Fire, Salvage and Forest Health Myths

Myths Regarding Fire, Salvage and Forest Health

Myth #1: Salvage logging removes fuels that reduce future fire risk.
Myth #2: We must eliminate large wildfires.
Myth #3: Lots of small fires will eliminate large wildfires.
Myth #4: Salvage logging helps forests recover from wildfires.
Myth #5: These fires are out of scale.
Myth #6: Large fires are destructive.
Myth #7: Fires cause sediment.
Myth #8: Firefighting is cost effective
Myth #9: Logging now is better for wildlife than wildfire.
Myth #10: Logging mimics fire.
Myth #11: The whole landscape was regularly burned by the Indians.
Myth #12: Salvage logging is necessary for reforestation.
Myth #13: Salvage logging is scientifically sound.
Myth #14: There's too much mortality in the forest.
Myth #15: Diseases are rampant.
Myth #16: Insects are killing our trees in massive epidemics.
Myth #17: Private and intensively managed federal lands are healthier than unmanaged lands.
Myth #18: Thinning the forest improves forest health
Myth #19: Large scale thinning is realistic & affordable
Myth #20: Salvage logging is a harmless way to retrieve value.
Myth #21: Salvage logging is beneficial to the local economy and government.
Myth #22: We have enough information to make our decisions.
Myth #23: We only have 15 to 30 years to do something!
Myth #24: Management is the only solution.

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Myth #1: Salvage logging removes fuels that reduce future fire risk.

Logging often increases fire risk. In nearly every salvage logging- project, the focus is on removing commercially valuable timber. Large old-growth trees are selected for removal, while smaller, non-merchantible trees are left on site. The larger trees are the LEAST flammable fuels, while smaller "flashy" and "ladder" fuels--and especially the logging slash--are the MOST flammable fuels. With the removal of large live trees, snags and logs, important shade and moisture reservoirs are eliminated, making these sites hotter and drier. If post-salvage sites are replanted with dense stocks of even-aged firs mixed with small dead and downed fuels and logging slash, then these sites are actually GREATER fire hazards .

One of the biggest fire hazards in western forests is the logging industry's enormous backlogs of slash that are piling up across clearcuts and selection cuts. Many of the biggest fires of the 1994 fire season, including the Tyee Creek blaze in Washington, burned through areas that have already been roaded and logged. Veteran firefighters know that fires often speed up when crossing a clearcut, fueled by abundant down and dead wood and available oxygen.

The fires in the Tyee Creek area, which occurred on mostly managed ground (under every kind of management available, from clearcuts to new forestry to various partial cuts to thinning) were neither prevented nor deterred -- nor even slowed down -- by the logging. An October 1995 Forest Service study of these fires says that:

"Logged areas generally showed a strong association with increased rate of spread and flame length (table 5), thereby suggesting that tree harvesting could affect the potential fire behavior within landscapes.

In general, rate of spread and flame length were positively correlated with the proportion of area logged in the sample watersheds."

FIRE AND TIMBER HARVEST ARE NOT COMPENSATORY, THEY ARE ADDITIVE. We must find a way to live within the natural disturbance regimes, not try to supplant them.

Myth #2: We must eliminate large wildfires.

This is a social statement, and socially we probably all agree that losing home and pretty scenery is hard on us. But ecologically we have no data on the consequences of such a policy.

Myth #3: Lots of small fires will eliminate large wildfires.

There were two fire regimes in the inland northwest, one short cycle of low frequency fires and one longer cycle of stand-replacing fires. Some trees probably survived both, either in the mosaic or because the fire was low intensity there. But both fire cycles occurred over the same areas over time. One did not preclude the other.

Myth #4: Salvage logging helps forests recover from wildfires.

Large standing and downed fire-killed trees are some of the most valuable ecosystem structures in forests. They provide critical habitat for such threatened and endangered wildlife species as Grizzly Bears, Pileated Woodpeckers, Pine Martens, Spotted Owls, and Salmon. Large dead trees provide essential shading and moisture for native plant regeneration. Large logs provide critical slope stability and soil nutrients. Large standing and downed dead trees take centuries to develop--they are essentially irreplaceable according to our current technology. Rather than accelerate or improve forest recovery, if large woody debris are removed, it degrades the wildlife habitat and native plant recovery of the site for centuries. [Discuss persistence of very large fire hardened snags]

Myth #5: These fires are out of scale.

