be suppressed? None of these questions are easy to answer. Scientists, firefighters, lawmakers, the public, and policy implementers are all attempting to address these issues.

Suburbs Meet Smokey the Bear

The Southern California fires burned more than 500,000 acres, bringing the state total for 2003 to approximately 1 million acres scorched. In the 273,000-acre Cedar Fire near San Diego, 2,820 buildings were lost.

Those fires are testament for the need to practice wildland management in attempts to prevent more costly suffering. As communities further expand into wildland areas, they are at greater risk of fire intrusion. These regions are known as Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI).

WUI boundaries are defined as communities that have at least three buildings per square mile. Rather than an arbitrary circle drawn around the community, the line is site-specific, according to topography.

One such WUI community is Julian, Calif. In October 2003, parts of Julian burned in the Cedar Fire. Entire neighborhoods were lost, including the home of Nicole Rogers.

Rogers, 20, is an elementary education sophomore at Humboldt State University. She said that despite her father’s attempts to clear brush and dead trees away from their house, it was still overwhelmed by flames. Only one house in the entire neighborhood was spared.

“My dad had helped that neighbor [clear brush]. He had done everything this guy had done. It was completely random,” she said.

Rogers, an only child, was at HSU when the fire occurred. Her parents, one cat and two dogs had to evacuate three days before the fire destroyed the house. They took photo albums and other family items as they left. Rogers had given them a list of important things from her room, in case of an emergency.

For many of those who lost their homes in the wildfires, life is still disrupted. “The sad part is the community of Julian is poor,” Rogers said. “Some of the families didn’t have fire insurance.” Some high school students will not be graduating this year because of the fires. “Some are still depressed,” she said.

Though her parents saved some precious belongings, Rogers still lost many sentimental items, including yearbooks, prom dresses and other mementos. She is still sad about the loss but looks on the bright side: her family had insurance that will pay for the cost of rebuilding. “It’s kind of exciting,” she said.

Communities such as Julian are faced with a significant dilemma. In order to keep fuels low in surrounding lands, prescribed burning has to take place. Yet many communities are reluctant to burn because such fires cause smoke and charred landscapes. This is not only an issue for private landowners but federal land managers as well.

Legislation for Healthier Forests

HR 1904, or the Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HFRA), had been in the making for more than a year. President Bush signed the Healthy Forests Initiative in August 2002. HR 1904, written by Congressmen Scott McInnis, (R-Colo.) and Greg Walden, (R-Ore.), is a separate piece of legislation, and was made a law in December 2003.

HR 1904 applies to all federal lands except National Wilderness Preservation System lands, Wilderness Study Areas, and federal lands where vegetation removal is prohibited.

It may also be implemented on private lands if people are willing to adopt a wildfire protection plan. Priority will be given to lands where endangered species live.

Supporters of the Act applaud the improvements that the policies will provide. They say the act will strengthen public participation in forest health projects. It will reduce complexity in environmental analysis, thereby expediting the projects that intend to improve forest health.

The White House has said that the Act “provides more effective appeals process encouraging early public participation in project planning.” And it also “issues clear guidance for court action against forest health projects.”

Critics of the Act cite the fact that lack of funding will slow the implementation, and therefore the effectiveness of the Act.

Rep. Peter DeFazio, (D-Ore.) was one opposed to HR 1904 as proposed by McInnis in May 2003. He and Rep. George Miller, (D-Calif.) wrote an amendment to the bill that would have provided adequate funding for community protection while ensuring that environmental laws were maintained. That amendment was defeated.

“The McInnis bill is a bureaucrat’s dream,” said DeFazio. “Rather than focusing efforts to reduce the threat of wildfire around high risk areas such as communities and municipal water supplies, the McInnis bill puts logging in the hands of D.C. bureaucrats.

“It provides no funding mechanism for thinning projects, so high value trees--large fire resistant trees--will have to be cut to pay for these projects.”

U.S. Forest Service vegetation program manager at Six Rivers National Forest, Roy Bergstrom, said, “Yes these fuel projects at times will produce timber sales of value. It is called trade for services. But most of the time it will be small-diameter trees [removed].”

