TNC, Whoofoos, and Tick Brush
April 12th, 2007
The principal “partner” involved in the Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC) is The Nature Conservancy. TNC is a BINGO, a big international non-governmental organization. Here are some “facts” (or so they claim) from TNC’s own website (here):
Fast Facts About The Nature Conservancy
The Nature Conservancy was founded in 1951.
The Nature Conservancy works in all 50 states and more than 30 countries.
The Nature Conservancy has protected more than 117 million acres of land and 5,000 miles of river around the world.
The Nature Conservancy operates more than 100 marine conservation projects in 21 countries and 22 US states.
The Nature Conservancy has about 1 million members and supporters.
The Nature Conservancy has more than 10,000 dedicated volunteers supporting our on-the-ground conservation work.
The Nature Conservancy has more than 1,500 volunteer board members advising our U.S. state and international country programs.
The Nature Conservancy has 3,200 employees, 720 of whom are scientists.
TNC also enjoyed over a billion dollars in income last year, including $100 million in government grants (see here). TNC is not just any BINGO, they are one of the Big Five BINGO’s (see here).
The WFLC has removed its presence from the Web (see here), because the bureaucrats involved wish to hide TNC’s involvement in the WLFC from the public. The legal issue is whether the WFLC is violating FACA, the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The political issue is how much of our forests can they incinerate and get away with it.
TNC’s role in the WFLC is to advance and promote whoofoos (wildland fire use fires, or WFU’s). A whoofoo is a fire started by lightning (i.e. during fire season), in a random place (wherever the lightning strikes), at an accidental time; a fire that the Federal firefighting apparatus could put out, but that the land management agency involved chooses instead to Let It Burn, following the orders of the WFLC.
Whoofoo is just a fancy name for Let It Burn fires. Some famous Let It Burn fires around here have been the Biscuit Fire of 2002 and the B&B Fire of 2003. Arizona has had many whoofoo/Let It Burn fires but last summer’s Warm Fire was special. Washington enjoyed the Tatoosh Let It Burn Fire last summer, but Canada was less enamored when it jumped the International Boundary (see here).
The WFLC has planned major mega-whoofoos this year for Central Oregon, Western Montana, the Southern Sierra Nevada in California, and Southern Utah. Over 10 million acres have been targeted for whoofoos in those areas alone, and over 50 million acres nationwide.
TNC is paid by you, the taxpayer, with a multi-million-dollar government grant to promote this crazy fire agenda. From their site (here):
We are encouraging federal and local governments to allow natural fires to burn when it is safe and ecologically beneficial. This practice, known as “wildland fire use,” has saved firefighter lives and millions of dollars in suppression and restoration costs across the U.S. In the 58,000-acre Boiler fire in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest, wildland fire use cost U.S. taxpayers less than $11 per acre, compared to typical suppression costs of at least $500 to $600 per acre.
TNC’s claims regarding whoofoos made in the quote above are all false. No firefighter lives have been saved. On the contrary, firefighter lives have been seriously endangered by whoofoos (see here). Nor have millions of dollars been saved. The Boiler Fire cost $600,000, but the nearby Cerro Grande Fire of 2000 ended up costing close to a billion dollars when it burned through Los Alamos. (Note: the Cerro Grande Fire was set deliberately by the National Park Service in Bandelier National Monument. It escaped and raced through the unkempt, fuel-laden Santa Fe National Forest and roared into town.)
The accounting logic used by TNC is bankrupt. Cost per acre is not important; total cost-plus-loss is the proper measuring stick for fires. Discerning readers will recognize that the same flawed, Enron-style accounting was featured in the incompetent USDA OIG Audit (see here).
TNC came to southwest Oregon last year to present a workshop on how to burn down what’s left of SWO forests. Their “ecological” recommendation was to convert the remaining old growth forests to “northern chaparral” via catastrophic whoofoos.
