Let Forest Fires Burn

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/06/science/let-forest-fires-burn-what-the-black-backed-woodpecker-knows.html

by mcone • 9 years ago

90 109 9 years ago

warrenm2• 9 years ago

There are trees that cannot reproduce unless their seed pods are baked open

Animals coming back to scorched areas carry all kinds of seeds with them that love the mineral- and carbon-rich environment

Some deer can grow beautiful atypical racks only when feeding in areas ravaged by fire

And burning-out old growth and underbrush allows whole new generations of forest to start because their impediments to growth are gone

Seems like the best thing to do is to let the fires run their course (at least the ones started naturally) .. and maybe note the risks of living near treelines like people who live near water lines know they could be flooded

hammock• 9 years ago

There are trees that cannot reproduce unless their seed pods are baked open

Aspen and lodgepole pine

freehunter• 9 years ago

Jack pine is another, and a nearly-extinct bird really depends on these trees. The Kirtland's Warbler relies on large stands of young jack pine trees, and jack pine cones only open in intense heat of forest fires. Really sad, the birds can't survive in super cold climates and only like reproducing in jack pine forests, so the ending ice age and the formation of the Great Lakes trapped the birds in the northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan. They can't move into the Upper Peninsula or Canada where jack pine is more common because it's too cold, and can't move further south because there aren't any jack pine forests further south.

As the number of wildfires has declined, so has the number of large stands of young jack pines. This has had a devastating impact on the Kirtland's Warbler, who already had their natural habitat decimated.

warrenm2• 9 years ago

I knew somebody'd find the species names

Gustomaximus4• 9 years ago

There is middle ground here when you control combustible material around property and let the larger parts of the bush/forest do their thing in a fire.

Here is an example of this ongoing process/advise in Australia: https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/fire-information/hazard-reduction...

goda90• 9 years ago

It's well known that because of fire fighting, there are build ups of flammable material causing subsequent fires to be bigger and hotter. I wonder if theres a point where if we just let the fires burn, they'll be so hot that the natural benefits will be lost and the forest damaged for much longer than usual. Maybe we need to ease into it by not putting out the fires, but still keeping them from getting really intense.

stephengillie• 9 years ago

I was certain this policy had been implemented decades ago. I remember seeing video of firefighters starting small, controlled fires to consume built-up debris. I must be having a 1984/Mandela/old moment.

crunksht• 9 years ago

You are correct:

https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/dbnf/home/?cid=stelprdb528146...

LordKano• 9 years ago

I distinctly remember seeing some conservation types on a tv series, I believe it was Mr. Wizard's World, doing a controlled burn to reduce the intensity of later wildfires.

woliveirajr• 9 years ago

Sometimes small and constant fires clean up the area, cleaning up dead leafs and so on. Constantly stopping those fires can lead to accumulation, until a great and wild fire comes and destroys more than the "nature following the natural fate" would have.

aphextron• 9 years ago

The problem with this is local politics. "Let wildfires burn" sounds great when it's not your multimillion dollar vacation home going up in smoke. Yes, in the long run it would be better for everyone involved. But we humans are anything but longsighted when it comes to dollars and cents.

knieveltech4• 9 years ago

Remember, you don't hate Mondays, you hate capitalism.

msla5• 9 years ago

You don't hate capitalism, you hate badly-regulated capitalism.

Besides, homes burn just as much in a socialist society.

ghaff• 9 years ago

Or even your not so multi-million house that is nonetheless in forest or even somewhat sparsely forested areas that get wildfires--which out West can mean a pretty large swath of land that just isn't urban or built-up suburban.

mschuster912• 9 years ago

"Let wildfires burn" sounds great when it's not your multimillion dollar vacation home going up in smoke.

The solution for this would be creating "clearance" area around said homes (or surrounding a town). 200m forest-free zone, additionally supported by a sprinkler system fed e.g. from a swimming pool or a huge buried water tank (fed by rainwater).

In addition, separate forest areas by cleared lines so that a fire cannot grow so huge that it cannot be contained in real emergency cases, and also that wildlife, trapped wanderers etc. can flee to safety.

The only thing this does not account for is cellphone / other RF antenna towers and power transmission lines.

notatoad2• 9 years ago

I don't think "let wildfires burn" is an accepted strategy anywhere that those fires could be threatening homes. It's a policy for wilderness fires, where it threatens a community it's not better in the long run for everyone involved. It would be disastrous to let a fire rip through a town just to reduce the fire hazard.

