Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 17, 2017)
Page 10 Street Roots • Nov. 17-23, 2017 News FOREST FIRES, from page 5 words like “catastrophic,” “disastrous” and “horrific.” were the same roads that granted human While the recent fire-caused deaths in access to that area of the forest - likely Santa Rosa were unmistakably tragic, many leading to the ignition of the fire. of the other wildfires given these labels While the fire’s cause is officially were actually part of a healthy forest’s life unknown, Groce, the Forest Service ranger, cycle, DellaSala said. said there hadn’t been any reported The Eagle Creek Fire, for example, while lightning in the area, leading the Forest seen as destructive to many Portland Service to believe it was human-caused. residents, was actually beneficial to the But Groce said the Forest Service is not Columbia Gorge’s directed to decommission ecological health, he said. roads as a fire-prevention "The kl»d ©I habitat The latest wildfire tactic. that exists after a fire Is season also seemed “We have roads for a so rare ©si the landscape especially apocalyptic variety of purposes,” she that yea really shealtf »*! given the extreme amount said. “We have been very of smoke that blanketed active in trying to right- be Hiessiag w ith It, urban areas. But DellaSala size our transportation There's way less post- said that had more to do system, but we still need lire habitat that exists with the location of the to provide public access to ©a HatioBal forests the» fires burning than the enjoy forests, manage number of acres burned. there used t© he/* forests and suppress fires. Additionally, smoke is While yes, it’s true that M IC H A E L K R O C H TA , B A R K 'S F O R E S T W A T C H going to be unavoidable people access the forest C O O R D IN A T O R some years when you live through our road system in a fire-prone region of and sometimes start fires, the country. that is an illegal activity.” Other misleading rhetoric includes calling In what Bark considers a partial win, the recent fire seasons “record breaking.” Forest Service recently agreed to reduce Just one of many examples was Nov. 1, the number of roads it was planning to build when Merkley’s office announced the 11 for a fuels reduction project on the eastern Western senators’ letter to the president side of Mt. Hood National Forest, known as asking for fire prevention dollars. It stated the Polallie Cooper timber thinning and the request was being made on the heels of fuels reduction area. a “record-shattering fire season.” “It’s for fuels reduction,” Krochta said of The only thing “record shattering” about the project, “but would have built miles and this year’s fire season, DellaSala said, was miles of roads in back country, which fire suppression, or firefighting, spending. heightens the risk of fire.” Most comparisons deeming the 2015 and T h e d e c is io n to r e d u c e th e ~ n u rn b e T o f 2017 fire seasons “record breaking” look roads was part of a resolution the Forest only as far back as the 1980s. But in terms Service reached with Bark, which has been of fire ecology, that isn’t long enough to put fighting the sale since it was first introduced recent fire seasons in proper context. in 1999. Bark had successfully argued that DellaSala pointed to fire seasons in the early by building more roads, the Forest Service 1900s that burned 10 times as many acres was undermining the very objective of the as fires we’ve seen in recent years. project: to reduce fire risk. He said looking back 2,000 years, scientists know fire seasons are tightly Not quite ‘record-shattering’ correlated with droughts. Wildfires coincide Another point of contention among with regional weather patterns that follow conservationists and some fire ecologists is global climate forces, such as the recurring the rhetoric commonly used in the media pattern known as Pacific Decadal and by politicians around wildfires, such as Oscillation, or PDO. Right now, that PDO is OOUCHNUT ramping up again like it was in the early 1900s, and fires are increasing along with it. DellaSala said we’re actually making up for a fire deficit. “You gotta pull back and look at it on a bigger scale, both a time scale and a global scale,” he said. “So when the delegation puts out an announcement that we’ve got catastrophic fire and all we need to do is reduce fuel hazards and everything will be OK, they are missing the link to these larger-scale processes that determine fire activity because they govern the kind of fire weather we’ll get in a particular season.” Reasoning with Congress DellaSala took these arguments to Washington, D.C., where he testified Sept. 27 before the House Natural Resources Committee’s oversight subcommittee. Westerman, the chief sponsor of the Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2017 (H.R. 2936), chaired the committee. Proponents of the bill, such as Oregon’s Walden, argue that it would give foresters and firefighters new tools to protect the forests, but conservationists say those tools would cripple their ability to intervene in environmentally unsound projects. Groups such as Bark often challenge timber sales on public lands using provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act. This law mandates that the federal government conduct assessments of how a project would affect watersheds, the ecosystem and species in the project area. This process includes opening up its analysis for public view and comment. This is the point in the process where conservationists have an opportunity to point out flaws in the plan, where the agency might have made mistakes or overlooked impacts, and then make comment and alert the public to do the same. The Resilient Federal Forests Act would allow the government to exempt from this public process logging projects covering less than 10,000 acres - which accounts for most logging projects. Also mixed into the fire-logging debates is the practice of salvage logging after a burn has come through, and these projects would also be exempted from environmental review under Westerman’s bill. On Sept. 8, Walden introduced a bill to allow salvage logging in the Eagle Creek Fire area. But many conservation groups, including Friends of the Columbia River Gorge, are outraged, saying it would harm the ecosystem, not help it. Krochta said the only objective to salvage logging is getting the trees out of a burn area while they still have monetary value. They are often weakened by a fire, which can make way for beetle infestations that ultimately kill them, making them worthless to timber companies. But salvage logging a post-fire habitat is one of the worst things for it, he said. “For one, driving heavy machinery on soil that’s this exposed, it really takes a while for the vegetation to come back, to stabilize it,” he said. “The kind of habitat that exists after a fire is so rare on the landscape that you really shouldn’t be messing with it. There’s way less post-fire habitat that exists on national forests than there used to be.” He said there are species that “really specifically” rely on these areas, such as the black-backed woodpecker, whose back is black because it’s adapted to foraging on burnt tree trunks. While thinning projects and salvage logging will not prevent another fire season like the Pacific Northwest just saw, what we’re doing about climate change can affect the frequency of such seasons, DellaSala said. “That’s the real causative agent here,” he said. “If we don’t get our heads around doing something about reducing fossil fuel emissions, we could very well see more active fire seasons like this producing more smoke. We keep avoiding the main issue here, which is these fires are being exacerbated by a climate signal that we’re not paying attention to. Instead we’re trying to treat the symptom, rather than the cause.” emily@streetroots.org; Twitter @greenwrites L All Profits to Social Justice WORD JUMBLE Cannabis with Benefits EMLPA □ c □ Panacea is a non-dividend, triple-bottom-line company. We commit 100% of profits to affordable housing and social justice. IPLF MEOHR W hich doughnut is named a fte r Elvis Presley's entourage? J ASM M OI LJC3 THE Print answer here y > À À -no > Everyone else is just sellin'weed. Recycle your cannabis money back to the community at Panacea. 6714 NE Sandy Blvd, Portland, Oregon • 503-477-5083 www.panaceapdx.com • panacea_pdx Mon-Sat, 10-8, Sun 11-5
