A Forest Fire Primer

A FOREST FIRE PRIMER

Ever since the recent extinction of the species Forester americanus, the forests of the United States have become fuel for fires of ever increasing intensity and extent. This phenomenon, while great media, political, and bureaucratic fodder; has given rise to certain misconceptions among the general public of just what is happening. I was reminded of all this as I read the papers lately. I thought at first someone had slipped me last summers’ paper or perhaps the summer papers from 2005 or 2004. But alas they simply read the same: “More Fires”, “Larger Fires”, “More Homes Burned”, “Town Evacuated”, etc. Surely the autumn papers will once again report how “Government Firefighter” and “National Forest Supervisor” and “Government Forester” explain how “people shouldn’t live here” and “the costs of fighting are enormous so we need more people and more money”. Next winter and spring (as the Presidential candidates scramble to assure us of their “sensitivity” and “concern”, proposals for “condemning” and “buying out” the middle class and poor rural landowners will proliferate. Urban elites will cheer that “more” land is preserved and that “Nature” triumphs. As rotten and evil (the right words) as this all is, there is a need to explain what is happening as things go from bad to worse.

A forester should do this but since they weren’t “Listed” (on the Endangered Species List) about 25 years ago, they are evidently extinct today. Foresters were trained (years ago) to manage the forests for biodiversity, economic returns, recreation, fire management, rural economics, and sustainable uses of all stripes. Twenty-five years ago (+ or-) all that changed. Like “Wildlife Biologists” and “Range Managers”, most “Foresters” were employed by Federal and State land management agencies and those agencies were subverted from within by anti-management and anti-use radicals lobbying politicians, obtaining passage of anti-management laws and taking advantage of Equal Opportunity laws and the elimination of requirements to be a “Forester” or “Wildlife Biologist”. The Universities followed along as they saw who was hiring in the agencies and where grants and other funding were originating: the result is “Foresters” that are merely anti-use and anti-management ideologues masquerading as “knowledgeable” and “educated” persons. Today’s “forester” is someone that might have taken a course in “Global Weather Satellite Imagery” or “Techniques for Influencing Teachers and Students”. Hire them in a government agency with no entrance exam or job requirements, dress them up in a starched uniform with a patch, and send them forth as an “expert” with “answers” and you are expected to nod appreciatively or just keep quiet. Nothing could be further from the truth.

So this old wildlife biologist will strain to explain why the forest fires get ever worse; who is responsible; who is profiting; and what must be done to reverse the devastation that is making rural America hostile to average Americans and a playground for the ultra-rich and government bureaucrats and radical environmentalists. This is a simple explanation for the general public from Manhattan to Kemmerer, Wyoming.

Forest fires are an integral part of the juggernaut that is eliminating private property and rural livelihoods and rural families and rural communities from the landscape to be replaced by Federal and State lands closed to access, use, and management. Throw in the wolves and grizzly bears and the bureaucratic hunger for “more” and the competition between politicians vying for “greenest” in the campaign and you have the recipe for disaster we see all around.

What follows is a few basic facts to consider as you watch the scenario I have described unfold this summer and fall across this great Nation.

WILDERNESS*
(*NOTE: Wilderness is both a legal and generic term. Government, i.e. “public”, land designated “Wilderness” is inaccessible and unmanaged and unused. National Parks have been similarly unmanaged since their inception to “save” Yellowstone game herds [one is forced to ask for what and if so why wolves and bears are allowed to proliferate there] over 100 years ago. Increasingly National Forests, National Wildlife Refuges, and even Bureau of Land Management lands are being made inaccessible, unmanaged, and unused. There are current proposals before Congress to expand these areas and even shift Forests bought for “multiple use” to the Park system to confirm their de facto “wilderness” status without jeopardy for the politicians seeking reelection.)