In fact, they are not out of scale -- the natural fires of 1910 and 1919 were much larger. And they seem to be hitting the fire intervals too, allowing for some wiggle room in the form of a decade of drought. The graph used to illustrate that these fires are out of scale only goes back to 1940, well after fire suppression was aggressively implemented.

None of the disturbances -- fire, insects, diseases -- may be out of scale in the course of the forest's timeline. We have been around for only a very short time, and have no idea what the extremes of disturbance and drought regimes have been. The "historic range of variability" scenario uses two data points, one set of photos from the 30s and 40s, the other from the 80s. Two points do not make a range, 50 years is a very short timeline, and habitat modification was well underway by the 30s. If we are worried about being out of the range of natural condition, we should look at Siddell's work on the degradation of salmonid habitat, and the pioneer accounts of riparian zones, and work at restoring the landscape from that perspective.

Myth #6: Large fires are destructive.

They may destroy buildings, but they renew a forest. Lodgepole, for instance, requires fire to germinate. Species like the black-backed woodpecker specialize in recently burned habitat, and require it. And fires burn in a mosaic, leaving patches and swaths of unburned forest within the perimeter, which in turn provide habitat and a source of seed for recovery.

The biggest forest health myth is that catastrophic wildfires are destroying the productivity of our forest ecosystems and leading to disastrous consequences. The same dire predictions were made when Yellowstone had large wildfires. Yet six years later, researchers report a vigorous comeback of vegetation and productivity. Likewise the Tillamook fire in northwest Oregon in the 1930's served as the prime example of fire's devastating effects. Designated an experimental forest, it has come back so well that the timber industry is now attempting to gain access to the Tillamook to log the large growth trees.

Moreover, even the largest fires burn in a patchy mosaic that encourages greater diversity of habitats. In fact, at the Senate hearing in Boise, Oregon State University scientist Dr. David Perry said he had toured the Blackwell Fire on the Payette National Forest by helicopter. Despite media coverage reporting the fire's devastating effects, Dr. Perry stated that no more than 30% of the area within the fire perimeter had actually burned and very few stands of trees were entirely burned.

Myth #7: Fires cause sediment.

It appears that after the first burst, the ash seals itself with the rain into an ash cap which thereafter produces very little sediment -- unless broken by salvage logging efforts.

Myth #8: Firefighting is cost effective

The policy of aggressive fire suppression has led to huge losses of taxpayer money. The myth that large fires can be put out with enough political pressure and money has led to multi million dollar disasters. For example, the 1988 fire season in greater Yellowstone saw some of the largest fires on record. Burning mainly in remote roadless areas on National Park Service land and within National Forest Wilderness, these fires were fulfilling their natural role in rejuvenating forests evolved to burn in large stand-replacing fires every 200-300 years. But media hype and political pressure soon turned the Yellowstone firefighting effort into the largest in history. Energized by sensational media accounts that America's Crown Jewel was in utter ruin, politicians demanded action.

At its high point, the Greater Yellowstone Area Fire Command fielded nearly 10,000 firefighters, 336 fire engines, 57 helicopters, numerous retardant bombers, and 41 bulldozers. Thousands of regular infantry troops from the Army and Marines, and additional military aircraft were called in. In all, more than 25,000 different firefighters took part in suppression efforts, digging more than 850 miles of fireline. the total taxpayer tab was more than $120 million. But other than the heroic rescue of numerous structures no significant progress was made on containing the fires until several inches of heavy snow and rain saturated the region in mid-September.

Apparently, not much was learned from the Yellowstone experience unless you look at it from another angle: politicians learned how to push the panic button. Helped along by a sensationalist media eager to sell stories; their ability to manipulate a story and turn it into incoming federal dollars is impressive. Hence the Montana Congressional delegation's complaints that not enough was done to fight the 1994 fires in northwest Montana. At the behest of Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) both Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Forest Service chief Jack Ward Thomas came to Montana in late August to respond to complaints of a lack of resources available to fight fires. After politicians complained, the Federal Emergency Management Agency gave the State of Montana over $7 million extra in federal cash for fire fighting, even though less than one one hundredth of one percent of the state had actually been affected by fires.

