On Oct. 16,  Judge Morrison C. England of the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California issued a written judgment denying the injunctions demanded by the Plaintiffs, a coalition of environmental groups led by Sierra Forest Legacy, formerly known as Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign. Others in the (losing) coalition are the Center For Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, and the Wilderness Society.

The victorious defendants were Mark Rey, in his official capacity as Under Secretary of Agriculture, Dale Bosworth, in his official capacity as Chief of the United States Forest Service on the date of filing, Jack Blackwell, in his official capacity as Regional Forester, Region 5, US Forest Service, and James M. Pena, in his official capacity as Forest Supervisor, Plumas National Forest. For a report from the Plumas County News, see (here).

The Plaintiffs sought to have the court enjoin three forest thinning projects initiated through the efforts of the Quincy Library Group. The QLG (website here) is a local citizen group with a steering group of about 30 members, formed in Quincy, CA in 1994. The QLG has been the most successful of any local group in the Nation at influencing the stewardship of the federal land in their landscape, about 2.5 million acres that encompasses most of the watershed of the Feather River. For a partial history (through 1998) of the Quincy Library Group, see (here).

In 2004, Regional Forester Jack Blackwell signed a new Record of Decision (ROD) for the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan Amendment providing authority to USFS managers to implement pilot thinning projects called for in the 1998 Herger-Feinstein Quincy Library Group Forest Recovery Act.

Since then the construction of over thirty lineal miles of DFPZ’s (Defensible Fuel Profile Zones: areas approximately ¼ to ½ mile wide where fuel loadings are reduced, usually along roads) have saved hundreds of thousands of acres of Sierra forest from catastrophic fire.

The Plaintiffs sought a preliminary injunction on grounds that the Slapjack, Basin and Empire Projects risked irreparable harm to old forest habitat and imperiled wildlife including California spotted owls, Pacific fishers and American martens. However, no fishers or martens have been seen within 200 miles of any of the project areas during the last 40 years.

The Projects are forest thinnings in the Wildland-Urban Interface, that most dangerous of fire zones. The Empire Project will treat 2,500 acres immediately adjacent to five communities at risk: Quincy, Massack, Greenhorn, Keddie and Butterfly Valley. The 35,00 acre Slapjack Project is near the communities of Brownsville, Challenge, Clipper Mills, Dobbins, Feather Fall, Forbestown, and Strawberry Valley, which collectively are home to between 5,000 and 7,0000 people. The Basin Project is 1,300 acres of similar selective thinning.

Judge England rejected the arguments of the Plantiffs, refused to grant an injunction, and wrote an excellent, landmark decision (for the entire document see here, 160KB): Some excerpts:

The USFWS study opined that the vegetation management treatments envisioned by the HFQLG Act (which include the three projects presently at issue) would not adversely affect the owl, and stated unequivocally 1) that catastrophic wildfire appears to be the greatest potential threat to the owl, with fuel-reduction treatments being necessary to reduce that threat; and 2) that the contemplated treatments will not threaten the continued existence of the owl…

Any impact on either the Pacific Fisher or the American Marten by the site specific plans is even more attenuated than potential effects regarding the owl. While Plaintiffs appear to argue that logging would increase fragmentation and create barriers to the movement of these forest carnivores, the simple fact is that neither species appears to be present within the project areas. No marten sightings have ever been reported 10 within any of the three project locations; in fact, marten generally prefer habitat at higher elevations than the lands at issue here. In addition, no scientifically validated sightings of fisher within 200 miles of any of the projects has occurred within the last 40 years…

In sum, then, available data shows that habitat effects upon owls are minimal, with the vast majority of habitat being unaffected by the projects in question and with the owl comprising a stable population in any event. Protections affecting potential forest carnivore habitat are also largely unaffected by the projects even though virtually no individual carnivore specimens have been detected…

Continue reading this entry »

In the previous few posts SOS Forests has presented some discussions about fires in the Northern Rocky Mountains. Last January we also wrote about the subject in these two posts:

Whoofoos Kill Old-Growth (here)

Homeland (here)

We present those again, because they pertain, and also because we are busy with other matters. This site is under reconstruction. Watch out for falling objects. Wear a hardhat around here.

The lightning storm that passed over the Oregon Cascades Thursday night ignited a fire in the Badger Creek Wilderness Area. The Ball Point Fire was reported to be 700 acres an hour ago on InciWeb (see here).

The Central Oregon Type II IMT with IC Tom Goheen (see here) assumed command of the Ball Point Fire at 6 am this morning.

The Ball Point Fire is reportedly burning in the vicinity of Ball Point (Butte) between Tygh Creek to the north and Little Badger Creek to the south, although the fire jumped Little Badger Creek yesterday. The majority of the fire is within the Badger Creek Wilderness Area.

Last summer the Mt. Hood Complex Fire was also started by a lightning storm. The majority of that fire was in the Mt. Hood Wilderness, but the Gumjuwac Fire (40 acres) and some other small fires were within the Badger Creek Wilderness.

