NATION
Saturday, July 20, 2019
East Oregonian
Plan to slow wildfires would clear strips of land
By BRADY MCCOMBS
Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY —
The Trump administration
is proposing an ambitious
plan to slow Western wild-
fires by bulldozing, mow-
ing or revegetating large
swaths of land along 11,000
miles of terrain in the West.
The plan that was
announced this summer
and presented at public
open houses, including one
in Salt Lake City this week,
would create strips of land
known “fuel breaks” on
about 1,000 square miles of
land managed by the U.S.
Bureau of Land Manage-
ment in an area known as
the Great Basin in parts of
Idaho, Oregon, Washing-
ton, California, Nevada and
Utah.
The estimated cost
would be about $55 mil-
lion to $192 million, a wide
range that illustrates the
variance in costs for the dif-
ferent types of fuel breaks.
Some would completely
clear lands, others would
mow down vegetation and a
third method would replant
the area with more fire-re-
sistance vegetation.
It would cost another
$18 million to $107 million
each year to maintain the
strips and ensure vegetation
doesn’t regrow on the strips
of land.
Wildfire experts say the
program could help slow
fires, but it won’t help in the
most extreme fires that can
jump these strips of land.
The breaks could also frag-
ment wildlife habitat.
An environmental group
calls it an ill-conceived and
expensive plan that has no
scientific backing to show it
will work.
A U.S. Geological Sur-
vey report issued last year
found that fuel breaks
could be an important tool
to reduce damage caused
by wildfires, but the agency
cautioned that no scientific
studies have been done to
prove their effectiveness
AP Photo/Jeffrey D. Allred, File
In this Sept. 15, 2018, file photo, firefighters battle a brush
fire near Shaggy Mountain Road in Herriman, Utah.
and that they could alter
habitat for sagebrush plants
and animal communities.
The Bureau of Land
Management says it has
done about 1,200 assess-
ments of fuel breaks since
2002 and found they help
control fires about 80% of
the time.
The strips of land that
would be 500 feet or less
would be created along
highways, rural roads and
other areas already dis-
turbed such as right of ways
for pipelines, said Marlo
Draper, the Bureau of Land
Management’s supervisory
project manager for the
Idaho Great Basin team.
They won’t prevent fires,
but they should reduce the
costs of having to battle
major blazes because fuel
breaks reduce the intensity,
flame length and spread of
fires and keep firefighters
safe, Draper said.
It cost about $373 mil-
lion over the last decade
to fight 21 fires that were
larger than 156 square miles
on lands managed by the
bureau in Utah, Nevada and
Idaho, according to a report
explaining the proposal.
“It gives us a chance to
get in front of it and put
fires out more quickly,”
Draper said.
Western wildfires have
grown more lethal because
of extreme drought and heat
associated with climate
change and by housing
developments
encroach-
ing on the most fire-prone
grasslands and brushy can-
yons. Many of the ranchers
and farmers who once man-
aged those landscapes are
gone, leaving terrain thick
with vegetation that can
explode into flames.
The proposal is out for
public comment and pend-
ing environmental review.
If approved, some of the
land could be cleared as
soon as next year while
other projects could take
several years, she said.
The plan comes after
President
Trump
last
December issued an exec-
utive order last Decem-
ber calling on the Interior
Department to prioritize
reducing wildfire risks on
public lands.
This proposal doesn’t
include U.S. National For-
est Service lands. Most
states have their own sep-
arate plans for fire pre-
vention, which sometimes
include thinning of forests.
A7
BRIEFLY
In reversal, Trump disavows criticism
of chanting crowd
These fuel breaks are
a useful tool if used along
with other wildfire preven-
tion methods that can keep
firefighters safer and poten-
tially help out in broad
scopes of land because
they are long and thin,
said Lenya Quinn-David-
son, the area fire adviser
for University of Califor-
nia Cooperative Extension.
They can especially helpful
by providing perimeters for
prescribed burns. But they
must be in the right places
and don’t stop fires, she
said.
David Peterson, an ecol-
ogy professor at the Uni-
versity of Washington and
former federal research sci-
entist, said the plan will
likely produce mixed suc-
cess slowing down fires.
But Peterson said the plan
will not help with extreme
fires that produce embers
and flames that jump
over these fire breaks. He
said the risk of fragment-
ing important habitat and
harming animals like sage
grouse is real.
The U.S. government
must also be committed to
the chore of maintaining
the areas or the plan won’t
help and could open the
door for more cheat grass to
grow in, which fuels fires.
“We are buying into a
long-term commitment of
funding,” Peterson said.
Patrick Donnelly, the
Center for Biological Diver-
sity’s Nevada state director,
said the plan could break
up habitat for sage grouse,
deer and the Pygmy rabbit.
He said the money would be
better spent planting native
seed and sagebrush to get
rid of non-native plants that
make fires worst.
“This seems like the
Interior is trying to demon-
strate they are doing some-
thing, and they want some-
thing that is impressive to
people, like: ‘Look at us,
we’ve bulldozed 11,000
miles of desert,’” Donnelly
said. “Ultimately, this is a
misguided effort.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump
renewed his attacks on a Somali-born congresswoman Fri-
day while reversing his previous criticisms of a North Car-
olina crowd who chanted “send her back,” defending them
as “patriots” while again questioning the loyalty of four
Democratic lawmakers of color.
In a week that has been full of hostile exchanges over
race and love of country on both sides, Trump returned to
a pattern that has become familiar during controversies of
his own making: Ignite a firestorm, backtrack from it, but
then double down on his original, inflammatory position.
“You know what I’m unhappy with?” Trump answered
when reporters at the White House asked if he was
unhappy with the Wednesday night crowd. “Those people
in North Carolina, that stadium was packed. It was a record
crowd. And I could have filled it 10 times, as you know.
Those are incredible people. They are incredible patriots.
But I’m unhappy when a congresswoman goes and says,
‘I’m going to be the president’s nightmare.’”
Giant Hawaii telescope to focus on big
unknowns of universe
HONOLULU (AP) — Is there life on planets outside our
solar system? How did stars and galaxies form in the earliest
years of the universe? How do black holes shape galaxies?
Scientists are expected to explore those and other fun-
damental questions about the universe when they peer deep
into the night sky using a new telescope planned for the
summit of Hawaii’s tallest mountain.
But the Thirty Meter Telescope is a decade away from
being built. And Native Hawaiian protesters have tried to
thwart the start of construction by blocking a road to the
mountain. They say installing yet another observatory on
Mauna Kea’s peak would further defile a place they con-
sider sacred.
Activists have fought the $1.4 billion telescope but the
state Supreme Court has ruled it can be built. The latest pro-
tests could be the final stand against it.
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