The current fire fighting policy is but another subsidy to the timber industry. Time and again each summer the papers were filled with accounts that wildfires "threatened high-value commercial timber" and thus thousands of firefighters were assigned to fight them at enormous expense many times the value of the trees as timber. Similarly, firefighting efforts often expend hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend remote structures worth a couple thousand dollars.

Myth #9: Logging now is better for wildlife than wildfire.

Logging is always hard on individual animals, as is fire. But fire leaves plenty of habitat behind, and logging doesn't. Thinning, which will not prevent wildfire, requires roads or other continual access. We know logging is bad for fish and wildlife; fires are a gamble -- they may not even occur. Why subject our already stressed wildlife populations to a certain hardship?

Myth #10: Logging mimics fire.

No, it doesn't, for the reasons already outlined above. And, if we want the effects of fire, why are we spending tax dollars twice, once to mimic fire, and once to fight it wherever it occurs?

Fire does not build roads, drag trees across the ground or run heavy vehicles across the soil.

Myth #11: The whole landscape was regularly burned by the Indians.

There is little evidence of this kind of effort, especially in the back country of the Pacific Northwest. This myth was given a sort of pseudo-scientific justification in a document titled "UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE THE HUMAN DIMENSION HAS PLAYED IN SHAPING AMERICA'S FOREST AND GRASSLAND LANDSCAPES: Is There a Landscape Archaeologist in the House?" by Doug MacCleery, a landscape architect at the Washington Office of the Forest Service. This document was first published on 2/10/94 in an internal Forest Service publication called Eco-Watch. It was one of the first signals of a new strategy aimed at permitting "mechanical treatment in advance of fire" in roadless, designated old growth and wilderness areas.

Myth #12: Salvage logging is necessary for reforestation.

Impacts from salvage logging affect the most critical, irreplaceable resource of all--soil. The compaction and disturbance from falling and skidding trees on the ground surface impacts the soil structure, affecting its ability to absorb and retain water. When large snags and logs are removed it exposes soil to greater sunlight and winds, making these sites hotter and drier. This affects the whole underground ecosystem of microscopic flora and fauna that are critical for making nutrients available to tree roots. When large woody debris is removed, it robs the soil of future organic matter and nutrients. In research on salvage logging sites in southern Oregon, Dr. David Perry has discovered why salvage logged sites fail to grow trees after multiple attempts at planting: the impacts from the logging, and the changes in microclimate, causes the soil to literally convert to "sand." Soil capable of sustaining old-growth trees takes as much as 50,000 years to develop. If the soil ecosystem is killed, those sites will never recover to a forest again.

Myth #13: Salvage logging is scientifically sound.

In fact, there is NOT A SINGLE SCIENTIFIC STUDY--NOT ONE!--that has demonstrated any benefit to the forest ecosystem. On the contrary, all available studies have shown significant short- and long-term environmental impacts resulting from salvage logging operations. Forest in the West have evolved with fire for millennia. Most tree species have their own unique adaptations to fire disturbances, and some, such as the mighty sequoia, are dependent upon recurring fires for their own regeneration. Forest ecosystems thus have their own natural recovery processes that forest managers have neglected to study in their usual "haste against waste" to get the cut out. While forests have evolved with wildfire, they have not evolved with nor adapted to industrial logging. The scale and pace of mechanized timber extraction has become the main source of a "forest health" crisis. Salvage logging is not the cure to the disease of industrial forestry; indeed, the historic overcut of the 1980s requires an immediate moratorium on all logging of native forests on public lands.

Myth #14: There's too much mortality in the forest.

Mortality of what? Goshawks? Westslope cutthroat? If we're talking trees (and that's all they are talking about, another fallacy), then even that statement is not true. Across the northwest our forests are snag-poor. 60 species of vertebrates in the state of Idaho require snags and downed logs for all or part of their life history.

Myth #15: Diseases are rampant.

Doctor Arthur Partridge of the University of Idaho has 30 years of data from permanent plots, showing that root diseases are at a 10-year low.

Myth #16: Insects are killing our trees in massive epidemics.

