California’s National Forests Are a Tinderbox Waiting to Explode

admin — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:09:22 +0000

Fully 7 million of 9.8 million acres that are productive forest lands “not reserved” on California’s National Forests are in an overly dense condition. Continuing drought in California has, in part, led to a dramatic increase in catastrophic wildfires the past two years. Continuing litigation of mechanical thinning/fuels reduction projects on the National Forests has, in part, led to the announcement to curtail operations of three sawmills in the rural towns in the Sierra Nevada’s (Quincy, Camino, and Sonora). These curtailments will cause the loss of a total of 450 direct jobs and has the potential to lead to the loss of an additional total of 900 other jobs in these rural communities. Action is needed now. Without a flow of commercial sized logs from our National Forests, these three sawmills will never reopen. Without this type of infrastructure, the cost of fuels reduction on our National Forests will become prohibitively expensive. These wood products mills serve a vital role in providing commercial value from needed thinning of commercial size trees that can be used to, in part, accomplish the removal of surface and ladder fuels to drastically reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfires.

Legislative action, perhaps through the 2010 Interior Appropriations Bill, is needed to reduce the density of vegetation on California’s National Forests to a level that can be sustainable thereby providing healthy forests that are resistant to insects, disease and wildfire. Further, legislative action is also needed through the 2010 Interior Appropriations Bill to continue to increase the USFS budget for timber management and hazardous fuels.

Additional action needed…
Even if legislative action takes place, we must reverse the efforts of groups that are in opposition to forest thinning. Litigants of national forest projects in California, and particularly in the Sierra Nevada’s, are funded, in part, by “Environment Now” (www.environmentnow.org). The following is excerpted from Environment Now’s home page:

“Environment Now’s Forest Program has three key goals:

Eliminate commercial logging on all public lands in California by transitioning the Forest Service to restoration
Promote true sustainable forestry practices on private lands
Fully protect all old growth

From their website, Environment Now’s “partners”, that they provide funding to, include:

Ebbetts Pass Forest Watch—who target Sierra Pacific Industries’ timber harvest plans on their private holdings
Sierra Forest Legacy—who target timber harvest from the National Forests in the Sierra Nevada mountains
John Muir Project—who statewide appeal and litigate projects on the national forests; they share “Environment Now’s goal to end logging”
Sequoia ForestKeeper—who target vegetation projects in and around the Giant Sequoia National Monument

At the same time, the USFS in California faces 7 million of their 9.8 million acres of productive forest lands that are not reserved to be at serious risk to catastrophic wildfire. The USFS has stated that once initial treatments meet fuels objectives, they will have to re-enter the same location about once every 20 years with follow-up treatments to maintain the fuels objective. The Region is currently able to manage about 100,000 acres per year hence will only be able to realize a managed landbase of 2 million of the 9.8 million acres. Essentially this is a management policy to let the remaining 80 percent of the productive forest lands eventually burn-up in large wildfires. This management policy certainly does not provide for healthy forests and will lead to substantial negative impacts on watersheds, wildlife habitat, and water quantity and quality.

The Forest Service’s own vegetation management policy for the Sierra Nevada’s is displayed in its 2004 Sierra Nevada Framework Record of Decision, which states on page 3 that they know this limited level of management confounds the problem of overly dense vegetation on the National Forests and will lead to the forests becoming denser than they currently are. Our polling indicates that nearly 90% of adult Californians want the wildfires dramatically reduced and they recognize you have to manage the vegetation to do that (including cutting trees).

By Steve Brink, Vice President Public Resources, California Forestry Association. He will be a speaker at the Forest Forum

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California’s National Forests Are a Tinderbox Waiting to Explode