Help California rebuild by managing our forests

By Bob Zybach 

...Last month Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue joined forces in directing their agencies to “prevent and combat the spread of catastrophic wildfires through robust fuel reduction and pre-suppression techniques.”

These statements were made before the California wildfires took place. Much of their focus was on controlling and suppressing wildfires, but “robust fuel reduction and pre-suppression techniques” imply long-term solutions via active management of our forests. That would signal a major shift from how many federal lands and wildfires have been managed during the past 30-plus years.

From 1951 until 1987, only one forest fire in Western Oregon exceeded 10,000 acres. Since 1987 there have been dozens of such fires, including 10 this year alone. Almost all of these fires have been on federal lands. Very few large fires in the past 70 years have burned on private or state lands — and those few were mostly affected by adjacent burning federal lands.

The principal difference is that private lands are actively managed for use and protection of their resources, while federal lands have increasingly become passively managed, allowing “natural processes” to take place with little or no human interference.

Active management in forested environments involves timely marketing and salvage of dead and dying trees; selective thinning of some areas; clearcutting, prescribed burning or reforestation in other areas; good road access; maintaining native wildlife populations and providing recreational opportunities. From World War II until the 1980s, most federal forests were actively managed to provide for national defense, post-war housing, wildfire control, public recreation and wildlife habitat. There were only a few large-scale wildfires during those years.

Passive management of federal forestlands largely began with the 1964 Wilderness Act, creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, and the 1973 Endangered Species Act.

This process accelerated in following decades with government land-use designations, burgeoning ESA and EPA policies, and public litigation resulting in roadless areas, spotted owl habitat, and other large preserves in which active forest management was discouraged or even outlawed.

Recurring large-scale and catastrophic wildfires in these areas has become a predictable result, beginning in 1987 and growing worse since then.

Quickly salvaging trees killed in this year’s fires would produce thousands of direct and indirect jobs, greatly improve the economies of rural Oregon and California, rebuild infrastructures harmed by the fires, reduce future wildfire risks and costs, and help provide economical, high-grade construction materials to restore ruined homes, businesses and communities. Safer, more beautiful forests for both people and wildlife would be another important result. 

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