WA State Lands Commissioner - Prepare Now For Fiery Future As Bark Beetles Ravage Western Forests

[hatrack]

State Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark looks out at Washington's unhealthy forests from a pilot's seat, flying his plane from Olympia to his family's ranch in the remote reaches of Okanogan County. "It is just mind-numbing the damage you see on west facing and south facing slopes . . . an overburden of dead and dying trees," Goldmark said yesterday, referring mainly to predation by pine bark beetles.

Goldmark had just shared his up-close perspective on global warming, and its consequences for trees in the Evergreen State, at a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hearing here. The likely future for our forests through the 21st Century: Burn Baby Burn. "There is a 33 percent chance that we will see 2 million acres burn in one year by 2080: That is about 5 percent of the entire state," Goldmark told the EPA.

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Tune in TV and radio talk, and you may hear a different message. The global warming denial cult is lately on a bit of a roll. Man-caused climate change "is a hoax," D.C. pundit Patrick Buchanan declared last week on an early morning MSNBC gabfest. Rush Limbaugh sneers at "screwy little spaghetti light bulbs" and guilt-driven people "using something other than the toilet paper in the bathroom."

These guys ought to come out West, even to places where snows linger, and look around. As I drove up into the Sawtooth National Recreation Area of Idaho last weekend, the lodge pole pine forests came in three colors. The green trees were alive. The orange trees were dying. The grey trees were dead. Some of the pines were horizontal, or just stumps. The Sawtooth NRA has launched a vigorous program of forest thinning, seeking to head off a big fire in one of the most drop-dead gorgeous valleys of the Mountain West.

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http://www.seattlepi.com/connelly/406468_joel22.html?source=rss

[Fotoware58]

1. Overcrowding, drought, bark beetles, snags and fires

Many would like to say that climate change is killing all these trees but, the "root" problem has been building for decades now. In many areas of the west, there are up to 1000 times more trees per acre in our forests than pre-European conditions. American Indians expertly managed their forests and fuels build-ups using fire. Today's forests cannot be managed with fire alone, however, our society isn't ready for the scientific cure(s). Congress yet again rejected the use of Federal biomass to be used as "renewable energy". They apparently would rather continue to watch our forests go up in smoke and greenhouse gasses, draining Federal, State and local budgets. Even after last year's three month fires, CalFire has laid off an additional 1500 firefighters. Is your state doing this, as well?

How many years of 10 million acres burned can we weather until we accept what the science says? How many years can people still believe that fires are good for the land?

[nichomachus]

2. It wasn't just the Indians

Nature managed forests using fire. Fires would rage through the woods regularly. The scrubby underbrush, weak trees, and dead trees would all burn quickly -- leaving the big healthy trees scorched, but standing, as the fire raced past. They would survive.

Then, we started building homes near the forests and we started putting out the fires. This allows undergrowth and weak trees to proliferate. Trees now grow too close together. So, the fire doesn't race through any more. It slows down a bit -- and kills the big healthy trees along with everything else.

When we have government sponsored tree clearing, the tree companies now go in and selected the best, healthiest trees for clearing, leaving the underbrush and weak and diseased trees behind, which sets us up for the next big fire.

So, the bottom line is that putting out fires is what eventually causes more fires. Nature had a wonderful way of keeping forests clean. We interrupted that.

[Fotoware58]

3. Misconceptions and inaction

The Forest Service does very little logging these days. Just because private loggers still do that kind of logging on private industrial forest lands doesn't mean that it is still done on public lands. As a matter of fact, National Forests in California have banned clearcutting since 1993. Highgrading was also partly eliminated through the banning of cutting trees over 30" in diameter. Average harvest diameters are about 14" around here.

Lightning fires played a VERY small role except at the higher elevations. Since fuels were already well managed by the Indians, lightning fires would start and then go out quickly, with no massive fuels buildup to feed on. This program favored oaks and pines, which were well adapted to the regular fires.

