Response to New Yorker Wildfire Article

The New Yorker recently published an article titled Trailblazing plan to fight California Wildfires https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/26/a-trailblazing-plan-to-fight-california-wildfires that contain misinformation. I’ve had many people ask me what I thought of the piece. Given the influential nature of the New Yorker itself, I decided to respond here.

The writing is good. There is much that is accurate about wildfire in the article such as the problems with the Clean Air Act and how it limits prescribed burning, but in many ways, the piece is a propaganda piece for the Forest Service and its logging agenda.

The main problem is that the author relied upon a limited number of sources for her article, and all the sources are pro logging/thinning the forests. The on-going propaganda promoted by the Forest Service is that large fires are “catastrophic” and such blazes are demonized to justify a pro-logging agenda. One would not know that many of the statements in her article are either vigorously debated in fire ecology circles with no clear consensus.

For example, she boldly states that frequent low-intensity blazes can preclude large fires. But there are counter-arguments and research that challenges such assertions which were never mentioned. While prescribed burning and thinning may “appear” to reduce fire spread under low to moderate fire weather conditions, there is a wealth of evidence that these management prescriptions usually fail in the face of fires burning under extreme fire weather conditions.

More than 200 preeminent scientists signed a letter to Congress finding that proposed solutions to wildfire like thinning forests are ineffective and short-lived. https://www.forestlegacies.org/images/scientist-letters/scientist-letter-wildfire-signers-2018-08-27_1.pdf

To quote from the scientists’ letter: “Thinning is most often proposed to reduce fire risk and lower fire intensity…However, as the climate changes, most of our fires will occur during extreme fire-weather (high winds and temperatures, low humidity, low vegetation moisture). These fires, like the ones burning in the West this summer, will affect large landscapes, regardless of thinning, and, in some cases, burn hundreds or thousands of acres in just a few days.”

The letter goes on to say: “Thinning large trees, including overstory trees in a stand, can increase the rate of fire spread by opening up the forest to increased wind velocity, damage soils, introduce invasive species that increase flammable understory vegetation, and impact wildlife habitat.”

There are sidebars that scientists working at Forest Service Research Stations or professors in forestry schools must observe if they want to keep their jobs and/or funding. These individuals do not fudge the data, but they start with specific questions and assumptions that beget certain conclusions.

For example, in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science “Adapt to more wildfire in western North American forests as climate changes” the authors concluded: “the effectiveness of this approach (logging and burning) at broad scales is limited. Mechanical fuels treatments on US federal lands over the last 15 y (2001–2015) totaled almost 7 million ha (Forests and Rangelands, https://www.forestsandrangelands.gov/), but the annual area burned has continued to set records. Regionally, the area treated has little relationship to trends in the area burned, which is influenced primarily by patterns of drought and warming.”

The author of the New Yorker piece apparently is unaware of these nuances, nor did she consult with any of the many scientists who come to differing conclusions about the effectiveness of prescribed burning and thinning.

All of the people she interviewed are part of the “school” that attributes large fires to past “fire suppression” which they assert has led to “fuel build-ups”.

In her opening few paragraphs, the author describes a prescribed burn where people purposefully light fires under conditions when the fires are likely to remain small and “controlled”.

The author suggests that if we had more use of prescribed burns, large so-called “mega fires” would be snuffed out by a lack of fuel. Problem solved.

She then goes on to describe “mega fires” as “uncontrollable”. And she notes that the resulting “the cinder-strewn moonscape that mega fires leave behind is unlikely to grow back as forest.” She says the forest is “incinerated.”

So the first problem with the article occurs in the first few paragraphs where death and doom are used to describe what are large blazes. The term “mega fire” is itself pejorative suggesting that large blazes are somehow out of the ordinary or unusual and destructive. By contrast logging, the forest is called “restoration.”

Never mind that high severity and the snag forests that result from them have some of the highest biodiversity in the West. They are hardly “moonscapes”.

This is due in part to the fact that most fires burn in are a mosaic of fire severity. You tend to have a quilt like patches of burned to lightly burned areas mixed with more severity burned areas. As a result, there is usually plenty plant regeneration after a blaze though it may be flowers, grasses and shrubs or different species like aspen or oaks that are favored by the opening of the forest canopy. No matter what grows back, it is not a “moonscape” for long.

Secondly, even in high severity fires, most of the tree boles remain after the blaze. They are hardly “incinerated.” Several studies suggest only around 3% of mature trees are consumed in a blaze, which is why we have snags remaining.

Furthermore, though fuels due to fire suppression might be an issue in a few specific forest types—predominately ponderosa pine forests—most of the vegetation in California as well as the rest of the West is not ponderosa pine and is characterized by long fire rotations.