The Act supplies approximately $900 million per year to forest health, with $720 million of that going toward fuel reduction.

The Act is seen by some as far too indiscriminate. It is open to addressing different forest types but is not specific. Matt Johnson, a wildlife habitat ecologist and professor at HSU, said, “It is hard to draft a plan that is nimble enough. Even if the plan is implemented well, [forest health] will take decades to get back to normal.”

Johnson recently published the findings of a study that he did on the Southern California fires. Using Geographical Information System technology, Johnson mapped the extent of the fires on federal forested habitat. Some legislators argued that the Southern California fires could have been greatly reduced if the plan had been in effect. In reality, most of the land that burned in those fires was privately held and non-forested.

Johnson and T. Luke George of the wildlife department at HSU collaborated on an article entitled “Sweat the Small Stuff.” In that piece they commented that the HFRA has the potential to do good. It all depends on the implementation.

“Wise use of the act could improve forest health by removing small trees and debris from forests characterized by frequent low-intensity natural fires,” they said.

“Irresponsible use of the Act could lead to the oxymoronic practice of removing healthy big trees under the pretense of enhancing forest health.”

Though forest management has improved greatly over the last 30 years, it is difficult to determine the effectiveness of managing practices because forests take so long to age. “It’s easy to overlook the fact that what we have learned, even over the last 10 to 20 years, is a lot,” said Johnson. But legislation and policies take decades or centuries before having useful or harmful impacts on our nation’s forests.

Catastrophic Fires

Steve Norman, a fire ecologist at Redwood Sciences Lab, is a researcher for the National Fire Plan Project for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service. The NFPP makes decisions dedicated to resource management and community safety.

According to Norman, a catastrophic fire is “really a value-laden concept and people need to be careful when they use it.”

“Catastrophic” is a dangerous word because many ecosystems are adapted to severe, stand-replacing fires. “Although it is a wildfire, I will never classify it as a catastrophe,” Norman stated.

Stand-replacing fires refer to those that burn essentially everything from the forest floor to the canopy. The term is synonymous with catastrophic and severe.

From an ecological perspective fire is necessary. “The motivation for a lot of the legislation is to prevent stand-replacing fires, severe fires, ‘catastrophic’ fires,’” he said. But some forests rely on severe fires.

According to manager Bergstrom, who has worked for the USFS for 25 years, a catastrophic fire “could be at the stand level or surface level. It’s large crown fires that destroy the whole stand.”

“The idea is to drop crown fires to the ground. Not stop them, just slow them,” Bergstrom said of combating severe fires.

Fires burn differently, depending on the type of forest. A chaparral environment has mostly low, shrubby vegetation and will burn with less intensity than a thick conifer forest, containing trees such as Douglas fir. Likewise, an open, grassy ponderosa or Jeffrey pine forest with frequent burns will have less devastating fires than an overgrown redwood ecosystem.

Even within the forest itself there are areas that will be more prone to fire than others. High steep slopes, for example, burn hotter than lower grades because, as the common axiom goes, heat rises. When there is a mild fire below, it can rage on the slopes above. This causes the steep-slope ecology to be markedly different than that below.

“You have a lot of complexity in fire regimes,” said Norman. “It’s a combination of fuel and topography,” along with climate and ecological systems. El Niño, for example, causes warm, dry spells in North America.

Excess fuel loads are certainly a problem in fire-suppressed forests. Fuel loads are high in certain areas because of a “zero tolerance” for wildfires since the early 20 th century. Nearly every fire has been seen as a threat to the nation’s forests and is put out whenever possible.

Fuel combined with “unusual weather conditions create conditions that are potentially going to result in the presence or absence of sprouting plants,” said Norman. That is, the severity or heat of the fire, which will determine whether or not plants are able to re-sprout, is dependent on several conditions. Not all of these are controllable factors.

“If fuel is driving fire-severity, it makes sense to treat fuel. It makes sense to do prescribed burning. It makes sense to limit the degree of the fuel. But if fires are responding to climate/weather, [the Healthy Forests Restoration Act] doesn’t make a difference.”