Today's forests are so choked with excess trees and underbrush, as well as having a MUCH larger component of flammable species. We cannot just let fires rage through unnatural forests. We HAVE to intervene with whatever technique will return the forests to a much more natural balance. Once our forests are in balance, only then can we reinvent fire into the essential tool that the Indians used. Letting lightning fires burn during the hot dry summers is sheer lunacy. Unfortunately, THAT is what is happening in our public forests.

[Bigmack]

4. Nature also managed forests by having

REALLY cold winters fairly frequently, which killed off lots of the pine bark beetles, so they wouldn't survive, multiply, and kill off ENTIRE forests, as they do now. So I reckon global climate change IS playing a rather significant part in all this..... Ms Bigmack

[Fotoware58]

7. Reality

Yes, we have been having some mild winters (although the last two here in the California mtns have been cooler) that have allowed more generations of bark beetles to explode. Other significant factors are also in play. When we don't salvage dead and dying trees from wildfires, the bark beetles explode with tons of weakened trees ripe for beetle infestations. The tree's main defense mechanism against bark beetles is an ample water supply. With tree densities sometimes 3 orders of magnitude higher than the pre-European conditions, competition for water has reached and surpassed a critical amount. When that happens, entire forests become explosive breeding grounds for massive infestations. We are currently seeing this in Colorado, Wyoming and other Rocky Mountain states. This has already happened in the mountains above LA. This continues to impact all of eastern Washington and Oregon. Fires in Trinity County, California last year put as much pollution as 2 million cars driving for an entire year. These fires do NOT reduce dead fuels in our forests. They radically increase the mortality rates and bark beetle damages.

I have zero faith that the Obama Administration and the public to support what science says is needed in our forests. It is predicted that wildfires, including fires purposely allowed to burn massive acreages, will be in the 10-12 million acres on average ( http://www.nifc.gov/QFR/QFR2009Final.pdf ). The 90's average acreages were about 3.5 million. It will take a huge loss of life and property to slow down the inertia against forest management. The Democrats promise to set aside another 25 million acres as desiganted and undesignated wilderness in the Rockies, all of it at risk to catastrophic fires. Climate scientists refuse to combine CO2 emissions from man-caused and man-enhanced wildfires into their equations and analyses. It's like CO2 molecules from wildfires are "good carbon".

Again, I ask. What is wrong with restoring our forests to pre-European conditions??

[Barrett808]

5. "You know, there are a lot of people who don't believe in climate change."

"You won't find them on the fire line in the American West anymore," Tom Boatner says. "'Cause we've had climate change beat into us over the last ten or fifteen years. We know what we’re seeing, and we're dealing with a period of climate, in terms of temperature and humidity and drought that's different than anything people have seen in our lifetimes."

-- The Age Of Mega-Fires (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/18/60minutes/main3380176.shtml)

[Fotoware58]

6. Planned mega-fires

The governement already has a catastrophic fire program underway, including some private lands. MMA's (Maximum Management Areas) have a maximum of 100,000 acres and have already been mapped out throughout National Forests in the west. These are areas which are pre-decided to be unmanaged for fire safety and forest health in favor of a lightning fire to come in and get going. The Biscuit Fire is a very good example of this. These kind of Let-Burn fires are extremely costly when they get out of hand, as they often do. Fires in California last year burned for 3 months straight with this strategy. Yes, firefighters are seeing incredible fire behavior but, that is consistent with the overcrowded forests more than with climate change. If we could magically fix climate change in today, we'd still be having devastating megafires tomorrow.

Where is the EPA in protecting us using the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts??!? My Uncle died from wildfire smoke. How many animals and fish die from wildfire impacts? Even last year's wine production was impacted by "smoke taint". Although the government claims "resource benefits" from these Let-Burn fires, I have yet to see what those benefits are and how they benefit us and the environment. The impacts have not been formally analyzed and the Feds are just "winging it" with their fire policy.