The Ball Point Fire is about ten miles east of the 2006 Gumjuwac Fire on the eastern edge of the Badger, just west of the White River Wildlife Management Area (OR Fish and Wildlife Dept.), and about 5 miles west of the private lands in Tygh Valley and Friend.

The Incident Base Camp (ICP) is being set-up at Dufur High School in Dufur. The helibase is located at Rock Creek Youth Camp.

InciWeb reported 216 personnel on the fire an hour ago, and additional resources are arriving hourly. This report on the fire was put together by Goheen’s IMT:

FIRE SITUATION:

Last night, the winds increased the fire activity and the fire made a run to the southeast and spotted over Little Badger Creek. A new acreage estimate will occur once crew are on the lines and able to view the fire growth. Today, crews are improving an existing spur road off the Forest Rd 2711 near the southwest flank and anchoring to begin line construction along the adjacent ridge. On the north flank crews are constructing hand line along Tygh Creek. Other crews are constructing direct line along the southeast flank, burning out where needed, holding this perimeter along the Forest Road 27, and installing hose lays for mop-up activities. The northwest flank is being scouted for the best location for hand line construction. Safety concerns to the firefighter are hazardous driving, extreme fire behavior in the bug killed and diseased trees, and falling snags. Helicopters will be supporting line construction as well as any burnout operations.

CLOSURES:

Forest Road 27 is closed to the public from the junction of the Friend Market Rd. south to the junction of Forest Rd 2711.

The following trails are also closed to public access:

Trail #460, Tygh Creek Trail

Trail #468, School Canyon Trail

Trail#469, Little Badger Creek Trail

The eastern portion of the Badger Creek watershed is much different than the western portion. The headwaters arise in an alpine bowl which is surrounded by high peaks and ridges, out of which flow four creeks: Badger Cr., Little Badger Cr., Tygh Cr. and Jordan Cr. The creeks flow east, exiting the alpine bowl between a collection of buttes: Gordon Butte, Ball Point, Hootnanny Point, Pen Point, Jordan Butte, and Frailey Point. These buttes, which are high points along east-tending ridges, geographically separate the western and eastern portions of the Badger Creek Wilderness.

The forest in the alpine bowl is much different than the eastern forest. The eastern Badger forest is a remnant open, park-like ponderosa pine forest, (now mostly a dense thicket of fir under old-growth pine), grading east into white oak and high desert prairie, and was maintained for millennia by anthropogenic fire. The higher western portion in its protected bowl exhibits much less human influence, and is more of a lightning fire forest.

The bowl has more than a dozen conifer species in patches both mixed and pure. The eastern slopes are (or were at one time) almost pure ponderosa pine. The difference has a lot do with perennial west winds. Historically, anthropogenic fires set in Tygh Valley and other watered flats to the east must have had a tough time traveling west. Even if fires were set when east winds were blowing, such winds do not last more than a few days at most.

The forest in the bowl is unique. There are few places on the east slope of the Cascades that were beyond the reach of anthropogenic fire. The Badger Creek watershed is an excellent place to study the effects of millennia of anthropogenic fire in comparison to an area almost immune from such fires.

The problem of the moment, however, is getting the Ball Point Fire contained. It’s always a bummer when Federal fires rage down upon communities filled with reactionary and independent-minded American citizens who didn’t like the Federal Government a whole lot to begin with. So the sooner the danger is averted, the better, for everybody.

Special Week Special No. 4

Today during Special Week at SOS Forests, we present the first Blogosphere pictures of the Black Crater Burn.

The Black Crater Fire started last July in the Three Sisters Wilderness of the Deschutes National Forest, west of Sisters, Oregon. By the time it was contained, nearly 10,000 acres had burned and nearly $10,000,000 had been spent fighting the fire. Most of the acreage burned was on public and private lands outside the designated wilderness.

The Black Crater Fire was contained in mid-August. These pictures were taken today, Friday, 9/29/06.

At the entrance of the 15 Road near Highway 246 is this macabre sign: a warning, become an omen, become grim reality.

Click for larger image (144 KB).

The forest that burned was, like so many western forests, multi-cohort ponderosa pine. The older cohort consisted of 10 to 20 trees per acre, all over 150 years old, but of varying ages up to 300+ years. The younger cohort had as many as 1,000 trees per acre, all 120 years old and younger.

This is what the forest looked like before the fire. Note the scattered old trees, one of them recently deceased. The thicket below competes with the older trees, not for sun, but for soil moisture. (The debris is pushed up from the fireline behind the camera.)

Click for larger image (237 KB).

The older cohort trees are the remnant relics from the open, park-like forest that once covered much the West. The open forest, almost a conifer savanna, was maintained by frequent, regular, anthropogenic fire, i.e. fire set by anthropoids, the human residents of the region for millennia past. In the absence of the Tenders and their firesticks, a thicket of doghair, “bull pine” ponderosa has arisen underneath the older cohort.

The ancient fires protected forests. Modern fires destroy them. For example, not 200 feet away from the last pic, but inside the fireline, this old growth, ancient, heritage tree was killed by the fire.

Click for larger image (215 KB).

This old growth tree was shooting sparks and had to be felled and bucked. It was 222 years old 8 feet off the ground, so approximately 240 years old. It germinated around 1760.