Again, insects are naturally cyclic, and probably provide periodic boosts to bird populations which are important on a landscape-level basis. They also provide the ecological functions the FS and industry would like to see out of logging; they thin the forest. Spruce budworm, for instance, does not kill mature firs; rather the larvae rain down on the small trees and kill them, thinning from below and opening up the stand so the pines can come in.

Myth #17: Private and intensively managed federal lands are healthier than unmanaged lands.

This analysis only considers trees, and only them in their commercial manifestation. NO OTHER RESOURCES ARE INCLUDED IN THIS ANALYSIS, BUT THE MANAGEMENT RECOMMENDATIONS OBVIOUSLY AFFECT ALL RESOURCES. Part of the discussion is the definition above, that mortality exceeding growth is an awful thing. In fact, considering all resources -- water quality, wildlife, fish, soils -- the private lands are much less healthy than unmanaged lands. [Input RPA data here]

Myth #18: Thinning the forest improves forest health

As one activist put it, "when they say they want to thin the forest, it means they want thinner trees." So-called "thinning cuts" in reality are often high-graded sections of forest where the Forest Service has selectively cut the biggest trees and left the smaller tree, which are the greatest fire risk. while claiming to thin in order to recreate historic stands of large ponderosa pine and fir, which have periodic understory burns, in practice they have done exactly the opposite.

Myth #19: Large scale thinning is realistic & affordable

The first forest health myth is that thinning and prescribed burning of the forest can be accomplished across millions of acres without dramatic increases in the Forest Service budget and creation of a massive new entitlement program for welfare corporations. For example, the Lolo and Nez Perce National Forests, both high volume timber producing forests, commercially thinned approximately 257 and 266 acres per year, respectively, over the past 6 years. Ten-fold budget increases and even higher would be required under the Lyons plan and where would this multi billion dollar funding come from? My personal experience on the Yellowstone Fires of 1988 taught me that thinning operations are labor intensive. Efforts to thin fuels from around structures in both the Norris and Canyon Village developed areas ultimately involved hundreds of people, several endloaders and dump trucks and dozens of chain saws. The total cost was staggering. This work proceeded over several days for long hours and yet covered very few total acres. It is both a physical and monetary impossibility to thin across millions of acres of rugged forest lands. The personnel and budget aren't available, and even a drastically increased work force could only thin a few hundred thousand acres per year on National Forests two million acres or more in size.

Myth #20: Salvage logging is a harmless way to retrieve value.

Salvage logging removes the large material left by fires, thus removing the only remaining biomass from the burned area. If the fire has been hot and the soil burned, this removal prevents the soil from recovering. The snags and logs, in addition to providing habitat, act as moisture sources (important, as fires like logging can dry out a slope) and, by falling across the slope, prevent erosion and create soil beds for recovery.

Myth #21: Salvage logging is beneficial to the local economy and government.

Fire-scorched trees are normally sold as "cull" at greatly discounted prices. Instead of purchasing trees by volume of timber,. companies buy them by the area; thus, instead of paying $400 per thousand board feet (approximately 1/3 of a single old-growth tree) they pay $400 per acre (containing as many as 150 big trees). Thus, huge windfall profits are accrued when timber companies buy public timber at "fire sale" prices. Salvage sales are normally large operations, thereby going to the largest timber corporations rather than smaller local companies. Profits from salvage timber sales thus go to stockholders in other areas (sometimes other countries) instead of remaining in the local region. The National Forest offering the salvage sale gets to tap into a special fund from Washington D.C. to administer and offer the timber sale, and keep all the receipts for itself instead of going to the General Fund as with other timber sales. Thus, powerful financial incentives are made for a Forest to offer big salvage sales regardless of the economic and environmental costs.

Myth #22: We have enough information to make our decisions.

Not hardly. If there is to be legislation on "forest health," it should be in the form of money for monitoring.

Myth #23: We only have 15 to 30 years to do something!

In fact, these problems have been building for 100 years. Forest systems are dynamic, and these disturbances may not be out of scale when the course of centuries is considered. These forests are taking care of themselves, cleansing themselves, and it may be off our timeline, but not out of the forest's.

Myth #24: Management is the only solution.

