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Fire Chronicle #22
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Laura McCarthy, Forest Trust
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Oct 13, 2003 13:34 PDT
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FIRE CHRONICLE: Stories of the National Fire Plan
Number 22
October 13, 2003
BETTER ACCOUNTING OF FUELS REDUCTION IS NEEDED
Most hazardous fuel reduction treatments take several years to complete.
Even after the planning is completed and a contract to perform the work
is awarded, it may still take several years for the treatment to be
implemented. Most treatments take place in phases, with thinning
occurring first, slash disposal second, and maintenance to keep new
fuels from accumulating third.
Accountability is a central goal of the National Fire Plan and the
federal land management agencies report annually the number of acres of
hazardous fuels they have treated. The current method of reporting,
however, allows the agencies to report each phase of treatment
separately. Since many acres are counted in each phase of treatment, the
current reporting system gives a mistaken impression about the extent of
forests treated.
The General Accounting Office (GAO) recently issued a report that
studied the agencies’ annual reporting practices. The GAO concluded that
“The current method of reporting annual performance under the fuels
reduction program is resulting in misleading data on what is actually
being accomplished.”
The study, whose full title is “Wildland Fire Management: Additional
Actions Required to Better Identify and Prioritize Lands Needing Fuels
Reduction,” identified two ways that the current method of reporting can
be improved. First, the GAO suggests that maintenance treatments be
tracked separately from new fuels reduction treatments. Second, they
suggest that treatments that require multiple entries to reduce the fuel
load be reported only once.
The rationale for separate reporting of fuels reduction and maintenance
treatments is that the individual numbers provide a clearer picture of
progress to reduce the risk of catastrophic fire. Mixed accounting of
the two types of treatments provides the impression that overall fire
risk reduction is faster than it really is. For example, the GAO found
that between 40% and 50% of the acres reported as treated or planned for
treatment under the National Fire Plan from 2001-2003 were maintenance
acres.
In addition to overstating actual fire risk reduction, the mixed
accounting underemphasizes the importance of maintenance treatments in
preserving the national investment in fuel reduction. Right now, most of
the maintenance treatments are in the Southeast, where prescribed fires
are used every 2-3 years in some forests to prevent the accumulation of
new fuels. After forests in the West are treated, the maintenance
workload will be significantly greater, and the agencies will need a
reliable system of accounting to ensure they can justify funding to
maintain low fuel levels.
The move toward “results-oriented performance measures” at the
Department of the Interior and the Forest Service is a good way to
address the inaccuracies that are generated by reporting on each phase
of a multi-year treatment. The GAO provided an example of a national
forest in Oregon that reported 13,000 acres as treated in 2002, even
though 5,600 of those acres, or 43%, were previously reported as treated
in 2001. In addition, 500 of the acres were treated and reported a third
time. The problem is not that fuel reduction treatments require multiple
entries to fully dispose of the slash, but that reporting a single acre
multiple times creates “the impression that more acres are receiving
treatments than what is actually occurring.”
Officials at the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture had an
opportunity to review the GAO report before it was released to the
public and their written response to the report was published with the
GAO study. Thus, in a letter dated June 26, 2003, USDA Under Secretary
Mark Rey and DOI Assistant Secretary Lynn Scarlett wrote of their
concern “about the apparent assumption that…the first of multiple
treatments on the same acreage do not lower fire risk.” In fact, several
peer-reviewed studies have clearly demonstrated that slash disposal is
needed to reduce fuel loads and change fire behavior (Weatherspoon and
Skinner 1995; Vihanek and Ottmar 1993; Lindenmuth 1962; Benson 1982;
Wakimoto et. al. 1988; Stephens 1998). The simple act of thinning trees
will not reduce fire risk. Slash disposal, whether off-site removal or
on-site burning, will extend most treatments into a second and sometimes
third year.
The Virgin Holiday fuel reduction project in the Jemez Mountains of New
Mexico is a good example of a multi-year treatment that illustrates
problems with the current reporting system. The trees on Virgin Mesa
were thinned in 2001. The contractor felled trees and the Forest Service
invited members of the nearby Jemez Springs and Jemez Pueblo communities
to remove the downed wood for personal use as firewood (photos can be
viewed at http://www.theforesttrust.org/forest_protection.html#22). The
remaining green slash was left to dry in the summer and winter, and in
2002 a prescribed fire was ignited to reduce the remaining slash. The
project acres were reported twice, but it was only after the slash was
dealt with – through the firewood sale and the prescribed fire – that
the fuel load was reduced. The fuel load was not actually reduced the
first year the treated acres were reported because the slash was still
on site.
