U.S. official: Wildfires to get more destructive
U.S. official: Wildfires to get more destructive
01 December 2012
published by www.idahostatesman.com
USA — Longer, hotter and drier seasons lie ahead, the Forest Service chief says, but restoration projects can help.
If you think fires have gotten big in the past few years, hold on.
U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell said Friday that the blazes will only get bigger and that the cost of fighting them could nearly double. But the agency that manages 193 million acres of national forest including 20 million in Idaho plans to increase timber sales by 20 percent in the next two years as part of a restoration effort to make communities safer and watersheds more resilient.
Wildfires have burned in excess of 8 million acres six times since 2004, a dramatic increase over the yearly totals seen in the past five decades. But Tidwell told the City Club of Boise that as many as 12 million to 15 million acres will burn annually now because of warming temperatures and drier years.
This comes even as state, tribal and federal agencies put out 98 percent of all the fires that start, Tidwell said. Firefighters jump on those blazes as aggressively as they can, he said.
Its that 2 percent that become very large very quickly, Tidwell said.
Todays fires are often so ferocious that managers wont risk putting crews in their path. The thousands of homes that have been built in and on the edges of the national forests have forced managers to shift resources and prompted firefighters to protect communities and lives.
It has drastically changed the way we fight those fires, said Tidwell, a forester who grew up in Boise.
More than 30,000 homes have burned in the past decade, Tidwell said, including 3,000 just this year homes in a Pocatello subdivision among them. Experts expect fires to keep claiming houses, but fuel-reduction steps can make communities safer and easier to protect, Tidwell said.
Federal budget cuts will make money more scarce, but communities are increasingly taking responsibility, he said. Flagstaff, Ariz., passed a $10 million bond to do forest restoration on private and federal land there.
Experiences in Idaho this year show that fuel-reduction works. On the 340,000-acre Mustang Complex Fire north of Salmon, a logging project in Hughes Creek helped firefighters turn the blaze away from U.S. 93, a critical economic corridor.
There is no question our restoration work can make a difference, Tidwell said.
Questions from the audience suggested that many believe the agency is still hindered by lawsuits aimed at stopping timber and salvage sales. But Tidwell said lawsuits are less of a problem today because of collaborative efforts such as the Clearwater Basin Collaborative in north-central Idaho.
There and in forests statewide, environmentalists, timber industry executives and local officials are working together to increase forest and watershed restoration efforts. Nationally, he predicted, timber harvests will rise 20 percent and could go even higher if the market improves. That would increase the money that the agency gets from cutting trees, which it could put back into restoration.
I often use Idaho as an example of how it can be done, how it is being done, Tidwell said.
And he said hes been quoted accurately saying it another way: If we can do it in Idaho, we can do it anywhere.
The failure was in the forest areas.Advertisement
Following a 10-year strategy, ACT fire managers have created a mosaic across the landscape of different fuel levels, burning at every opportunity.
But forests have been too wet to burn this spring and the past two summers.
Read more:http://www.canberratimes.com.au/environment/red-alert-for-high-risk-of-fires-20121118-29koa.html#ixzz2CmafUgo3
The failure was in the forest areas.Advertisement
Following a 10-year strategy, ACT fire managers have created a mosaic across the landscape of different fuel levels, burning at every opportunity.
But forests have been too wet to burn this spring and the past two summers.
Read more:http://www.canberratimes.com.au/environment/red-alert-for-high-risk-of-fires-20121118-29koa.html#ixzz2CmafUgo3
The failure was in the forest areas.Advertisement
Following a 10-year strategy, ACT fire managers have created a mosaic across the landscape of different fuel levels, burning at every opportunity.
But forests have been too wet to burn this spring and the past two summers.
Read more:http://www.canberratimes.com.au/environment/red-alert-for-high-risk-of-fires-20121118-29koa.html#ixzz2CmafUgo3
Two summers of unprecedented rain and unusually cool temperatures have left a large fuel load of grass and unburnt forest areas in and around Canberra.
A network of 500 fire trails and strategic burns along the north-west urban edge, heavy grazing and extra grass slashing will create a fortress for the territory which forecasters say faces a higher than average risk this summer.
After a fire-fuelled tornado in January 2003 killed four Canberrans and frightened thousands more, CSIRO fire expert Phil Cheney told the subsequent inquiry the fire’s penetration into urban areas under extreme conditions did not reflect a failure of fuel management on the urban interface.
Read more:http://www.canberratimes.com.au/environment/red-alert-for-high-risk-of-fires-20121118-29koa.html#ixzz2CmaXNjum
The failure was in the forest areas.Advertisement
Following a 10-year strategy, ACT fire managers have created a mosaic across the landscape of different fuel levels, burning at every opportunity.
But forests have been too wet to burn this spring and the past two summers.