Click for larger image (235 KB).

This old tree had lived through many fires, but this fire burned it through, and it fell. Firefighters bucked the burning butt log off. The tree had 264 rings at 12 feet off the ground, so was approximately 290 years old, germinating around 1710.

Click for larger image (259 KB).

The dead forest is nearly silent now. There are no birds, or squirrels, or chipmunks. There is a faint hum, though. Almost every dead tree emits a tiny chirping noise. Softer than a cricket, regular and rhythmic, the chirps sound like little kisses.

Click for larger image (302 KB).

They are kisses of death: the mating calls of the male mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae. The male beetles invade the freshly killed trees, depositing a blue stain fungus, Ophiostoma sp., in the still wet cambiums. The females are attracted by the osculent chirping. The beetles mate as enthusiastically as small insects can, and the females deposit eggs in galleries under the bark. The larvae that hatch shortly thereafter, together with the blue stain fungus, girdle and plug up vessels in living trees, which are also invaded after the fire.

This old growth ponderosa pine survived the fire. It will not survive the beetle infestation.

Click for larger image (194 KB).

A few patches of doomed green trees here and there, less than 5 percent of total burn area that we walked through, and the eerie, rhythmic chirping of the bark beetles, were the only signs of life today in the Black Crater Burn.

A new forest fire started yesterday (evidently) on the west slope of the Oregon Cascades, in the Santiam River watershed. The Middle Fork Fire grew to over 700 acres as initial attack crews arrived from the Puzzle Fire 30 miles to the east.

State and Fed responders helped evacuate about 1,000 people from campgrounds and trails near Green Peter Reservoir and the Quartzville area. The fire is near Rocky Top Mountain between the Middle Fork of the Santiam River and Quartzville Creek. It is just north of the reservoir.

The Middle Fork Fire is burning in second growth restocked clearcuts and old growth forest. Temperatures are expected to get into the high 90’s today. An east wind is blowing, driven by a high pressure cell now over the Columbia Basin/Plateau.

This fire is going to get bigger. How much remains to be seen, but indications are not good.

The Middle Fork Fire is a west side fire, with huge fuel loadings on steep and dissected terrain. There are two designated wilderness areas in the immediate vicinity: the Middle Santiam and the Menagerie Wildernesses. Two more are a few miles north: Opal Creek and the Bull of the Woods Wildernesses.

If the fire gets into any of those, watch out. Westside old growth burns like no other forest type, with flames shooting hundreds of feet into the sky and combustion temperatures approaching Cone 10 (2300 degrees F). It is impossible to put out westside old growth forest fires directly. Firefighters must drop back to defensible perimeters and set fires that move back towards the main fire, burning out the fuels in between.

Let us hope that does not happen because if it does, some magnificent, world-class forests are going to fry.

A lot of urban liberals have deep attachments to the Opal Creek Designated Wilderness Area, in particular. The wilderness area is an urban job, an old growth forest protected by legislative and judicial fiat after an urban dead tree media campaign. Ditto the other designated wildernesses in the vicinity. They are all products of urban political power tripping and imperiousness.

Except, as it turns out, pronouncements by fearless leaders and hailed Acts of Congress do not actually protect anything, in real life. The fire doesn’t care about legal boundaries. The fire is not a sentient intelligence, so it doesn’t have cares, worries, intents, or even consciousness.

Forest fires are merely chemical reactions, wherein carbon life forms are oxidized rapidly, with intense, exothermic caloric output.

We will try to track this fire, which might not be that hard since we can see the smoke from the front porch. Expect more updates, and an occasional curse at the bozos who set up our best forests to burn catastrophically.

From the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center this morning:

Middle Fork Fire

Status: Active
Lead Agency: ODF
Location: 14 miles northeast of Sweet Home, OR
Latitude 44° 30′ 19″ (44.5053) Longitude 122° 24′ 55″ (-122.4153)
Fire Start Date: 2006-09-01
Acres: 700.00
Square Miles: 1.09
Percent Contained: 10
Threatened Structures: 0
Expected Containment: 2006-08-26 ???
Cause: Under Investigation

More Info: This fire spread quickly in steep terrain and heavy fuels under the strong east winds and very low humidities. An estimated 1000 campers, recreationalists and other outdoor users had to be evacuated yesterday from the Green Peter Lake and Quartzville Creek areas due to the intensity of the fire.

Status: An Oregon Dept of Forestry Incident Management Team has been ordered and Team 3 (Walker) has been assigned.

The fire has been officially named the Mt. Hood Complex Wildland Fire. From the InciWeb Incident Information System:

This complex has fires in both the Mt. Hood Wilderness and Badger Creek Wilderness, and includes approximately 10 lightning-caused fires. The two largest fires are the Bluegrass fire, burning in the Mt. Hood Wilderness on the west side of Highway 35, and the Gumjuwac fire, which is in the Badger Creek Wilderness on the east side of Highway 35.

The Bluegrass Ridge Fire is estimated to be 300 acres, the Gumjuwac Fire 50 acres, and the others are smaller, as of 2:30 PDT.

