The Forest Solution Set

Our Federal forests are in crisis. They are decrepit and unkempt, and burning down at an increasing record rate.

Our rural, forest-based communities are in crisis. They are beset by catastrophic wildfires emanating from Federal forests, a dearth of rural jobs, declining forest health, disappearing county receipts, undue leverage over entire regional economies, habitat and species losses, destruction and conversion of heritage forests, additional pressures and restrictions on private landowners, the NW Forest Plan, ESA, NEPA, etc. etc. etc.

All these crises are related. They all devolve back to an overabundance of Federally-owned forests and the inability or unwillingness of the Federal government to adequately or appropriately care for public lands.

This is a tough situation. No matter how desirable, it is unlikely that any significant land ownership redistribution is going to happen anytime soon. The burden of 50 to 80 percent Federal ownership of the land base in Western US counties is not going to go away.

Therefore, the only currently workable solution set involves repairing Federal land management agencies, so that they do as little harm as possible.

At one time the idea was that public forests should serve the common good. Now the best we can hope for is that Fed forest agencies reduce their output of uncommon evils and tragedies.

We suggest two fundamental strategies that the USFS, BLM, and NPS should follow:

1) Prepare forests to receive beneficial, anthropogenic fire through the practice of restoration forestry, and

2) Rapidly suppress wildfires to extinguishment, especially during summer months.

Restoration forestry will make our forests safer and less prone to catastrophic, forest-replacing fires. Restoration forestry, properly applied, protects, maintains, and perpetuates habitat, heritage, wildlife, esthetics, recreational uses, watershed values, and every other forest characteristic valued by human beings.

Restoration forestry uses improved, modern methods based on traditional practices and knowledge of great antiquity. History is a guide, not a rule.

Preparing forests to receive fire is the critical step. Fire cannot be excluded from forests, but forests laden with a century or more of accumulated fuels are deforested by wildfires. To save our forests we must tend them by carefully removing and disposing of the accumlated fuels.

The tending practices of restoration forestry are NOT the same as tree farming practices. Forests are not tree farms. Management techniques appropriate for the one are generally inappropriate for the other.

However, restoration forestry does produce a certain amount of commercial wood, fiber, and biomass products. Not as much as tree farming, but in significant amounts that can defray the costs of treatments. The raw commercial products from restoration forestry treatments undergo many levels of processing, reprocessing, and value-adding. The values multiply as the products move through the economy, boosting jobs, tax revenues, and wealth creation.

There are approximately 380 million acres of Federal forest in the US. At least four percent (roughly 15,000,000 acres) needs to be treated by restoration forestry techniques each year. At that rate it would take 25 years to treat all the acres. It may be that some acres do not require treatment, so the job could be completed sooner.

Since the inception of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, less than 200,000 acres per year of Federal forest has been treated by mechanical fuel disposal. Moreover, generally speaking, most of the HRFA treatments to date have not been entirely consistent with best restoration forestry practices, and that’s another problem.

We need to boost the program acres per year 50-fold or more, and to increase the use of professional, expert design and control of the practices. We need to do this boosting right away.

In the meantime, we cannot sit back and watch while catastrophic holocausts destroy forests, farms, homes, communities, and lives. We must attack and control wildfires rapidly. It makes no sense to destroy forests through deliberate inaction when saving actions are available.

It also makes no sense to continue along the present course of un-management and catastrophic megafires. We can do better, and residents and denizens (human, animal, and vegetable) will benefit if we do.