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About The Observer. (La Grande, Or.) 1968-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 7, 2019)
4A MONDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2019 The Observer OUR VIEW New DHS rules aim to keep kids alive Reading through the state Department of Human Services’ public reports on the deaths of children in DHS-involved families is not for the faint of heart. In the past few years, at least a couple of kids were killed in car wrecks when a parent drove intoxicated. One apparently committed suicide, and some died of neglect. A shocking number, according to 14 of 18 investigations in 2018, died as a result of what the department calls unsafe sleep, generally infants sharing a bed, couch or chair with a sleeping parent. If a bill approved by the 2019 Legislature works as it’s supposed to, that could change. The measure, Senate Bill 832, was sponsored by Sen. Sara Gelser, D-Corvallis, perhaps the most outspoken critic of the way DHS handles the state’s most vulnerable children. New, tighter rules governing investigations into child deaths were to have been fully in use by Tuesday. The new law requires that Critical Incident Re- view Teams be formed within about a week when- ever there’s a reasonable belief that neglect or abuse was responsible for a child’s death. It also beefs up public reporting requirements, in part by requiring information about each CIRT review to be published on the DHS website within 10 days after the report is received. The reports will allow DHS to draw lessons, if there are any, from specific incidents, increase ac- countability to the public and allow the agency to make improvements to the system more quickly. The state’s CIRTs from 2017 to today are tough to read. In a perfect world, the reports make it clear that most if not all those children would have been alive today under different circumstances. Their deaths cannot be undone, but if all the goals are met, they should help make children living in dif- ficult circumstances safer, and that’s no small thing. Write to us LETTERS TO THE EDITOR The Observer welcomes letters to the editor. Letters are limited to 350 words and must be signed and carry the author’s address and phone number (for verification purposes only). We edit letters for brevity, grammar, taste and legal reasons. We will not publish poetry, consumer complaints against businesses or personal attacks against private individuals. Thank-you letters are discouraged. Letter writers are limited to one letter every two weeks. Email your letters to news@lagrandeobserver.com or mail them to La Grande Observer, 1406 Fifth St., La Grande 97850. MY VOICE Science: Reducing fuel load in forests has little effect on wildfires T he Wallowa-Whitman National Forest is proposing to log the Lostine Wild and Scenic River corridor. The basic justification is to reduce the potential for large wildfires. Yet according to the Oregon Depart- ment of Forestry, in 2019 only 16,868 acres burned in the state, compared to 846,411 acres burned last year. Why the big difference? Is there that much less fuel? If fuel is the reason we are seeing large acreages burn, then why so little this past year? The obvious reason and what the research shows is that climate/weather is the dominant factor in all large wild- fires. If you have drought, low humidity, high temperatures and high winds, you get large fires — regardless of the fuel load. That is why even though the Oregon Coast forests have some of the highest “fuel loadings” in the nation, they seldom burn. Yet the Forest Service and its lackeys from the Oregon State Forestry School (which gets funding from the timber industry) continues to “sell” the myth that fuels are the problem and logging our forests is the solution. The Forest Service continues to ig- nore the growing science that calls into question the efficiency and effectiveness of fuel reductions. For instance, in a paper that looked at thinning and ponderosa pine forest, Rhodes and Baker found a very low probability of a thinned site encounter- ing a fire during the narrow window when tree density is lowest. Another review paper by fire special- ists at the Missoula, Montana, Fire Lab about fuel reductions concluded: “The majority of acreage burned by wildfire in the U.S. occurs in very few wildfires under extreme conditions. Under these extreme conditions, suppression efforts are largely ineffective.” About the author George Wuerthner, of Bend, is an ecologist and author. He has published 38 books on environmental and natural history subjects and has worked as a university instructor, Alaska wilderness guide and BLM botanist, and more recently as the Tompkins Conservation Ecological Projects director. My Voice columns should be 500 words. Submissions should include a portrait-type photograph of the author. Authors also should include their full name, age, occupation and relevant organizational memberships. We edit submissions for brevity, grammar, taste and legal reasons. We reject those published elsewhere. Send columns to La Grande Observer, 1406 5th St., La Grande 97850, fax them to 541- 963-7804 or email them to news@ lagrandeobserver.com. The authors go on to suggest: “Extreme environmental conditions … overwhelmed most fuel treatment effects. This included almost all treat- ment methods including prescribed burning and thinning. Suppression efforts had little benefit from fuel modi- fications.” The Congressional Research Service found that: “From a quantitative per- spective, the CRS study indicates a very weak relationship between acres logged and the extent and severity of forest fires. The data indicate that fewer acres burned in areas where logging activity was limited.” SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION STAFF Phone: SUBSCRIBE AND SAVE NEWSSTAND PRICE: $1.50 You can save up to 34% off the single-copy price with home delivery. Call 541-963-3161 to subscribe. Stopped account balances less than $5 will be refunded upon request. Subscription rates per month: By carrier...............................................$11.80 By mail, all other U.S. .............................. $15 A division of Another review paper published in 2017 found: “Managing forest fuels are often invoked in policy discussions as a means of minimizing the growing threat of wildfire to ecosystems and wildland-urban interface communities across the West. However, the effective- ness of this approach at broad scales is limited.… Regionally, the area treated has little relationship to trends in the area burned, which is influenced primarily by patterns of drought and warming.” Dr. Jack Cohen, who recently retired from the Forest Service Fire Lab in Missoula, Montana, has written extensively about fires and home pro- tection and concluded that: “Wildland fuel reduction may be inefficient and ineffective for reducing home losses, for extensive wildland fuel reduction on public lands does not effectively reduce home ignitability on private lands.” In a 2018 letter to Congress, more than 200 scientists questioned the fuel reduction strategy. 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 tempera- tures, 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.” This is only a small sampling of the science that calls into question the ef- fectiveness of fuel reductions. Nevertheless, the Forest Service will degrade the forest and scenic corridor largely to provide fodder for the timber industry. 541-963-3161 An independent newspaper founded in 1896 (USPS 299-260) The Observer reserves the right to adjust subscription rates by giving prepaid and mail subscribers 30 days notice. Periodicals postage paid at La Grande, Oregon 97850. Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays (except Dec. 25) by EO Media Group, 1406 Fifth St., La Grande, OR 97850 (USPS 299-260) COPYRIGHT © 2019 THE OBSERVER The Observer retains ownership and copyright protection of all staff-prepared news copy, advertising copy, photos and news or ad illustrations. 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