Several roads, trails, and campgrounds have been closed. Contact the Hood River Ranger District Office regarding closures at 541-352-6002.

The Bluegrass Ridge Fire is on the ridge of that name, which runs NNE from Elk Mountain to Tamanawas Falls, between the East Fork of the Hood River and Cold Spring Creek. The east slope is steep, a mile wide (from the East Fork to the ridge top), and thick with trees and laddered fuels.

The forest on Bluegrass Ridge is multicohort. The once open and park-like character may be seen in the scattering of huge, old, ponderosa pines towering above younger, invading western larch, Douglas-fir, grand fir, and at least nine other conifer species. Huge old western red cedars line the base of the ridge above the flats of the East Fork and Robinhood Creek.

The forest of the upper East Fork of the Hood River. For larger image click here (406 KB).

The Mt. Hood Wilderness Boundary runs right along the ridge top of Bluegrass Ridge, as does the Bluegrass Ridge Trail. The trail will aid foot access during the fire, but the wilderness designation complicates and limits fire suppression efforts.

The Gumjuwac Fire is in the Badger Creek Wilderness Area on the south side of Lookout Mountain, not far from Badger Lake. The forest there is more of a patchwork of even-aged stands of larch, Engelmann spruce, subalpine fir, and lodgepole pine. The Badger Creek forest is a subalpine, lightning fire forest up on Lookout Mountain. Lower down Badger Creek the forest becomes multicohort, with a ponderosa pine older cohort over a mix of younger conifers.

The upper elevational limits of the historic anthropogenic fire regime can be seen in the existing Badger Creek Forest. Fires started by the ancestral residents of Tygh Valley to the east would climb west up the slopes, burning the grassy understory of the pine savanna, but would peter out in the broken terrain in the Badger Creek headwaters.

The Gumjuwac Fire may be more difficult to contain than the Bluegrass Ridge Fire, because it is entirely within a designated wilderness. Firefighting efforts will be limited to MIST techniques there.

Today the Mt. Hood Complex Wildland Fire was manned with 227 persons, one helicopter, and one pumper. Air tankers and fire retardant were used on the Bluegrass Ridge Fire today. Here is an amalgamated summary from various web sources:

Mt. Hood Complex Wildland Fire

Updated 2006-08-09 20:11:39 EST
Incident Type Wildland Fire
Cause Lightning
Date of Origin 08/07/2006 at 0101 hrs.

Size: 400 acres
Percent Contained: 0
Estimated Containment Date: unknown

Total Personnel: 227
Type 1 crews - 2
Type 2 crews - 6
Helicopter - 1
Fire Engines - 1

Planned Actions: Take suppression action on all new starts in the established Initial Attack area. Continue to enforce the road and trail closures for firefighter and public safety. Continue with reconnaisance on the two larger fires in the complex to look for opportunities for containment lines and begin to establish these containment lines. Continue with the mop up of the smaller fires in the complex. Use air resources to support the suppression effort and for initial attack.

Projected Movement: Some movement in all directions is expected until containment lines can be established.

Growth Potential: High

Terrain Difficulty: High

Containment Target: No estimate of containment has been made at this time.

Remarks: The Northwest Oregon Interagency Incident Mangement Team led by Carl West was delegated the responsibility for the suppression of the incident as of 0600 hours on Wednesday, August 9, 2006. There are approximately 10 fires in the complex, including the Bluegrass and Gumjuwac fires.

Weather
Current Wind Conditions: 7 G to 16 mph SW
Current Temperature: 75 degrees
Current Humidity: 30 %
Forecasted Wind Conditions: 6-10 mph SW
Forecasted Temperature: 78 degrees
Forecasted Humidity: 30 %

The Kaibab Forest was once magnificent. Today it is a tattered remnant of its former self. Ever since the Kaibab Forest was stolen from the Paiutes, first by the Mormons and then by the U.S. Government, the Forest has suffered and declined.

The Kaibab was one of the first western forests to be railroad logged. The gentle terrain was perfect for long, straight rail lines deep into the (as it turned out) non-infinite colonnade. Railroad logging was first; after WW II massive skidder/chainsaw clearcutting was instituted.

If you followed prior instructions here and focused Google Earth on Fredonia, do it again and close in to 35,000 feet “Eye alt”. Soar southward. From 35,000 feet the Kaibab Forest looks like it was hit by a giant cheese grater. The formerly continuous forest is now a hairnet forest, a spiderweb of non-logged strips of trees between the clearcuts.

The USFS attempted, from about 1950 to roughly 1990, to convert the Kaibab National Forest into a government-owned (socialist) tree farm. The agency desired a ponderosa pine plantation for commercial purposes, for the benefit of the Government and their “partners”.

This venture failed. This should really come as no surprise to anyone. As we have pointed out so many times from the very beginning of this blog, tree farms are not forests. They are nothing like. The government is and always has been incompetent at tree farming (this should come as no surprise, either). Consequently, the Kaibab N.F., for the most part, has been deforested and converted to brush.

Oh sure, there are still some trees on the Kaibab Plateau. But the forest-ness is gone, along with the heritage trees of the former forest. There is also plenty of new tick brush where forest used to be, and thickets of tiny, torchy conifers.