Northern chaparral is another name for tick brush. The TNC bopped into the Applegate and tried to shove holocaust and forest destruction down the throats (and through the homes) of the local residents. Instead of “Blackened, Burned, Dead Forests Are Beautiful,” TNC used “Mother Nature Wants Tick Brush” for their arsonist-terrorist indoctrination session.
As you might imagine, TNC’s sales pitch did not go over well with local residents who live spitting distance from the Biscuit Burn. Some attendees even felt (and still feel) personally threatened in life and property by TNC policies.
To TNC conserving nature means burning it to a crisp. They dislike forests, and much prefer tick brush. And they can deliver on that. This is why they fit in so well with the WFLC. Everybody’s on the same page.
Except for the American people, who own the forests and pay the salaries of the bureaucrats and TNC lobbyists alike. Most Americans prefer forests over tick brush, no matter how cheap the conversion allegedly is per acre. Hence the need for the WFLC/BINGO propaganda/indoctrination campaign. You stupid Americans are getting in the way of government-planned holocaust, but TNC is here to convince you tick brush is better, and charred, dead forests are prettier than green ones.
April 13th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Sorry for being off topic, but OPB showed “Rethinking Forests” in Oregon Story tonite. Have you seen this? Just curious what your thoughts on it were? Thanks.
April 14th, 2007 at 9:32 am
No need to apologize, Celeste, because it is on topic.
I watched about five minutes. Some 90-year-old geezer was guffing about his tree farm. To me, a professional forester, that kind of folksy Appalachian tripe is deeply offensive.
We need to get real about the current forest situation and look for modern, scientific solutions. We also need to snap out of this “tree farms are forests” madness and realize that forests and tree farms are completely different.
To me, that TV show was propaganda hype from people who have a vested interest in incinerating public forests, and are deliberately obfuscating things.
However, others may have enjoyed it, and got more out of it than me. If so, that’s great. I turned it off. TV is a wasteland.
April 14th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Weeeeellll, I hope I can still get out and visit my trees when I’m 90 ;0). I’m curious why you don’t like his way of doing things–the gist of it was cut the trash trees first, leave the healthiest trees to reproduce(good genetics and robust constitutions), selective cut/thin (I think he said)every 15 years or so, and burn slash(clean up the windfall stuff, or potential fuel). It didn’t seem like his intention was for an intensive tree farm, but rather a healthy, fireproof(he has had some lighting fires which didn’t “whoofoo” because he had thinned to the “parkland” density beforehand)I’ll call it a forest, which provides him with a living. Yes, I wouldn’t call his operation a tree farm, but on the other hand it looks like he has a good balance going on–he’s using forest–oops–”plant” resources on the plant community’s terms–looks to me very similar to what the native americans did(using the land on its terms, or gardening, whatever you want to call it). I’m really curious what was offensive about that.
And apparently the forest service(nat forest? state forest? dunno, didn’t catch it) representative on the show was advocating “mechanical” thinning of trash trees and brush, then prescribed burns of the grass–much like (it seems) what you advocate(they showed before and after example pix). She was specifically talking about east side ponderosa pine forests(I mean that was where she was talking from, and where she was showing examples).
Well, just trying to get my brain around the interesting things you say!
April 15th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Here’s my beef.
Over 60 percent of the West is owned by the Feds, including almost all our forests. What you find on private land are tree farms. Those are two completely different land uses. Forest management and tree farm management are also two completely different things.
At first inspection it may seem that “gardening” the Indian way has similarities to the gentleman tree farm featured. But they are not similar. The Indians tended entire landscapes with selective fire. The tree farm is not oriented to fire, and is managed for commercial timber purposes, something the Indians did not do.
There are pluses and minus to the particular tree farming style of the old dude. The immediate questions a pro would ask is what is the return on investment, and are there more profitable approaches to tree farming on that property? But those are moot questions. They are tree farming questions and that is not what the TV show purported to be about.