Again, forests are dynamic, and our desire for certain states should not be the definition of what is healthy. We know very little about the recovery times of our watersheds; anecdotal evidence suggests that burns and other disturbances recover faster if left alone than if tampered with, and that, all impacts being equal, burns recover faster than logged areas.

Based on myth lists by Evan Frost, Lisa Lombardi and Mike Bader

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IF this is a crisis, the first thing we should see is the cessation of logging of old growth, particularly the fire-tolerant species like P. pine. We should see the preservation of roadless reserves, both as refugia for the forest resources at risk from our century of management (water quality, fish, and wildlife) and as controls for our research and monitoring efforts. Those efforts should be small, as befits experiments. As it is, we've had 100 years of broad-scale experimentation in these forests, and the results are in: loss of species. loss of water quality. Perhaps a loss of short-term resiliency. WE MUST NOT SACRIFIC LONG-TERM RESILIENCY AND OUR REMAINING RESOURCES TO SHORT-SIGHTED HYSTERIA. Forests are more than trees.
IF this is a crisis, the first thing we should see is the cessation of logging of old growth, particularly the fire-tolerant species like P. pine. We should see the preservation of roadless reserves, both as refugia for the forest resources at risk from our century of management (water quality, fish, and wildlife) and as controls for our research and monitoring efforts. Those efforts should be small, as befits experiments. As it is, we've had 100 years of broad-scale experimentation in these forests, and the results are in: loss of species. loss of water quality. Perhaps a loss of short-term resiliency. WE MUST NOT SACRIFIC LONG-TERM RESILIENCY AND OUR REMAINING RESOURCES TO SHORT-SIGHTED HYSTERIA. Forests are more than trees.
IF this is a crisis, the first thing we should see is the cessation of logging of old growth, particularly the fire-tolerant species like P. pine. We should see the preservation of roadless reserves, both as refugia for the forest resources at risk from our century of management (water quality, fish, and wildlife) and as controls for our research and monitoring efforts. Those efforts should be small, as befits experiments. As it is, we've had 100 years of broad-scale experimentation in these forests, and the results are in: loss of species. loss of water quality. Perhaps a loss of short-term resiliency. WE MUST NOT SACRIFIC LONG-TERM RESILIENCY AND OUR REMAINING RESOURCES TO SHORT-SIGHTED HYSTERIA. Forests are more than trees.
IF this is a crisis, the first thing we should see is the cessation of logging of old growth, particularly the fire-tolerant species like P. pine. We should see the preservation of roadless reserves, both as refugia for the forest resources at risk from our century of management (water quality, fish, and wildlife) and as controls for our research and monitoring efforts. Those efforts should be small, as befits experiments. As it is, we've had 100 years of broad-scale experimentation in these forests, and the results are in: loss of species. loss of water quality. Perhaps a loss of short-term resiliency. WE MUST NOT SACRIFIC LONG-TERM RESILIENCY AND OUR REMAINING RESOURCES TO SHORT-SIGHTED HYSTERIA. Forests are more than trees.
IF this is a crisis, the first thing we should see is the cessation of logging of old growth, particularly the fire-tolerant species like P. pine. We should see the preservation of roadless reserves, both as refugia for the forest resources at risk from our century of management (water quality, fish, and wildlife) and as controls for our research and monitoring efforts. Those efforts should be small, as befits experiments. As it is, we've had 100 years of broad-scale experimentation in these forests, and the results are in: loss of species. loss of water quality. Perhaps a loss of short-term resiliency. WE MUST NOT SACRIFIC LONG-TERM RESILIENCY AND OUR REMAINING RESOURCES TO SHORT-SIGHTED HYSTERIA. Forests are more than trees.
IF this is a crisis, the first thing we should see is the cessation of logging of old growth, particularly the fire-tolerant species like P. pine. We should see the preservation of roadless reserves, both as refugia for the forest resources at risk from our century of management (water quality, fish, and wildlife) and as controls for our research and monitoring efforts. Those efforts should be small, as befits experiments. As it is, we've had 100 years of broad-scale experimentation in these forests, and the results are in: loss of species. loss of water quality. Perhaps a loss of short-term resiliency. WE MUST NOT SACRIFIC LONG-TERM RESILIENCY AND OUR REMAINING RESOURCES TO SHORT-SIGHTED HYSTERIA. Forests are more than trees.