In 2004 the Kaibab N.F. was kicked started into a fuels management/prescribed fire program by the Healthy Forests Act (see here). This is sort of a good thing, but wrong-headed:

The objectives of the Topeka project are to improve forest health and resilience to enable the forest to better withstand natural disturbances such as drought, insects, disease and wildfires; and, to substantially reduce forest fuel levels in order to lower the risk of uncharacteristically intense wildfires to the forest, nearby private inholdings, and Grand Canyon National Park.

Their objective should be to restore the heritage Kaibab Forest. The way to do that is, in part, through fuels management and prescribed burning, which they are doing, although they don’t know why, and only on a very small scale.

Fuels management is a necessary part of forest restoration because many areas within the Kaibab Forest have accumulated 150 years worth of biomass build-up. Two negative things happen when accumulated fuels burn. First, the fires are very hot and tend to crown, killing all the living trees. Second, the fires fail to combust all the fuels.

When pine needles accumulate for 150 years, the resulting duff is too thick and dense to burn well or completely. When accumulated duff does get hot enough to burn through, the soil underneath gets baked. The old trees, the heritage trees, are killed when hot, glowing duff boils the cambiums around their bases.

Fires in thick fuels tend to produce more fuels, by killing the living biomass while imperfectly combusting the old accumulations. Trees get killed. Brush sprouts back. More fuels remain than before the fire. The hazard is worsened, and the mess burns again. Eventually, forest is a forest no more, but a fire-type brush field.

The Kaibab N.F. has a program to deal with heavy fuels. They treated close to 18,500 acres in 2004:

During the past year forest managers spent considerable time and energy working to reduce hazardous fuels through forest thinning and prescribed burning projects. The accumulation of this hard work resulted in close to 18,500 acres being treated, an increase of almost 7,000 acres from what was accomplished in 2003.

Prescribed burning: Kaibab fire managers accomplished 8,882 acres of prescribed burning on the Forest’s three districts in 2004. That included both underburning, in which fire is used to remove the build-up of fuels on the forest floor, and pile burning, in which fire is used to burn stacks of trees and limbs that resulted from thinning projects.

Thinning: The Kaibab National Forest completed more acres of thinning in 2004 than in recent years, accounting for a total of 9,617 acres treated.

The increase in the number of acres treated through thinning and prescribed burning is the result of strengthened commitment by the Forest Service to restore the fire-adapted ecosystems of Southwest forests. The many benefits from forest restoration include, enhancing wildlife habitat, reducing the risk of high-intensity wildland fires, managing rates of insect infestation and disease, and generally improving overall forest health.

Again, the Kaibab N.F. has no concept of their forest history, or the heritage nature of the Kaibab Forest, nor the understanding of how the Forest came to be. However, they are doing some restoration, mostly by accident, so some praise might be in order.

Might be, but isn’t. The Kaibab N.F. destroys far more forest acres per year than they restore. This year, 2006, is special because the dimwits in charge of the Kaibab N.F. attempted to destroy their entire forest last month.

Next Back to the Rim segment: the Warm Fire

Rising above the ocean of sagebrush and prickly pear that is the Great American Desert, stands a green and forested island-like terrain, the Kaibab Plateau. The Plateau covers about 700 square miles at elevations between 7,200 and 9,000 feet. This is high enough to draw enough snow and rain to grow trees in a landscape otherwise mostly without them.

To get a satellite lens view of the Kaibab Forest with Google Earth, center your image on Fredonia, Arizona (use Search) and zoom out to view from an “Eye alt” of approximately 40 miles. The forest green contrast with the desert brown surroundings is stunning. The Plateau is bounded on the east by Marble Canyon, to the south by the Grand Canyon, to the west by Kanab Canyon, and to north by the Great Basin.

The Kaibab Forest is a ponderosa pine forest. About half the forest is nearly pure pine, and a third is mixed conifer (ponderosa pine, Douglas-fir, Engelmann spruce, Colorado blue spruce, white fir, and subalpine fir). Pure spruce forests, aspen groves, and meadows make up the rest.

The USDA Kaibab National Forest is aware that people used to live on the Plateau. From the KNF website:

Although our knowledge of North Kaibab prehistory is limited, archeologists have found evidence of human use dating as far back as about 7000 BC. Prehistoric groups who lived here during what has come to be known as the Archaic Period hunted game and gathered wild food on the Kaibab Plateau from about 7000 BC to 300 BC. They lived in small camps, often located on meadow edges or in small caves. Their transient lifestyle gave way to a more sedentary one after cultivated crops were introduced to the region from Mexico. These hunters and gatherers gradually became farmers between 300 BC and AD 500.

At about AD 500 a group known as the Anasazi appeared. These people farmed crops such as corn, beans, and squash in addition to supplementing their diet with wild food and game. The more reliable food source allowed them to live in one place for longer periods, build surface houses, and live in larger groups than previous residents. Archeologists are still unsure why the Anasazi left the area in about AD 1200. They were succeeded by the Paiute, whose hunting and gathering lifestyle was similar to that of Archaic groups. The Paiutes, whose reservation headquarters today are at Pipe Springs, were the last Native American inhabitants of the North Kaibab before Europeans began settling the area.

