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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 31, 2018)
4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 2018 editor@dailyastorian.com KARI BORGEN Publisher JIM VAN NOSTRAND Editor Founded in 1873 JEREMY FELDMAN Circulation Manager DEBRA BLOOM Business Manager JOHN D. BRUIJN Production Manager CARL EARL Systems Manager PRO-CON Jae C. Hong/AP Photo Tim Grant watches a wildfire burn in the Cleveland National Forest near El Cariso, Calif. IS CLIMATE CHANGE SPARKING RECORD-BREAKING FOREST FIRES? PRO: Climate change clearly is a major culprit in the fires devastating the western US ANTA CLARA, Calif. — California is agement has intercepted these processes and burning, but it is hardly alone. Up and mainly centered on fire suppression. down the western half of the country, The goals were laudable: Agencies kept the 92 wildfires are currently raging in states as general public safe and protected lands and diverse as Oregon, Alaska, Idaho and Arizona. natural resources such as timber and oil. At the heart of the crisis, California is in the Yet we may have done more harm than middle of another record-breaking fire season, good. Although fire suppression may satisfy with 820,000 acres across the state already short-term goals, in the long run, it encourages ravaged — twice as many as by this point last the growth of denser forests with less fire-re- sistant species and more fuel, greatly exacer- year. Three of California’s biggest recorded bating the size and intensity of wildfires. fires are burning right now. We may be able to learn from California While we cannot pin a particular fire on — a state that has larger populations, more climate change, their bundled appearance extreme droughts, a history of intense forest is consistent with the processes scientists management and greater susceptibility to understand and can describe, measure and warming than most. calculate. Along with an intense fire sea- And while part of our current fire son, 2018 is shaping up to be the crisis most certainly has its roots in fourth-warmest year on record, only forest management practices and exceeded by the three previous years. human settlement patterns, we now In California, these warm years have an opportunity to plan for a fire have been overlapping with the most future without putting on blinkers IRIS intense drought in recorded history. when it comes to climate. STEWART Throughout the West, drought and Healthy forests are vibrant eco- FREY systems that provide us with water, heat have weakened trees and made timber, biodiversity, recreational them susceptible to disease and pests opportunities and living spaces. They are part such as the pine beetle that devastates forests of why so many people find California and the as far north as Canada. Dead and weakened trees and excessive West attractive places. wood fuel from fire suppression have turned On our current trajectory, we continue to California into one giant tinderbox. suppress low-intensity fires in increasingly So can we blame those raging fires on warmer environments, and are setting human-induced climate change? Based on ourselves up for more frequent and intense physical processes, elevated greenhouse gas mega-fires. concentrations make warmer temperatures, Alternatively, we can rethink our path for- ward to help our forests establish a new equi- shifts in precipitation and climatic extremes librium between tree growth, fuel generation, much more likely. Although there is still much to learn about low-intensity fire and warmer temperatures. the way fires burn, warmer temperatures and Most likely that would mean some con- intense droughts facilitate extreme fire seasons trolled burns and greater control of where and The costs of suppressing fires have reached how people live in regions of high fire risk. It an all-time high, a mind-boggling $2.9 billion would also mean that we need to fund research in 2017 for California alone, and it is time to and projects in areas as diverse as fire behav- ior, disaster preparedness, economic recovery take a no-nonsense look at what we can do and forest restoration. better. Yes, we can talk about extreme fires with- We also need to accept a transition period out mentioning what often cannot be named to this new strategy and its outcomes. In the — climate change, but they are consistent with longer term, such an approach will save lives what scientists expect from global warming. and help us develop adaptation strategies to In the West, natural forest systems period- protect our economic and natural assets in a ically burn with low-intensity fires that clear changing world. brush, help germination, and result in more Iris Stewart Frey is an associate professor fire, pest and disease-resistant open forests. and chair of the Department of Environmental Studies at Santa Clara University. However, for over a century forest man- S CON: Climate change isn’t causing California wildfires — blame lies with bad forest management D ALLAS — California is suffering, yet again, through a horrendous summer MORE PHOTOS of wildfires that are destroying forests, View some of this summer’s devastating homes — and lives. Many in the media seem wildfires that are torching Western US states to blame the size of the fires on climate change. and those who are fighting them. President Donald Trump had a different Page 10A take in a recent tweet: “California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws ... Must also tree clear states. Wildfires took between 300,000 and 400,000 acres annually between 1940 and to stop fire spreading!” 1985. There has been a steady increase ever Trump is correct that human-caused poli- cies may be playing a bigger role than human- since. The current California wildfires have consumed more than 1 million acres, according caused climate change in the increasingly to the Forest Service. destructive wildfires. Why the decades of smaller fires? Better- For decades the U.S. Forest Service allowed managed forests, especially when logging companies to enter forests and management focused on “select clear out dead, stressed and diseased cutting.” trees and underbrush — all of which But one of the purposes of the are kindling for wildfires. National Forest Management Act of Between 1960 and 1990 roughly 1976 was to protect national forests 10 billion to 12 billion board feet of from excessive logging. And it timber was removed annually from MERRILL required forest planning based on a national forests, according to the MATTHEWS consensus of groups, including envi- Forest Service. But a steady decline ronmental organizations that tended to led to only about 2.5 billion board feet oppose the logging. harvested in 2013, leaving forests filled with In addition, the Engendered Species Act dead and diseased trees. tied the hands of effective management if spe- As the Forest Service reported last cific actions would have a perceived negative December, in California “the total number of impact on threatened species. trees that have died due to drought and bark Such changes ultimately made forest beetles” reached an historic 129 million on 8.9 million acres. The dead trees continue to pose a management, in McClintock’s words, “all but impossible.” hazard to people and critical infrastructure ...” The irony is that California Gov. Jerry You can say that again! But it doesn’t have Brown is dedicated to reducing carbon emis- to be that way — and it wasn’t in the past. sions — using more renewable energy sources, California Rep. Tom McClintock, the imposing higher mileage standards on cars and Republican chairman of the Subcommittee on Federal Lands, said at a committee hearing last trucks, etc. But the wildfires that have grown so extensive on his watch undermine those year: “The sale of excess timber ... provided efforts. a steady stream of revenue to the treasury and The earth has been on a gradual warming thousands of jobs to support local families. We trend since the last ice age; there is very little could match and maintain tree density to the humans can do about that. And many climate ability of the land to support it.” scientists concede that most carbon-reducing But, he continued, “Forty-five years ago, proposals would have minimal impact on we began imposing laws that have made the management of our forests all but impossible.” rising temperatures. But there is a lot we can do about reducing The result of those changes has been a rapid the size and intensity of wildfires, which would expansion, not so much in the number but the also reduce carbon emissions. And it starts size of wildfires. The Government Accountability Office has with embracing policies that were standard practice decades ago. Well-managed forests are published a chart showing the total number of much safer and less-costly forests. national forest acreage burned between 1910 Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar with and 1997 — national forests, as opposed to state and private forests, are mostly in western the Institute for Policy Innovation.
