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.
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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.
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We reject those published
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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.”
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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
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