The TV show purported to be about forests, not tree farms. That makes some sense, since the crisis we face today is in our public forests, not our tree farms. Our public forests are being incinerated deliberately by the US Government. That’s a hell of a thing, and what this blog is all about.
Tree farming is also important to me. I am a professional tree farm consultant and wrote a booklet entitled A Guide to Innovative Tree farming in the Pacific Northwest. Send me $10 and I’ll send you a copy. One of the reasons I don’t post every day is that I am busy with my own tree farm and my business.
Forests, however, are also of concern to me professionally. It is our jointly-owned public forests that are in crisis, not privately-owned tree farms (except in the case where Fed forest holocausts jump the property lines and burn up private tree farms, which is an imposition of deliberate, bureaucrat-induced catastrophe on private landowners.)
The commercial tree farming style featured on the show is totally inappropriate for public forests. What is appropriate is Restoration Forestry: techniques of protecting, maintaining, and perpetuating heritage forests.
Some of the techniques featured on the show (I didn’t watch the whole thing) might be appropriate in certain situations as partial sub-steps in a larger process of restoring heritage forests. Thinning, for instance, is often needed initially in many of our forests. But the long-term goal of restoration forestry not to grow commercial timber, or commercial quantities of anything. The long-term goal is to restore sustainable, human-friendly, native landscapes, forests and wildlife populations, using advanced, science-based methods, ON PUBLIC LAND!!!!
It is no good for society to expect private landowners to provide forest values on tree farms. Society wants to force private forest conservation, and at the same time the public forests are being destroyed by anti-forest mismanagement.
The crisis is on Federal Land, and it will not be solved by anything private people do on their own land. One big Fed push has been to try to ban homes on private land in the whooie (the mystical wildland-urban interface that includes 95 percent of all private land in Oregon). However, the whooie is not where the fires start. The whooie is where the Fed fires go when they leave Fed property. Burning out the whooie is the domino that falls after our public forests are incinerated.
Restoration forestry is much more involved than anything I saw on the TV show. I’m glad somebody recommended something like that for our Federal forests. It is not likely to happen, however, before the Feds whoofoo the public forests to death.
There is a real crisis going on right now, today. There is a real conspiracy, a rather open and obvious one, to burn baby burn, right now, this year, our public forests in the biggest forest fires ever. Twiddling around with Grampa Moses on his accidental tree farm is a distraction away from that crisis.
Restoration forestry is banned on Fed land in Eastern Oregon, or severely limited, by eco-lawsuits emanating from Portland and Eugene. San Francisco judges have enjoined everything positive that has ever been proposed. Pie-in-the-sky recommendations that do not address the core problem are illusory, and serve only to ensure the coming regional firestorm.
April 15th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Mike:
I think your core definitions and analyses regarding private tree farms and public forests are valid and defensable, if occasionally overstated (for effect, I’m assuming!). I also agree that Restoration Forestry provides a number of precepts and guidleines that would make a wonderful alternative to the current mish-mash of obstructive laws, policies and litigation that are causing so much damage to our nation’s forests and to our rural economies.
I would argue with your phrase “coming regional firestorm,” however. It’s already here, we’re in the middle of it, and there is a good chance it’s going to get a lot worse before something is done to make things better.
The western forests “firestrom” can be said to have started with the 1987 Silver Complex (now “Biscuit”) and 1988 Yellowstone fires on federal “wildlands.” The B&B, Warm, Tripod, and other named complexes have followed, and there is no end in sight. To see the magnitude of this situation, compare a map (or table) of western US forest fires from 1946 to 1986 (40 years), and from 1987 to 2006 (20 years).
The word “firestorm” usually refers to a specific type of wildfire condition or event, but on a regional basis it has to be considered as a complex of events and conditions. The 1902 and 1910 Fire Years demonstrated spatial complexity for catastrophic-scale wildfires, just as the 1933, 1939, 1945, and 1951 “6-Year Jinx” Tillamook Fires established temporal complexity for such events.