It's entirely possible to do proactive controlled burns and fuel reduction near towns, and let the fires burn when they aren't threatening a town. Letting fires burn and controlling, directing, and managing the fire are not mutually exclusive.

VintageCool• 9 years ago

Sure, but people are building really nice homes deeper and deeper into the woods. The area that we would consider safe to 'let burn' keeps shrinking as people move in to those areas.

jlarocco• 9 years ago

I think the biggest problem with a "let wildfires burn" strategy is that most forests in the continental United States are too small (or too populated) to make it feasible. Any "large" fire will always be near a town or homes.

msla5• 9 years ago

Letting fires burn is standard policy at this point. We learned it the hard way, particularly after the Big Burn, or the Great Fire of 1910.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_1910

It is uncontroversial to let isolated fires burn, but fires close to houses must be contained and fires close to towns must be contained.

kibwen• 9 years ago

I'd say later than 1910, see the 1988 Yellowstone fires: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_fires_of_1988

"Before the late 1960s, fires were generally believed to be detrimental for parks and forests, and management policies were aimed at suppressing fires as quickly as possible. However, as the beneficial ecological role of fire became better understood in the decades before 1988, a policy was adopted of allowing natural fires to burn under controlled conditions, which proved highly successful in reducing the area lost annually to wildfires."

"In contrast, in 1988, Yellowstone was overdue for a large fire, and, in the exceptionally dry summer, the many smaller "controlled" fires combined. The fires burned discontinuously, leaping from one patch to another, leaving intervening areas untouched. Intense fires swept through some regions, burning everything in their paths. Tens of millions of trees and countless plants were killed by the wildfires, and some regions were left looking blackened and dead. However, more than half of the affected areas were burned by ground fires, which did less damage to hardier tree species. Not long after the fires ended, plant and tree species quickly reestablished themselves, and natural plant regeneration has been highly successful."

I visited Yellowstone a decade ago, and remember seeing the great wide swathes of equally-sized small trees growing in the aftermath of the burnt-out areas. I met a few older people who had seen the park before the fire and were sad at its present state (some even said it was "ruined", though this has to be hyperbolic, as Yellowstone is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen), but to me it was a beautiful thing to get to witness the cycle of rebirth on such a grand scale.

falcolas10• 9 years ago

some even said it was "ruined", though this has to be hyperbolic, as Yellowstone is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen

I visited Yellowstone before, during, and after those fires. The view was ruined from one point of view - a lot of variety in tree size and age was lost in those fires, to be replaced with uniform coverage.

A large party of the beauty of Yellowstone can be attributed to its wildness - how untouched by human hands it is. Yellowstone's forests post fire... felt tamed. No matter how much of an illusion it is, that wildness is something we all feel and seek while in Yellowstone.

This has gotten better over the decades since, with trees no longer being as uniform in size and coverage, but it's still possible to make out the scars of those fires, if you know where to look.

koliber• 9 years ago

Ruined is such a loaded word. I'm guessing it did not meet the expectations of these people you've met.

National parks are places where nature is left to their own accords, and that happen to allow easy access for people to see such mostly-unspoiled nature. Nature does not care what you think about it. It is not constant, but rather changing and evolving. Sometimes, points in time in that evolution are glorious and pleasing. At others, they may seem mundane, or even repulsive. To force nature to remain in a certain state just reinforces the idea that things don't change. Let's leave that to zoos and botanical gardens, while letting national parks retain as much of their full cycle as feasible.

I wonder what this person's thought was about the no-longer-flowing Minerva Terrace in the Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone. Is it ruined as well? As an analogy to putting out forest fires in national parks, perhaps the Yellowstone administration should put in some piping to at least wet these terraces down a bit to save some of their previous glory.

elihu• 9 years ago

I asked a firefighter what she thought about controlled burns awhile back. She said that one of the advantages of controlled burns is that you can set them when conditions are favorable so that they won't get out of control and burn areas they didn't want to burn just then.

So, the "just let it burn" strategy when fires start might lead to a lot more property damage than a strategy of proactive burning.

