Wednesday, September 13, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
11
Amid raging wildfires, fire management practices criticized
By Andrew Selsky
Associated Press
SALEM (AP) — Intense
wildfires plaguing much
of the West have rekindled
controversy over logging
restrictions and fire manage-
ment practices that critics say
have created explosive fire
seasons.
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden,
an Oregon Democrat, took
to the floor of the Senate on
Thursday to describe the toll
the fires have taken.
Efforts to thin dead and
dying trees have been inad-
equate, he said as he stood
next to a large photo of
flames leaping from trees in
the majestic Columbia River
Gorge.
“This is a years-long pat-
tern in the West,” he said,
calling for smarter policies
and criticizing the “broken
system of fighting wildfires.”
He complained that federal
funds earmarked for fire pre-
vention are instead used for
firefighting.
“The idea of ripping off
prevention, which you need
most, defies common sense,”
Wyden said. “Shoddy budget-
ing today leads to bigger fires
tomorrow.”
Fires have charred more
than 12,000 square miles
(31,080 sq. kilometers) while
shrouding vast areas of the
West in smoke and destroying
homes and historic lodges.
Some experts say the
policy of fighting wildfires
whenever they break out
and sharply limiting logging
and other forest thinning has
created a combustible situ-
ation in which forests have
grown too thick and too close
together.
Oregon state Sen. Herman
Baertschiger Jr. wrote to
the chair of the Senate
Environment and Natural
Resources Committee, calling
for a work group to revamp
policy.
“The inability to man-
age our forest resources due
to environmental concerns
is threatening the safety and
well-being of Oregonians
and ultimately damag-
ing our beautiful state,” the
Republican wrote.
In Oregon alone, at least
822 square miles (2,128 sq.
kilometers) have burned so
far this year — an area over
half the size of Rhode Island.
The 2014 wildfire season
claimed 911 square miles
(2,359 square kilometers).
“We’ve allowed forests to
develop that never developed
naturally,” said John Bailey, a
professor of fire management
at Oregon State University
in Corvallis. “As a result,
we have longer and hotter
fire seasons that drive these
megafires.”
A fire becomes a megafire
when it reaches 156 square
miles (404 sq. kilometers).
A megafire burning in south-
west Oregon increased to
277 square miles (717 square
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kilometers), authorities said
Thursday.
Bailey said the solution is
thinning forests through log-
ging, prescribed burns and
allowing naturally occurring
fires to be managed instead
of extinguished.
There is now a record
amount of fire fuel such as
trees and brush in the West,
and forests that were once
separate now overlap, he said.
“Oregon is not harvesting
enough timber, nor reduc-
ing fuel loads, to ensure
the health and natural resil-
iency of our forests,” said
Republican state Sen. Sherrie
Sprenger.
Paul F. Hessburg Sr., a
U.S. Forest Service research
landscape ecologist, told an
audience in Bend in May that
forest fuels are at “powder-
keg levels.”
There’s “a current epi-
demic of trees; more trees
than the landscape can sup-
port,” he said.
He also advocated thin-
ning by managing wildfires
and other means.
“If we don’t change a few
of our fire management hab-
its, we’re going to lose a few
of our beloved forests,” he
said.
So far, it has cost federal,
state, and local governments
along with private groups
at least $238.5 million to
fight the fires in Oregon,
the Oregon Department of
Forestry said.
“It is bankrupting us,”
Bailey said. “The irony is we
steal from the positive things
we can do to keep suppress-
ing, even though suppressing
makes next year’s fire season
worse.”
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