A different view on the Rim Fire: Congress partly to blame

Guest opinion by John Buckley | Posted: Tuesday, September 10, 2013 9:58 am

http://www.calaverasenterprise.com/opinion/article_501373e0-1a3a-11e3-951b-0019bb2963f4.html

Whenever there are major tragic events, such as the huge Rim Fire, they grab the public’s attention and provide an opportunity for some people to get on a soapbox to promote their interest. Dr. Tom Bonnicksen, a consistent spokesman for the interests of the timber industry, provided a guest opinion piece for the Enterprise , printed on the Opinion Page Friday, Sept. 6, 2013 , suggesting that foresters could eliminate big wildfires. His opinion piece mixes good information with some highly debatable suggestions.

It is true that because our society has chosen to suppress wildfires over the past century, there has been an enormous accumulation of fuel in many areas of the forest. When pine needles, branches, dead trees, bushes and thickets of small trees all accumulate in a forest, it will burn hotter than if fewer fuels were present.

It is also true that by doing prescribed burning under cool, safe conditions, or by doing thinning logging followed by prescribed burning to open up dense forest stands, the U.S. Forest Service can significantly reduce the risk of some forest areas burning intensely.

But Bonnicksen’s rejection of the warming climate as playing any major role in giant wildfires is easy to dispute. This year, the snowpack at high elevations was almost entirely gone by May and forest fuels have been tinder dry for months. The combination of two dry years in a row does matter when it comes to wildfire. And while Bonnicksen is correct that thinning logging has a positive role to play in reducing wildfire intensity, the Rim Fire burned thousands of acres in the first two days that were almost entirely brush, scattered oaks and grass. Thinning logging couldn’t have made any difference when there weren’t even conifers to thin.

Over the past few years, the Forest Service had approved thousands of acres of prescribed burns and thousands of acres of thinning logging and the shredding of brush in the exact area where the Rim Fire burned. Those fuel reduction projects were strongly supported by environmental groups and the full range of community interests. But Congress chose to limit Forest Service budgets so there was no money to implement those projects. That is the real tragedy. The Forest Service responsibly approved a long list of projects that could have greatly reduced any damage from a big wildfire. Yet fiscal conservatives in Congress called for a sequester and chose to restrict dollars for the projects that could have spared taxpayers from spending almost $100 million to contain the huge Rim Fire.

With decades of fuel accumulation and a warming climate that is increasing wildfire risk, either Congress needs to give the Forest Service the dollars it needs to do fuel reduction projects on a regular basis, or taxpayers need to accept paying gigantic sums to chase incredibly destructive conflagrations.

John Buckley is the executive director of the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center in Twain Harte. Contact him at 586-7440 or johnb@cserc.org.