Last year’s fire season was bad. This year’s could be too. So why does agreement on a plan to reduce the likelihood of forest fires remain elusive?

“We keep hearing that if only we could do active management we could reduce the risk of severe fires,” said Dominick DellaSala, chief scientist at the Geos Institute, a climate change solutions advocacy group based in Ashland. “I heard that continuously when I testified before Congress last September. But when we looked at 1,500 fires, we found it’s the areas with the most active management that had the highest amount of high-severity fires. They wouldn’t believe that data.”

Read the full article by Pete Danko at the Portland Business Journal

Geos Institute and NGO comments on the Chetco Bar post-fire logging environmental assessment. The Chetco fire took place in an area of extraordinary botanical diversity, spectacular wild rivers, and a potential climate sanctuary along the Oregon-California border that benefited from the fire but will be impacted by extensive post-fire logging by the Forest Service. 

Geos Institute releases a new report, “Everything you wanted to know about wildland fires in forests but were afraid to ask: lessons learned, ways forward“, summarizing latest wildfire science and calls on decision makers to develop science-based policies that protect communities from fire and allow wildfires to perform their ecological functions safely in the backcountry.

Media Coverage

• Phys.org highlighted this report on April 9, 2018

Marc Heller and Geof Koss, E&E News reporters

Published: Wednesday, March 21, 2018

A long-term solution to address the climbing cost of wildfires continued to stymie lawmakers yesterday, despite a near-agreement to loosen some environmental restrictions on timber harvesting.

Lawmakers, congressional aides and industry insiders tracking the issue said top lawmakers were on the cusp of a deal early this week, only to see it dashed for a reason that some hadn’t seen as contentious: how to set up disaster funding so the Forest Service can cover the cost without hurting other programs.

The basic outline of a deal, they said, involved expanding certain categorical exclusions from the National Environmental Policy Act. The exceptions allowed for forest thinning on several thousand acres and expanding “good neighbor” authority that allows the Forest Service to work with states on forest management projects.

Congress has included 90 anti-environmental riders on the Omnibus Appropriations bill that it is rushing to pass next week. Measures to address runaway wildfire suppression spending, for instance, include destructive riders to eliminate protections for old-growth forests and roadless areas in Alaska, expand Categorical Exclusions (no environmental review) on logging projects up to 6,000 acres, and weaken protections for endangered species.

I am excited to report that over 200 scientists have signed on so far. The letter will be delivered to Capitol Hill staffers on Friday morning DC time; however, we will continue to accept signatories through Tuesday of next week as we update the final count and resubmit the letter later.

View the letter delivered Friday, March 16, 2018.

Commissioners hit Forest Service with vote of “no confidence,” but they stand alone

By Curtis Hayden

Originally published in Sneak Preview on March 1, 2018 (Grants Pass and Medford) and April 1 (Ashland)

The timing was impeccable. A couple of weeks ago my wife and I were visited by some friends from Portland, Tom and Laura, and when I mentioned that I was writing a story about the Josephine County commissioners and their vote of no-confidence in the ability of the U.S. Forest Service to handle catastrophic forest fires, Tom went out to his car and returned with a book he was reading, Timothy Egan’s The Big Burn.

I figured the book was about the Tillamook Fire of 1933 because I’d heard a lot about that Mother of All Fires over the years.

“The Tillamook Fire was nothing,” Tom said. “It only burned 300,000 acres. This book is about the fire that took place in northern Idaho, Montana and Washington in 1910, which burned over three million acres.”

Commissioners hit Forest Service with vote of “no confidence,” but they stand alone

By Curtis Hayden

Originally published in Sneak Preview on March 1, 2018 (Grants Pass and Medford) and April 1 (Ashland)

The timing was impeccable. A couple of weeks ago my wife and I were visited by some friends from Portland, Tom and Laura, and when I mentioned that I was writing a story about the Josephine County commissioners and their vote of no-confidence in the ability of the U.S. Forest Service to handle catastrophic forest fires, Tom went out to his car and returned with a book he was reading, Timothy Egan’s The Big Burn.

I figured the book was about the Tillamook Fire of 1933 because I’d heard a lot about that Mother of All Fires over the years.

“The Tillamook Fire was nothing,” Tom said. “It only burned 300,000 acres. This book is about the fire that took place in northern Idaho, Montana and Washington in 1910, which burned over three million acres.”

On Friday Februray 16th the following article was posted online by the Washington Post, featuring the work of Forest Legacies director Dominick DellaSala. 

The 15-year-old boy who started a wildfire that torched 48,000 acres of one of the northwest’s most coveted scenic regions entered the courtroom stoically Friday. Wearing a beige suit, a black necktie and with his hair neatly combed, he admitted to all 12 of the misdemeanor charges against him, and when he spoke to the courtroom, he apologized.

He apologized seven times.

The wildfire he admitted to sparking along the Eagle Creek Trail — in the heart of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area — started Sept. 2 when he hurled a firecracker into a dry ravine as a group of friends filmed him with a cellphone. On that scorching-hot afternoon, the state was in the midst of a burn ban.

“Every day I think about this terrible decision and its awful consequences,” said the Vancouver, Wash., boy, who is being identified by the judge only by his initials, A.B. “I know I will have to live with my bad decision for the rest of my life.”

This story from E&E News is especially timely. We’ve been pushing hard here at Forest Legacies on the fire fix funding as there are really bad logging provisions being proposed by Congress that would usher in massive logging on national forests, eliminate roadless and old growth protections on the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, and bypass landmark environmental laws. We recently with law makers and the reporter below while in DC. This is a big push nationally to maintain public lands protections that we are involved with.

By Marc Heller and Geof Koss, E&E News reporters

Originally Published at E&E News on Thursday, February 8, 2018

The battle over federal wildfire funding and forest management will go on, given that a broad budget deal between Senate leaders failed to resolve the issue.

Watch a recording from January 19, 2018 from the University of Northern British Columbia “Cumulative Impacts Research Consortium Panel Presentation: Wildfire preparedness and Cumulative Impacts“.

Presenters are: Dominick DellaSala, Madeline Maley, Raina Fumerton, and Sonja Leverkus.