Question: Is there more fuel for forest fires in an untouched “Wilderness” where woody fuels proliferate in thick stands, dead trees and brush are untouched and there is no access: or is there less fuel for fires in woodlands managed for timber and access for men and machinery?
Answer: Do I really need to say that of course there is LESS fuel in a managed forest than in an unmanaged and inaccessible forest? Alright, there IS LESS FUEL IN THE MANAGED FOREST.

LOGGING

Question: Does managing, i.e. harvesting in a sustainable process, the timber and trees in forest lands reduce fuel for fires and make fires more amenable to control and eradication when they occur?
Answer: Timber management reduces fuel build-up and maintains access to fight fires. Additionally it creates multiple (as opposed one) habitats for a diversity of wildlife, plants, and human activities and benefits. The annual loss of board-feet of timber in this country is staggering while we berate Canadians for not selling us their timber at the price we want to pay, go figure? Road, roadside, trail, and different age re-growth habitat types provide just not variety but “edge”, a valuable habitat feature for all plants and animals as foresters and wildlife biologists that received their degrees more than 30 years ago know.

ROADLESS AREAS

Question: When a fire breaks out from any cause (lightning, matches, catalytic converter, whatever) is it more likely to be contained and extinguished in and area where there are NO ROADS or where roads are numerous be they trails, logging roads, campground roads, county roads, etc.?
Answer: If you answer that the area with roads presents far less of a fire hazard when a fire breaks out you would have made a good forester years ago.

GRAZING

Question: Will an area that is grazed regularly and significantly, burn as readily or as hot or as quick as a similar area that is un-grazed? Remember that not only cattle and sheep and horses “graze” but consider elk and moose and deer and wild sheep et al that also “graze” and “browse” vegetation.
Answer: Of course the grazed areas are far less of a fire hazard and also, because of the reduction in fire “fuel”, fighting fires is more feasible and can generally result in quicker containment and smaller burned areas. – Ask yourself why it is so “popular” to “buy-out” grazing leases and to drive ranchers out of business? Ask yourself why more and more government land is closed to grazing (with truly religious zeal) as more and more grazed rural land is purchased by government or shut down by Nature “Conservancies” and Land “Trusts” using government tax exemptions, government cost sharing, and resales of such lands to government agencies with healthy commissions?

PREDATORS

Question: What is the link between predators and forest fires?
Answer: Large predators (cougars, wolves, and bears [especially grizzlies]) decrease big game herds and livestock operations by killing big game animals and livestock year around. These predators will multiply and kill such animals until the animals become scarce. When these animals become scarce, the amount of grass and browse and other vegetation they consumed BECOMES FIRE FUEL. As states like California protect cougars and like Oregon prohibit hunting them with dogs (the ONLY consistently effective method) and others like South Dakota and Iowa try to protect them as some sort of special species: they will decimate grazing and browsing animals BEFORE increasing their attacks on small and immature humans for food. Wolves and grizzly bears enjoy Federal protection and state agency cooperation in their spread across the United States. While urban neophytes giggle about how they might help reduce urban deer herds (BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR!) rural big game animals huddle in towns and by garages year around in vain hopes of avoiding these predators in the surrounding farm and ranch areas as well as the forests. This all results in quicker build-up of forest fire fuel and quicker spreading fires when winds and drought and lightning do what is too often blamed on lighters and campers and vehicles.

HIDDEN AGENDAS

Question: If this is true that the things we are being told to support (no logging, no grazing, abundant predators, closing ranches, no resource management, etc.) are causing fires to be worse and bigger and more devastating, how can this be? Is someone lying? Who is benefiting from this?
Answer:
When the bureaucrat (disguised as a government firefighter or “forester” or “spokesperson”) tells us this fall that they need “more” people and dollars because they “have” to protect rural homes and communities “that don’t belong there”; guess who we are supposed to believe really “belongs there”? If you answered the US Forest Service or the National Park Service or the US Fish and Wildlife Service, you get an “A”. Government agencies and government employee’s careers benefit as well as the politicians seeking reelection that they manipulate like puppeteers.