I would argue that the regional firestorm you are describing has already started; is increasing in frequency and intensity; and that severity and extent will vary from year to year, depending on weather (not climate!), trending upward, until some form of active management program is reinstated on western forests and grasslands, or until our heritage forests are gone. Until that time, the situation will continue to grow worse, just as you describe.
Bob Zybach
April 15th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
Thanks for your answer! Well, I still say the old guy’s got it going on at 90–he’s not drooling in a nursing home, and I’ve got a few old geezer neighbors just like him nearby with their own trees to care for, one way or another. I am in the process of figuring out how best to care for my own land(80 year old second growth “transitional” oak savannah/conifers, but it’s definately not a tree farm ;0)). And I’ve really enjoyed unraveling the history of my land and the surrounding area.
Do you have some posts where you describe your tree farm, its history and how you manage it?
And yes those eco-lawsuits bite!
April 15th, 2007 at 11:46 pm
Bob,
I am expecting (but would like to prevent) a devastating fire event: that fateful summer day when dozens of active fires combine with strong winds to form a single firestorm that sweeps across millions of acres in a matter of hours, burning cities, towns, and rural neighborhoods as well as forests. Such an event occurred in 1910 and in prior decades, but not since.
However, your definition/analysis is also acceptable and perhaps more correct. When the singular “perfect” firestorm occurs, it will actually be only one of a growing series of megafires, as you describe.
The weather will be a factor in that singular firestorm, but not the principal factor. The chain of megafires we have suffered for 20 years have not been weather (or climate) related. Every major megafire in the last two decades has resulted from human choice: specifically, the choice of Fed land managers to Let Them Burn rather than rapid attack and suppression.
And in most cases, Let It Burn has been the planned, designed, policy choice made years in advance of the megafires.
This is important for people to understand. The Biscuit, B&B, Warm, Tripod, Day, Middle Fork, and dozens of other megafires of the last 20 years have been deliberate forest incinerations planned and perpetrated by the USFS and NPS in particular. Yes, lightning may have ignited them, but those fires burned freely and grew to enormous size and exorbidant expense because that was the Plan.
And more such megafires have been planned for this year. The WFLC has engaged BINGO’s to promote the fires ahead of time as “ecological” and “beautiful.” They would not undertake that sick marketing program if they didn’t already know what they plan to burn. The propaganda is aimed at the fire zone residents very specifically.
Furthermore, most USFS personnel (the ones with intact brains) are heartsick at the destruction and know the solution is restoration forestry (or something similar, perhaps with a different moniker). However, the leadership is of another mindset, a political one, and they refuse to alter their forest-elimination political course.
And when the bright light of public scrutiny is shone upon the leadership, they crawl deeper into the shadows. That is not a good omen. The WFLC members are remote and recalcitrant, and so the megafires will continue. Active management will only be possible when the leadership wills it, and right now the leadership wills catastrophic holocausts instead.
April 16th, 2007 at 12:05 am
Celeste,
I don’t mean to knock the geezer. Good for him, if that’s what he wants to do with his land. He is not a model for public forest management, however.
A forest, by my definition, is a vast tract of native vegetation with an abundance of trees. Your private property is not vast enough to qualify as a forest. But if you want to call it that, I guess I can’t stop you.
Other than that, your choice of management is perfectly okay with me, whatever you choose. I have administered professional forestry to so many private landowners for so many decades that I have come to realize the job is less about biology and more about psychology (or family counseling).
My book is the best source of info on innovative tree farming and what I do on my place ($10 includes postage and I’ll sign it!). Every property is different, though, and every tree farm too. Land management is an art as well as a business, and every artist is unique (or should be, if they’re any good).
My best general advice is to sink yourself into your property and study it’s history, relic vegetation, and the ancient spirits that inhabit it. Let your place reveal itself to you, and thereby shape and color your vision for its future.
Then cut the damn Douglas-firs and sell them. Take the money and invest it in your vision.
April 16th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Thanks for your book offer, I’m adding it to my to-get list!!