For example, much of California is covered with chaparral. Chaparral tends to have long fire rotations up to a hundred years or more. And when this plant type burns, it does so naturally at high severity. Fire suppression does not influence wildfires in chaparral. Indeed, most of the larger recent fires that have burned in California are largely in chaparral ecosystems including the Thomas Fire by Santa Barbara, the Tubbs Fire by Santa Rosa, and so on.

Most of the large fires we are witnessing today are a consequence of climate change and natural climate variation, not a “disastrous buildup of forest density” as the author and her sources suggest.

First, the idea that areas with a lot of fuels are more prone to high severity fires can be challenged both scientifically and logically. The highest biomass on the West Coast is in the coastal forests of Oregon and Washington. Despite the abundance of fuels, these forests seldom burn. If fuels were the most important reason for large fires, we would expect these areas to be the center of so-called “mega fires.”

In addition, any number of studies have shown that areas that are “actively managed” (meaning logged) whether it is private timberlands or public forest tend to burn at higher severity than protected landscape where presumably the fuels are greatest.

One study that reviewed 1500 blazes around the West found the highest severity fires were in managed logged landscapes while parks and wilderness areas where there is no “active” management tended have lower severity blazes.

If you have drought, low humidity, high temperatures and most importantly, you have large fires. Since the canopy of dense forests provides shading and thus cooling of the forest floor, and also slows down wind penetration, wildfires are often slowed when they enter an old growth forest stand. By contrast, thinning the forest opens the stand to greater solar penetration (drying) and greater wind penetration, which can “fan” flames.

Keep in mind the 1910 Big Burn that raced across some 3-3.5 million acres of Idaho and western Montana occurred long before there was a “fire suppression” to create “excessive fuel.”

The author repeats the often-heard phrase that “a century’s worth of fire suppression” has created large fuel build-ups. This assertion fails to acknowledge that much of the last century between the late 1930s through the early 1980s was cool and moist due to natural climate variation. Indeed, in the 1970s there were fears that a new Ice Age might be upon us.

What happens when the climate is cool and moist? First, you get few ignitions. Second, the burns that do start, do not spread rapidly. Third, you have favorable conditions for tree germination and establishment which in turn leads to “denser” forests.

Furthermore, back in the early 1900s, all fire suppression was done by guys riding mules through what is largely wilderness. To suggest that this was an effective fire fighting force beggars the imagination. It was only after the advent of helicopters, smoke jumpers, and modern fire fighting equipment that one might be able to suggest fire suppression had a potential role in slowing fires.

But even this is hard to believe. Was there that much less fuel in 1987 in Yellowstone National Park than in 1988 when more than 1.2 million acres burned in the ecosystem? And why could firefighters control fires prior to 1988, but suddenly the same equipment, including at one point more than 10,000 firefighters failed to contain the blazes? Why did the fires suddenly stop on September 11th when it snowed?

All this is ignored by the advocates of the “century of fire suppression” proponents.

The idea that Indians burned most of the California landscape and thus precluded large blazes is another mythology she incorporated in her essay. For one thing, some research has found that Indian burning, to the degree, that it did occur, did not add significantly to the total acreage that burns naturally. Yes, in the immediate area around villages, and other high use areas, Indian burning likely exceeded the natural background fire.

Then as now, the majority of all acreage burns only when climate/weather conditions are favorable for fire spread. For instance, some 95-99% of all fires seldom burn more than 1-5 acres before they self-extinguish. In other words, whether a fire is started by lightning or humans, most fires do not spread very far.

If, however, the right conditions exist for fire spread, particularly if the wind is blowing hard, you will get a large blaze. That is why most of all acreage burned annually in the West is due to a very small number of blazes that occur during “extreme fire weather” conditions. If you don’t have these conditions, you don’t get a large blaze.

We have evolutionary evidence for this situation. For example, take sagebrush ecosystems. Most sage species must regenerate from seeds. The latest science suggests sagebrush burns anywhere from 50-400 fire rotations. If Indians were burning sagebrush ecosystems every few years as some suggest, there would be no sagebrush landscapes. And there would be no sagebrush obligate species like sage grouse, pygmy rabbits, sage sparrows and the like.

At the other end of the spectrum, higher elevation forests of spruce, fir, and mountain hemlock also burn infrequently, often hundreds of years between significant blazes, but when they do, they often burn at high severity as well.