Results-oriented performance measures for fuel treatments should report
areas where slash has been completely disposed of and where fuels have
been reduced. An acre thinned is still an accomplishment, but the
agencies should indicate when a second or third year will be needed to
reduce the fuels. Clear and unambiguous accounting of progress to reduce
wildfire risks is necessary to build public trust and develop support
for continued funding of the fuel reduction program.
CITATIONS
Benson, R.E. 1982. Management consequences of alternative harvesting and
residue treatment practices – lodgepole pine. USDA Forest Service
General Technical Report, GTR-INT-132. Ogden, UT: Intermountain Forest
and Range Experiment Station.
General Accounting Office. August 2003. Wildland Fire Management:
Additional Actions Required to Better Identify and Prioritize lands
Needing Fuels Reduction. GAO-03-805.
Lindenmuth, A.W. Jr. 1962. Effects in fuels and trees of a large
intentional burn in ponderosa pine. Journal of Forestry 60:804-810.
Stephens, S.C. 1998. Evaluation of the effects of silvicultural and
fuels treatments on potential fire behavior in Sierra Nevada mixed
conifer forests. Forest Ecology and Management 105(1):21-35.
Wakimoto, R.H., R.D. Pfister and K.D. Kalabokidis. 1998. Evaluation of
alternative fire hazard reduction techniques in high-hazard, high-value,
and high-use forests. Pp. 401-402 in: Proceeding – Future forests of the
mountain west: a stand culture symposium. USDA Forest Service General
Technical Report INT-243. Ogden, UT: Intermountain Forest and Range
Experiment Station.
Vihanek, R.E. and R.D. Ottmar. 1993. When logged units burn in a
wildfire, does slash treatment mitigate effects? Pp. 709-714 in: 12th
Conference on Fire and Meteorology, October 26-28, 1993. Jekyll Island,
Georgia.
Weatherspoon, C.P. and C.N. Skinner. 1995. An assessment of factors
associated with damage to tree crowns from the 1987 wildfires in
Northern California. Forest Science: 41(3):430-451.
FIRE CHRONICLE is edited by the Forest Trust. Laura McCarthy, Forest
Protection Program Director, wrote this issue. The Forest Trust welcomes
your comments, stories, and observations about how the national fire
plan is being implemented (just send a reply message and it will go to
the list moderator). To subscribe to FIRE CHRONICLE go to
http://www.topica.com/lists/firechronicles/ or send an email message to
lau-@theforesttrust.org.
PAST ISSUES OF FIRE CHRONICLE can be downloaded from
http://www.theforesttrust.org/forest_protection.html#fire
1. 2002 Fire Plan Appropriations will Benefit from 2001 Experience
2. Wildland-Urban Interface Definition a Barrier to Accountability
3. Stewardship Blocks: Innovative Tool Brings Fire Plan Benefits into
Community
4. Youth Training Needed for Fire Plan to Benefit Local Workforce
5. Grants Get National Fire Plan Money into Communities
6. Collaborative Forest Restoration Program Creates New Solution to
Gridlock
7. Permits Regulate Prescribed Burning on Private Land
8. Accountability Remains a Key Issue for National Fire Plan
9. National Partnership Advances Landscape-Scale Forest Restoration
10. Poor Communities Most Threatened By Wildfire
11. A New Model to Fire-Proof Forest Homes
12. Consensus Over Fuel Reduction Treatment Dissolves
13. Wildland Urban Interface Definition Needed for Effective Policy
14. Funding Gaps Prevent Completion of Hazardous Fuel Reduction
15. Agencies Propose to Streamline Environmental Review for Hazardous
Fuel Reduction Treatments
16. National Fire Plan Provides Economic Opportunity for Rural Residents
17. Bark Beetles Heighten Wildfire Concerns
18. Small And Local Businesses Cite Barriers To Reaching National Fire
Plan Goals
19. Federal Report Fuels Public Debate Over Healthy Forests Act
20. New Report Evaluates Efficacy Of Fuel Reduction Treatments
21. Slow Progress to Set Treatment Priorities for National Fire Plan
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