When the bureaucrats and the radical environmental organizations tell us that we need “buffers” to protect ourselves and “the ecosystem” they are really providing the publicity and justification for the self-serving politicians to give them money and people and tax exemptions and grants etc. to create the illusion of “doing something”. This generates votes and slick pictures for articles about what “needs to be done” so send money.

As government land control expands and roads are closed and management and use of resources like timber and grazing and big game and fishing dwindles (thanks in part to our need to be “saved” from the fires) human uses and other activities are constricted. Those that “hate” grazing are mollified, those that “hate” tree cutting are benefited, those that “hate” hunting and fishing are happy, those that “hate” rural life and rural communities (except for the artist colonies) are encouraged, those that “hate” guns watch the numbers of people carrying or using guns diminish (as well as their political clout) and thus are many groups given to support the fire cycle made by government.

As the patchwork of plant and animal habitats that formerly existed in managed woodlands are replaced by monolithic (and therefore less biologically diverse) forests that grow as one and burn as one the abundance of birds and mammals and even fish disappears. There are fewer birds to hunt and fewer mammals to hunt. Ask yourself why we are introducing and protecting wolves and grizzly bears that destroy the elk and deer and moose and sheep herds? Fewer hunting dogs are needed and besides the wolves and bears kill them at every opportunity. Camping and hiking dwindle since only the young and fit can go far from the edges and the old and young and handicapped and people too busy or too poor to spend family time in gyms no longer have any access. As children are dragged from sleeping bags to be eaten and as mountain lions pounce on and eat equestrians and bicyclists and as a Canadian man killed and eaten by wolves is the subject of a 2-year debate about how he died (still not even a Coroners Report and bureaucrats told to remain quiet or face firing) the subject of predators is like a covered pot boiling on the stove and about to blow. Under these conditions rural communities dwindle, tax revenue (from citizens AND government landowners) dwindles and thus government land purchases or “Conservancy” easement purchases are to be had for a song. Also, the very rich buy up estates and live in isolated baronial splendor much like their ancient predecessors under ancient Kings and Emperors.

Ask yourself what possible benefit or benefits outweigh the destructive effects of these mad policies? Forest fires, decline of hunting, loss of ranches, destruction of rural economies, burned homes, broken families, gargantuan government bills to actually increase what they say they are the only ones that can decrease: ALL FOR WHAT?

I was reminded of this government discombobulating to explain away their role in fires and their horrendous effects while watching the news two nights ago. A southern Florida fishing guide was bemoaning the National Park Service plan to shut down sport fishing access in the Everglades. (Like the Park Service and US Fish and Wildlife Service plans to likewise shut down hunting and hunting access in Southern Florida as well despite all their protestations about “input” and “fairness” and “comments”.) The scene then shifted to a lady “Park Ranger” with big earrings and a “Smokey the Bear” Hat telling us that it was too bad about the fishermen but they were destroying aquatic habitats. (NOTE: What they claimed was habitat “destruction” could as easily have been characterized as “edge creation” a technique for increasing habitat utility and productive capacity.) Then she seriously wrinkled her brow and told us the Park Service’s Mission was to “save such places”.

The US Forest Service and the US Fish and Wildlife Service in cooperation with the National Park Service own and control HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF ACRES (20 % nationally, over 70% in certain states) already and they are always expanding for a long list of reasons including “containing” fires. Today, they each share the philosophy of the Lady Ranger: “People are the problem and closure of public land to management and access and use is the only way to ‘save’ it”. Fire is THEIR ally and OUR enemy. Does anyone remember when these government employees used to work for us?

I once read a philosophical question that I found fascinating. “If a sparrow falls in the woods and there is no one nearby to see or hear it: does it make a sound?” One might ask today, “If public lands contain no humans or human activities: whose responsibility is it to maintain it?”

Jim Beers
25 July 2007
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- Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Centreville, Virginia with his wife of many decades.