For at least the last 9,000 years people have been living in the Kaibab Forest. Thousands of archeological sites have been found, indicating that the entire Forest has been continuously occupied by somebody or other since way back when. The residents were variously hunters, gatherers, farmers, and herders. They were human beings. They interacted with the landscape just like human beings everywhere: through the agency of fire.

People have been setting fire to the Kaibab Plateau for thousands of years. They set fires to clear land for farming, to remove hazards, to drive game, and for dozens of other practical reasons. They probably also set fires by accident, although the majority were by intent.

Lightning fires also occurred every year. However, the lightning fires encountered a pre-burned landscape and so they behaved like anthropogenic fires. Catastrophic fires that killed all the trees across vast tracts were rare, because fuels were never allowed to build up to catastrophic levels.

An open, park-like forest resulted. Below is a sketch by Heinrich Balduin Möllhausen, the artist and cartographer who accompanied Lt. Joseph Christmas Ives on his 1857-58 Colorado Exploring Expedition.

From the Report Upon the Colorado River of the West, Lt Joseph C. Ives, 1861. Click here for larger image, 554 KB.

This sketch must be taken with a couple of grains of salt. First, it is of the forest on the South Rim, about 1,000 feet lower in elevation than the Kaibab Forest. Second, Möllhausen was a Romantic. From Stephen Pyne’s How the Canyon Became Grand (see here):

A similar intellectual schizophrenia afflicted the expedition’s two artists, H.B. Möllhausen and Baron F. W. Egloffstein, both Germans, both Humbolteans, and both … compromised between the landscape they saw and the one they were equipped (and avid) to express. … Their sketched and painted landscapes were visual cognates to Ives Romanticized prose, and their judgments echoed his. …

Whipple remarked sourly that the only thing Möllhausen had painted accurately was a Navajo blanket. But most of his sketches for Ives are recognizable, if not strictly representational. … The odd mix of of the precise detail and the grand impression so characteristic of the Humboltean enthusiast suffused the Möllhausen oeuvre.

In any case, the forest was more open then than now. As we noted here, Clarence E. Dutton, in the Tertiary History of the Grand Cañon District, also described the forests on the North Rim in 1887:

The trees are large and noble in aspect and stand widely apart. … Instead of dense thickets where we are shut in by impenetrable foliage, we can look beyond and see the tree trunks vanishing away like an infinite colonnade. … All is open, and we may look far into the depths of the forest on either hand.

The early explorers widely attributed the open character of the Kaibab Forest to anthropogenic fire, although Indian burning was called “Paiute forestry” by detractors. John Wesley Powell, the greatest Grand Canyon explorer, was a supporter of anthropogenic fire as a forest mangement tool, and had a public political fight with Gifford Pinchot over the practice. Both men’s careers were crippled by the battle, but Pinchot’s ideas prevailed. (Hopefully we will post more in the hazy future on this forest history topic.)

Over the last 100 years the US Forest Service has fought tooth and nail against Paiute forestry. The animus ran and runs deep, so deep that the USFS denies to this day the impact of Prehistoric Man and his Incendiarism on American forests.

This Denial of the Obvious is a form of institutional intellectual schizophrenia. An odd mix of the precise detail, and a romantic but false grand impression so characteristic of eco-religious Bambi thumpers, suffuse the USFS oeuvre.

The USFS celebrates the ruins of past cultures on the Kaibab, and understands that the former residents were human beings with advanced combustion technologies. (Early Kiabab residents were potters. Speaking as a novice kilnmaster, I assure you it takes a lot of controlled combustion technology to fire pottery.) However, the USFS doesn’t grok that those ancient combustion specialists also combusted the ancient landscape broadly and regularly. The Kaibab Forest was a tended handiwork of humanity for thousands of years, but the USFS denies it.

To be continued …

The Bitterroot National Forest is synonymous with bad forest management. Massive clearcuts on the Bitterroot in the 1960’s caused an outcry, engendered a Bolle Report, sparked numerous lawsuits, and led indirectly to the National Forest Management Act of 1976. Bungling on the Bitterroot did not stop, however, and in 2000 alone crown fires destroyed 20 percent of the Bitterroot forest.

After stealing the land from the Indians, the government has embarked on a non-stop, 120-year trashing of the acreage.

But all that is behind us now. The Bitterroot NF has embarked on a new course heralded by a Revised Land Management Plan and guided by a new Analysis of the Management Situation (see here).

Unfortunately, this silver lining does not hide the dark cloud. The New Plan and the New Analysis make the same old mistakes.

The foundational failure of both documents is that they do not consider the history of the landscape. The New Manifestos make no mention of anthropogenic fire, pre-1800 conditions, or historic forest development pathways. No mention is made of any forest history since Lewis and Clark, either. The most ancient reference to historic forest conditions is 2000.

This is astounding! The USFS is attempting to manage the public domain with no memory, no awareness, and no interest in the former condition of the forest, how it got that way, or how the forest got degraded to its current, debilitated state.

