Saving prime sage grouse habitat will mean fighting fires differently this summer

Mike Courtney gave Interior Secretary Sally Jewell a tutorial on sage grouse, cheatgrass and fire last October as he guided her on a short hike in the South Hills near Twin Falls. After gathering scientists in Boise in November, Jewell issued a secretarial order in January requiring Interior officials to make stopping fire in critical sagebrush habitat the top resource priority for the Bureau of Land Management. The directive requires the BLM to send firefighting money, equipment and personnel to 15 districts in five states that have 38 million acres of critical sagebrush habitat, even at the expense of other parts of BLM’s 262 million acres in 11 states. Under Jewell’s order, Courtney is pre-positioning fire equipment in sagebrush country, which is up to 40 miles from the nearest town. He has plowed to bare dirt 12-foot wide “brown strips” along roads, designed to reduce the spread of fires before firefighters arrive. Eventually BLM plans to plant native and other non-invasive plants in the strips that will stay green and resist fire long into the summer. Jewell’s plan also calls for expanded efforts to restore habitat damaged by wildfire and to boost the amount of native seeds and plants used for rehabilitation. Early in a season, many firefighters are in Alaska. Often, when that fire season ends in June and July, firefighters get to choose where they go next. Not this year This year, they’ll go to places like Winnemucca and Vale and other out-of-the-way communities in prime sagebrush country, Dunton said. “They will not get to pick and choose,” he said. “That’s not going to make people happy.”...more