A combination of unfavorable weather conditions and forest management practices boosted the 2002 fire season to nearly double the 10-year average, burning more than 1 million Oregon acres and costing more than $318 million, a spokesman for the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center David Widmark said.
Because of the seriousness of this fire season, President George W. Bush visited Oregon in August and announced the Healthy Forests Initiative, something he says is designed to restore the health of our forests.
Under this initiative, federal agencies will work with Congress to create and enact legislation directed at preventing extreme fire seasons.
Bureau of Land Management spokesman Doug Huntington said that short- and long-term weather patterns played a key role in creating the right weather conditions for a severe fire season.
It started with an extended period of below-normal precipitation and above-average temperatures, he said. Then a potent storm front in July ignited several fires in remote areas, making the initial response very difficult.
Hundreds of fires were ignited by one lightning storm and many merged together to become huge blazes, Huntington said. This was followed by six weeks of no rain in western Oregon, accompanied by easterly winds. The warm, dry air helped the fires to spread.
Because fire season started early in the year, many Oregon firefighters were already in other states battling blazes. Recruits were brought in from Canada, Australia and New Zealand to help Oregon crews, Huntington said.
In addition to weather conditions, forest management practices also played a role in the severity of these fires.
Many forest lands have been managed under a fire exclusion policy, whichrequires all fires be put out rather than allowed to burn. The forests usually have several small fires to get rid of debris rather than a few mega-fires, which are much more destructive.
The policy caused flammable material to accumulate, Huntington said. Without occasional fires decreasing the fuel load, dead plant debris piles up, becoming dry and extremely easy to ignite. “The environment is somewhat dependent on fire,” Huntington said. Also, areas that have been burned in the past or infested with insects were not salvaged, creating an even heftier fuel load.
“American public lands have undergone radical changes in the last century due to the suppression of fires and a lack of active forest and rangeland management,” United States Forest Service spokeswoman Heidi Valetkevitch said.
If passed, the Healthy Forests Initiative will increase controlled burns, expediting fuels reduction projects. It would also remove imposed procedural requirements for Forest Service appeals, making it harder for many groups to appeal logging decisions. The plan may also strengthen efforts to fulfill the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan, which was designed to protect habitat and recreational areas while sustainably harvesting timber.
The Sierra Club is one group that strongly opposes the initiative. Paul Shively, Sierra Club’s regional representative in Portland, objects to the HFI because he feels it has more to do with logging than with forest health or protection.
“This is a forest industry dream bill,” he said.
SC issued a press release saying the bill fails to adequately protect communities from fires, guts important environmental protections and increases destructive logging practices.
Although both federal agencies and environmental groups want to decrease the acreage burned in future blazes, they have different ideas about how to do it.
“We all have different science and goals,” Huntington said. But in the end, he said the desired result is the same. “We all want healthy forests.”
SC has constructed its own strategy called the seven point plan.
Parts of the club’s plan include more controlled burning, preserving forest safeguards and protecting ancient and wild forests
from logging.
More information about the Sierra Club’s seven-point plan is available at its Web site, sierraclub.org.
For more information about the president’s Healthy Forest Initiative, visit www.usda.gov.
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