Scientists: Wildfire Prevention More Than Logging

NEW YORK, New York, August 4, 2004 (ENS) - It is time for federal and state governments to reassess strategies for managing wildfires on public lands, scientists said Monday at the annual meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology in New York. Current management practices often fail to consider the long term and evolving needs of the land and do not target the areas most in need of protection near communities, the scientists said.

They are calling for approaches that focus on long term restoration of the integrity of forests and rangelands, and prepare for wildlands fire using targeted risk reduction measures.

"Different forest types have different fire regimes ... and require fundamentally different fire management approaches than those currently practiced by federal forest management policies and programs," said Jerry Franklin, a professor of ecosystem studies at the University of Washington.

"Land managers must adopt a new vision for wildfire preparation that recognizes the important ecological differences and social priorities between one place and another."

Some five million acres have already burned this year, with 15 active large fires across 10 states. (Photo courtesy Forest Service)

Decades of fire suppression, road construction, and loss of forest diversity have reduced the health of many western lands and increased the risk of catastrophic wildfire.

The timber industry, encouraged and subsidized by the U.S. Forest Service, has clearcut huge tracts of natural forests, often replacing them with closely spaced and highly flammable timber plantations.

There is also the emerging threat of invasive species, which has decimated the health of several Western forests, and the severe drought that has parched the West for much of the past decade.

More than the health of the forests is at stake, said Cindy Deacon Williams, an ecologist with the Oregon environmental group Headwaters.

"Successfully preparing for wildlands fire has become even more critical as people increasingly build their homes in the woods," she said. "Forests cannot be fireproofed but we can prepare for fire by restoring the integrity of our wildland forests and rangelands."

The new vision for fire preparation recommends actions in three land management zones.

In areas near communities that typically have many roads - the "wildlands-urban intermix zone" - the scientists call for an emphasis on fuel treatments and wildfire suppression to protect communities.

They call for a different approach in the "restoration matrix zone," which they define as areas farther away from communities, but locations where significant management activities occur and which can have a variety of road densities.

In this zone, the proposal calls a management emphasis on restoration of healthy forest conditions and high biological integrity.

Duirng the past few years, fighting wildfires has cost the federal government more than $1 billion annually. (Photo by Robert Eplett courtesy California Office of Emergency Services )

Within remote areas that are mostly unroaded tracts of public land, called the "wildlands zone," they recommend actions that would restore fire as a natural landscape disturbance agent.

"Fire is a force of nature that sculpted much of the western landscape," said Jack Williams, a professor at Southern Oregon University and Science Coordinator of the Southern Oregon Institute for Environmental Studies. "The new vision we [propose] offers a strategy that outlines a more effective way to live safely with wildlands fires."

The post-fire response also needs to be reassessed, said Chris Frissell, an ecologist with the Pacific Rivers Council.

Frissell criticized support for logging of burned trees and for active seeding and replanting following fire.

Natural regeneration readily occurs in most circumstances, he said.

"Timber harvest and many associated traditional post-fire management actions do not help recovery and should not be considered "restorative actions" for post-fire landscapes," Frissell said. "They typically do more harm than good, risking the health of the land, the quality of the water, and the ability of the area to support fish and wildlife."