The USFS has institutional amnesia. History, The Past, is not their thing, not even natural history. Well, to be fair the AMS states, in a small eddy in the flood of verbiage:

In general, prior to human-caused disturbances, major changes in native biodiversity were a result of substantial shifts in climate, geology, or other natural occurrences such as stand replacement fires, volcanoes, or floods. Recent assessments of landscape condition and trend within the interior Columbia Basin identified at least three major management practices as principle causes for the dramatic change in forested habitat conditions since early European settlement:

1. Large-scale intensive timber harvest.
2. Large-scale exclusion of wildfire.
3. Widespread development of roads.

Number 1 is correct, but numbers 2 and 3 are wrong. Wildfire has not been excluded. In 2000 a fifth of the acreage was burned. What has been excluded is anthropogenic fire: regular, low intensity, non-summer, human-set, ground fires. The roads were developed centuries ago, too.

The AMS also has this to say:

• A comparison of the historic to the current cover type, size and density shows a lack of shade intolerant species such as white pine, ponderosa pine and western larch in early successional stages in the uplands, and hardwoods in riparian areas. (Quigley 1997; NRO 1998 pgs. 7,12-18, 34, 38, 40; Landscape Assessments).

• A significant loss of the whitebark pine dominated communities has occurred since historic times. (Quigley 1997; NRO 1998 pgs. 7, 13)

• Compared to historic conditions, there has been in increase in multi-storied stands and more homogenous landscapes, due to fire exclusion and succession. (Hessburg et. al., 1999)

These statements are also wrong, but in a twisted truth kind of way. The pine/larch forest that is missing today was not “early successional”. The trees were hundreds of years old, maintained by anthropogenic fire. Succession is a false god, anyway (see here).

Whitebark pine prevalence has diminished, no doubt, but it was never in “communities”. The other plant species allegedly in the “community” have not become scarce, just the whitebark pine. In the absence of the one species, the others are actually doing better and are more prevalent. Again, the cause for loss of white bark pine is the elimination of anthropogenic fire, which favored it.

Their “multi-storied” stands are actually multi-aged (more properly multicohort) forests. The phraseology used in the New Plan and Analysis is borrowed from tropical rainforests and does not apply. The Bitterroot is a temperate conifer forest and conifer heights reflect tree ages. Differing tree heights mean differing tree ages on the Bitterroot. Tree ages (found in the rings) express forest development.

But that is history, and the USFS eschews history. They refuse to recognize the obvious and refer to age structure with visual metaphors, because they wish to obscure the history that they deny happened.

The USFS seems to think that the Bitterroot forest has not changed for millions of years. However, much of the Bitterroot Valley, and the adjoining Clarks Fork Valley, were part of Glacial Lake Missoula for the last 1.6 million years or so. It wasn’t even dry land, much less forest. The land above the lake was tundra or under land ice. Following the Bretz Floods, lodgepole pine appeared in the region about 11.5 kya (thousand years ago). Ponderosa pine followed about 8 kya. Archaeological (human residency) evidence goes back at least 11,000 years. That means humans predated the ponderosa pine forests in the area by at least 3,000 years.

Yet human influence on the Bitterroot forest, for umpteen centuries, is utterly ignored and de facto denied by the New Manifestos.

How can the USFS plan for the future when they do not know or care about the past? Answer: with huge incompetence and tragic consequences.

Nearly 50 percent of the Bitterroot NF is dedicated to wilderness or wilderness-like areas. This leads to catastrophic fires that kill forests. And they know this!

Due to the Bitterroot fires of 2000, much of the old growth ponderosa pine/Douglas-fir forest dominated by ponderosa pine was burned and may have eliminated a high percentage of suitable nesting habitat for flammulated owls, a sensitive species (Bitterroot Post Fire Review). The cohesive strategy team concluded that for western Montana and northern Idaho existing large diameter ponderosa pine forests occur at only 12% to 18% of the pre-fire suppression/pre-logging level.

The New Plan changes nothing. There will be no efforts made to reduce fuels and institute beneficial annual burning. Instead, lightning fires will be allowed to burn fuel-laden forests and the subsequent burned-out snaggy wastelands left to rot. Mother Nature will do the job for the agency. Whatever Big Mother does is okay with the USFS. Better Her than them.

The New Plan is as bad or worse than the Old Plans, which were total failures. Like those, the New Plan is a blueprint for catastrophic fire and forest destruction. Ergo, the future of the Bitterroot is likely to be as bitter as its past.

Over the last twenty years there has been one clear, consistent, and surprisingly infallible advocate for forests, Mr. James Petersen of the Evergreen Foundation. Jim is the founder, publisher, and editor of Evergreen Magazine, the voice of the Foundation.

Evergreen Magazine is a step above any other forestry periodical, but occasionally Jim publishes a super issue, one that is truly archival. The latest issue, Winter 2005-2006, is one such ground-breaking, deeply insightful, historic work. Entitled Forestry in Indian Country: Models of Sustainability for Our Nation’s Forests? the new issue examines forestry as practiced by Native Americans on tribal reservations and compares it to forestry practiced on our National Forests. It is a superb collection of essays, expert reports, and stunning photography (many by Larry Workman of the Quinault Nation).