She finishes up her piece by describing how allowing fires to burn, and/or thinning can result in higher water flows from the Sierra Nevada. A review of the assumptions by Chris Frissell and John Rhodes The High Costs and Low Benefits of Attempting to Increase Water Yield by Forest Removal in the Sierra Nevada found that while there might be modestly higher flows in high snow years, in drought years, there was little extra water. In other words, at the time when you might want more water flows, you are unlikely to see it. Regrowth of vegetation promoted by forest removal will suck up much of the expected additional flows and countering this effect would require clearing at least 25% of a watershed every ten years—an expensive and generally impossible task.

What is obvious to anyone familiar with the scientific literature on wildfire is that while the author dutifully and accurately reported on the opinions and work of her sources, she did not realize that much of what she reported is contested or countered by other scientists and sources.

While permitting more wildfires to burn in remote areas is a positive outcome of our understanding of the important role of wildfire in forest ecology, the idea that massive thinning and burning can preclude large fires is delusional. In the end, the focus should be on reducing the vulnerability of homes and cities to fires–and this starts at the home and works outward–and preventing the construction of homes in the “fire plain”. Unfortunately, the article gives the impression that all that is needed is more management of our forests.

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Comments

  1. Bruce Bowen Avatar
    Bruce Bowen

    In my own experience from the 70’s and 80’s the controlled burning boys mainly used the argument ‘that 100 years of fire suppression was bad for the forest’ to increase their budget. The inner workings of bureaucracy are seldom examined by popular magazine writers and the bureaucracy itself is very tight lipped about the waste of tax payer dollars. So they continue using the same propaganda.

    I was once asked to access around 50,000 acres of public land to determine the impacts of controlled burning on wildlife. In a nutshell there was only about 1000 acres that honestly could be burned to reduce very old dead and dying shrubs in order to stimulate regrowth. Much of what the government wanted to burn was on very steep slopes as well and there was no thought given to soil erosion at all by the fire mongers. And, as was the case in those days, the proponents of burning never thought to mention non-game species in their initial report. After my report, which in this case temporarily sank the ill conceived project my name became quite unpopular. To the point that when the fire boys did succeed in getting a controlled burn approved, they bragged about destroying some of the wildlife projects I had previously worked on.

    This is the kind of stuff that seldom if ever gets reported to the general public. The government most certainly takes advantage of the public’s ignorance and suppresses real ecology if it does not fit into their budgetary plans. So they try to make us believe that more chain saws are good for the forest and more cows are good for the range.

    This is largely why the planet is doomed.

  2. idaursine Avatar
    idaursine

    “She then goes on to describe “mega fires” as “uncontrollable”. And she notes that the resulting “the cinder-strewn moonscape that mega fires leave behind is unlikely to grow back as forest.” She says the forest is “incinerated.””

    I have read reports where it is stated that today wildfires burn hotter, ‘sterilzing’ the landscape. ???

    I was lucky I feel to have been to Yellowstone after their big fire, and along with blackened snags, there was lots of regrowth of plants.

    1. idaursine Avatar
      idaursine

      ^^and eventually, forest.

  3. Hugh Powell Avatar
    Hugh Powell

    Thank you for this well-informed critique of the New Yorker piece. Coincidentally, I recently reported on the other side of the argument – about the natural role of severe wildfire and the importance of a “living with fire mindset” – in an article for Living Bird, the magazine of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/old-flames-the-tangled-history-of-forest-fires-wildlife-and-people/

    1. Nancy Avatar
      Nancy

      Great Article, Hugh! Thanks for posting your link.

    2. idaursine Avatar
      idaursine

      It is a lovely article. 🙂

  4. Richard Halsey Avatar

    Outstanding article, George. Thank you.

  5. Valerie Gremillion, Ph.D Avatar
    Valerie Gremillion, Ph.D

    Excellent article but a few typos throughout could confuse the unknowing reader. For instance “For instance, some 95-99% of all fires seldom burn more than 1-5 acres before they self-extinguish. ” should have been something like some 95 to 99% about fires burn less than 1 to 5 Acres before they self extinguish”. There are a few other sense and grammar issues significant enough to point out, sorry about that because otherwise the piece is so exactly what we need from a common-sense basis to explain to the fire mongers that destroying something in order to prevent it from being destroyed is not the best strategy!

  6. Roger King Avatar
    Roger King

    This is one of the worst cases of not knowing anything in real time about forests or Ca. Native Americans did just this frequently yti manage their environment. It appears the writer knows nothing about “ladder fuels” nor that the majority of Nir Ca is not Cgapperal but pine and oak forest. Stay in New York

Author

George Wuerthner is an ecologist and writer who has published 38 books on various topics related to environmental and natural history. He has visited over 400 designated wilderness areas and over 200 national park units.

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