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As the Wallow Fire continues to rage in Northern Arizona, this week we’re tackling the debate on whether or not forest thinning could have prevented the blaze.
Arizona Senator Sylvia Allen says the Wallow Fire is further evidence that our current system of managing our forests is simply not working.
But officials from the Center for Biological Diversity say forest restoration work among conservationists, local communities and government agencies has lessened the severity of the Wallow Fire.
So, could forest thinning have prevented the severity of the Wallow Fire?
Click “next page” to read the first of two positions, “Collaborative forest restoration project has lessened damage of Wallow Fire”.
“Collaborative forest restoration project has lessened damage of Wallow Fire”: By Taylor McKinnon and Todd Schulke with the Center for Biological Diversity
U.S. Forest Service officials say forest restoration work implemented under the White Mountains Stewardship Contract — part of a cooperative project among conservationists, local communities and government agencies — has lessened the severity of the Wallow fire and helped firefighters save towns threatened by the flames. Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest Supervisor Chris Knopp told the Associated Press on Thursday that he credited treatments with helping to save Alpine, Nutrioso and Springerville. A district ranger from the same forest told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday that restoration treatments aided firefighters’ ability to save homes in the White Mountains.
“Ever since Arizona’s last mega-fire — the Rodeo-Chediski in 2002 — communities, environmentalists, local industry and forest officials have been pouring their hearts and souls into community protection and landscape-scale restoration of the degraded pine forests in the White Mountains,” said Todd Schulke of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups involved with the project. “That work began next to towns where the fire danger was high, and it looks like those years of cooperation are paying big dividends in the Wallow fire.”
After the Rodeo-Chediski fire, the Forest Service initiated the White Mountains Stewardship Contract to facilitate forest restoration in White Mountains east of that fire’s boundary in a swath of forest that includes the area being affected by Wallow. Its objective is to restore up to 150,000 acres of degraded forest over 10 years by strategically thinning small trees in overgrown ponderosa forests to safely reintroduce beneficial fires.
As of April 2010, 49,719 acres of degraded forest had been approved for treatment. Work had been completed on 35,166 of those acres, and the rest were in progress. Most of the acres are located in the wildland urban interface — lands abutting towns — and are intended to reduce fire hazards to communities including Alpine, Nutrioso, Eager and Greer that are now threatened by the Wallow fire.
The Center for Biological Diversity publicly supported the White Mountain Stewardship Contract creation in 2004. Since then the Center has actively worked with communities, the Forest Service and businesses that thin small-diameter trees to ensure the project’s success. That work included lobbying Congress for adequate funding. Because of broad agreement around the project — which resulted in forest recovery and local jobs — it has been hailed as a model for collaborative forest restoration.
“Without the success and cooperation of the stewardship contract, damage from the Wallow fire would have been much worse,” said Schulke. “Our forests need more of this kind of cooperation if we are to have any hope of restoring them.”
The Center and other organizations have been also working together to expand the success of the White Mountains Stewardship Contract to the rest of the Mogollon Rim. The 2.4-million-acre Four Forests Restoration Initiative (4FRI) seeks to restore the ponderosa pine forest from Flagstaff to New Mexico, focusing on strategic thinning of small trees on 1 million acres over the next 20 years in order to protect communities and safely restore beneficial fires to forested landscapes. 4FRI includes a plan to develop a restoration wood industry designed specifically to thin and utilize small-diameter trees in order to eliminate costs to taxpayers and rapidly expand the amount of forest work being done.
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Click “next page” to read the second position, “A lack of forest management in Arizona”
“A lack of forest management in Arizona”: By Arizona Senator Sylvia Allen My heart goes out to those families in Alpine and Nutrioso, Arizona, who had to evacuate June 2 because of the Wallow fire, which swept down from the ridge above Alpine. This is the community where my father was born and where some of my family still live. Sadly, there will be some who will have no home to go home to. I know what it is like to be forced to leave your home on a few hours notice. In 2002, we were forced to evacuate our home due to the Rodeo/Chediski Fires.
I once again must express my anger at the lack of forest management that, for the last 20 years, has turned our forests into a tinderbox of undergrowth, small trees, brush, and downed trees. In some areas of the forest around Alpine, the undergrowth was so thick that you could not even walk across the forest floor.
In 1990, Arizona had a thriving forest industry with 15 sawmills bringing $550 million a year to the Arizona economy and employing thousands of rural Arizona citizens. Many rural ranching families ran cattle across the forest land, helping to keep the undergrowth down and cleaned out. Over the years, their allotment numbers have been cut to the point that many have gone out of business.
Living through the “timber wars” of the 1990s, I know that the Forest Service was knee deep in lawsuits brought by environmentalist groups pushing for efforts to list the Mexican Spotted Owl and the Goshawk. The timber companies hung on as long as they could, spending thousands of dollars defending their legal contracts in court. Eventually, one by one, they went out of business, and their infrastructure was sold at auction.
There was a time when the Forest Service operated in the black with a very healthy return on their investment. The natural resources that were developed on Forest Service lands created jobs and products benefitting the American people. They were the only federal agency that accomplished such things.
All that changed when misinformation, faulty science, lawsuits, and downright lies were used to shut down our forests by those environmental groups that built multi-million-dollar businesses putting families out of work. These flawed environmental philosophies have made their way into federal policies that have now resulted in an unhealthy forest environment.
The catastrophic fires of the last few years are an indication of the health and vitality of our forests. This overgrowth of trees has depleted our watersheds. If the current disastrous Wallow fire burns for the next 15 days, it will put as much pollution into our air as 700 million cars running 24 hours a day for a year.
We must return to common-sense forest management. The federal government held 12 western states hostage and only agreed to grant us statehood if we gave up control of 60% of our land, assuring the states that they (the states) would have use of the land and be able to use the resources within the boundaries of our respective states. The federal government has broken its word.
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