So much is revealed in this issue. The first articles are by outsiders, Euro-American forest scientists with political foci. They seek to impose “helpful” red-tape bureaucratic burdens on the tribes. They do not mention the interwoven historical nature of the forest and the Indians. Their approach is quite racist and bigoted. Imagine telling people, who have managed their land successfully for thousands of years, how the white man thinks it ought to be done, complete with phony ecology and “natural” catastrophic fire.

But then the Native American voices are heard in the following articles. So many are so great, it is hard to excerpt the best. We shall make a feeble effort, however. From “A School of Red Herring” by Gary S. Morishima, Technical Advisor, Quinault Nation:

Tribes have been managing natural resource systems for thousands of years, but protecting tribal legacies for the future is no simple task. The resources that are essential to sustain tribal cultures are coming under relentless attack from a variety of economic and political forces … To a great extent, these threats stem from the introduction of an invasive species several centuries ago … Europeans.

From “Sovereignty, Stewardship, and Sustainability” by Larry Mason, Project Coordinator for the Rural Technology Initiative at the College of Natural Resources, University of Washington:

Tribes are known to have been managers of natural resources for 10,000 years or more. In many areas of the United States, ecosystems found by early European settlers were not virgin wilderness untouched by the hand of man, but were instead forests altered through time by many generations of Natives that burned, pruned, sowed, weeded, tilled, and harvested to meet their requirements for firewood, fish and game, vegetal foods, craft supplies, and building materials. Periodic underburning not only produced desirable vegetative conditions but reduced fuel accumulations that might otherwise sustain intense fire. A severe fire in a tribal territory would have meant not only loss of property, resources, and lives, but also a long-term disaster for the well-being of the community.

From “The Yakama’s Prescription for Sustainable Forestry” by Markian Petruncio, Ph.D., Administrative Forester, Yakama Nation, and Edwin Lewis, Forest Manager, BIA, Yakama Agency:

Forest restoration implies that a forest will be returned to a prior condition. Nineteenth-century forest conditions on the Yakama Reservation appeared to be more sustainable than present conditions. For example, open pine stands were maintained in a healthy condition by frequent, low-intensity fires. The forestry program [on Yakama Nation lands] is using historic species composition and stand densities as references for restoration of forest health. … The pathway to sustainable forestry requires proactive management.

From “The Forest Is In Your Hands” by Nolan Colegrove, Sr., Forest Manager, Hoopa Valley Tribal Council, Forestry Division:

We tended and managed the forest with many tools that were created from nature, but the most effective tool was controlled fire. … The tending of the forest with the use of fire produced annual crops which provided the daily necessities of the people; but what also occurred, by conducting low intensity burns annually for hundreds of years, was that the condition of the forest was healthy and in balance.

From “Ecosystem Management and Tribal Self-Governance on the Flathead Indian Reservation, Montana” by Jim Durglo, Forest Manager, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes:

The Tribes understood that both Indian-lit and lightning fires shaped the forest. Here in the Northern Rockies, fire, more than any other factor except climate, shaped the structure of our forest. It determined the kinds and ages of trees, how close together they grew, and the number and types of openings that existed. … From the stories of elders, the historical accounts of early Europeans, and the findings of modern scientific research, we know that Indians have been purposefully burning in the area for at least 7,000 years.

The best article, in our opinion, is “The Gift of Fire” by Germaine White, information and education specialist for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation, Montana. She begins by quoting Dr. Stephen J. Pyne, an excellent start. Germaine White’s own words are deeply compelling, too:

As Salish and Pend d’Oreille people, our view of fire was and is quite different from the modern western view. In our tradition, fire is a gift from the Creator brought to us by the animals. We think of it as a blessing, that if used respectfully and in a manner consistent with our traditional knowledge, will enrich our world. This belief explains our long tradition (12,000 years plus) of spring and fall burning …

On my last trip into the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area with one of our tribal elders, Harriet Whitworth, we followed the trails she had followed seventy years previous with her mother and grandmother, trails her family had followed for multiple generations. When we arrived at Big Prairie on the South Fork of the Flathead River, Harriet described what it was like when she was a little girl. She said it was a big, open, park-like area where there were enormous ponderosa pine trees, an abundance of grass, and many animals … [with] many clearings, a series of prairies in one place, and Harriet talked of how beautiful it was when she was a child.

Now there is only a little bit of a camp and small prairie or meadow left, and the big pine trees are crowded with Douglas-fir trees. Being there in that place and listening to the stories of how it used to look just a single elder’s lifetime ago showed me in a vivid way what it means to exclude fire from the landscape.

There are more great articles in this issue of Evergreen magazine, including an excellent history of Indian firefighters by Bodie Shaw, Deputy Chief, National Interagency Fire Center, BIA.

Jim Petersen has outdone himself, again. We wholeheartedly recommend you send him some money. Join his non-profit Evergreen Foundation; it is cheap and you get collector edition issues like this one. Plus, you might learn some very important things about our forests.