Also, from a carbon footprint point of view, it seems advantageous to mix burning and logging, so that not all the carbon returns straight into the atmosphere.

wahern• 9 years ago

  So, the "just let it burn" strategy when fires start might
  lead to a lot more property damage than a strategy of
  proactive burning.

The U.S. is _huge_. There's too much land to do controlled burning. And an intentionally set fire is morally perilous, so there are strong incentives to avoid burning except where it's easy and obvious; that is, _away_ from housing or in only very small patches to create fire breaks.

  Also, from a carbon footprint point of view, it seems
  advantageous to mix burning and logging, so that not all the
  carbon returns straight into the atmosphere.

But loggers are gonna take the good trees and leave behind the young ones, precisely the opposite of what a fire would do. I know this isn't how it's supposed to work on paper, but the incentives aren't well aligned. A natural fire isn't going to lobby Congress to increase its quota of high-value trees.

I think any practical land management plan that has a shot at restoring forest health requires letting many more natural fires burn, and to burn more widely. The dilemma is that things are so bad that these fires are much more dangerous than they'd normally be. But I don't see how you ever get over that hump unless you can send out an armada of autonomous, self-replicating robots to cut down the underbrush. Perhaps we'll just have to wait for that solution.

discodave• 9 years ago

The US is only 25% bigger than Australia and has more than 10x the population.... soo the argument that the US is too big doesn't really hold much water.

* 3.797 to 2.97 square miles

* 323 / 24 million

strebler2• 9 years ago

Sure, sure, let the fires burn. It's an easy argument to make when it's not your property. What about when the fire does over $3 billion dollars in direct damages, burns 1.5 million acres and forces the evacuation of over 80K people [1]? I'm fine with tax dollars going towards trying to prevent that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Fort_McMurray_Wildfire

eesmith4• 9 years ago

One of the arguments, which the NYT piece mentions, is that decades of fire suppression causes a fuel buildup so that if/when a fire does occur, it is much larger, more dangerous, and harder to manage.

For example, https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2016/0504/Did-fi... points out: "In order to prevent fire like this week’s, Alberta has engaged in a robust fire suppression program, says MacDonald. But because the province has suppressed natural fires that burn off underbrush ever 50 or more years, forests are full of fresh tinder.

“Alberta has engaged in a robust fire suppression program that changed the age structure of the forest,” MacDonald told the Monitor. “Typically, forests in that part of Alberta would burn every 50 to 200 years. But with strong fire suppression, there has been a tremendous buildup of fuel.”"

As a politician, would you rather say "we'll have a forest fire in the area every 10 years" or "we'll make sure there are no fires" .. and conveniently or optimistically omit the "until after I'm long gone, but then we'll have a real doozy of a blaze which will be worse than all of the little fires put together".

In addition, as that Wikipedia article points out, fire fighters came in from other provinces, the national government, and even South Africa. Do you think the local people paid for all of that? Effectively this fire fighting acts as an insurance subsidy.

It's possible to build houses to withstand wildfires, as people have done in Australia and southern California. These designs work best when fires are more frequent, because those fires are less intense, with less fuel to burn. However, these designs are also more expensive.

If people are convinced that the fires will be suppressed, they are not going to spend the money, and the building codes won't change to require better wildfire resistance. Nor is it easy for individuals to switch to safer building designs because when the fires do come they will be much more intense than it should have been without decades of fire suppression.

strebler2• 9 years ago

If the theory were true, then why were the two largest fires in recorded North American history in 1919 and 1950 (which MacDonald, a wildfire expert, missed)? 5 and 4 million acres respectively, significantly larger than 2011 or 2016 Alberta fires.

The data does not support the theory, the fires over the past 70 years have been smaller.

pvaldes• 9 years ago

The problem is that mature trees store things that humans need badly to survive.

When a forest burn entirely you can say goodbye to a lot of much needed water for years, and there is also a problem with carbon. We want carbon stored in the trees, not to be released in the air. And the soil layer needs decades to be created, but can vanish in a week. You can't just think in terms of 10 years. This creatures can live thousands of years.

What is very good for some animals, plants and fungi can be also very bad for other animals, plants and fungi. A net of burn areas isolating islands of intact areas would be a better solution probably providing a patched environment with lots of oportunities.

And we should remember that some very old forests reach a mature level that is fire resistent (plenty of humidity in soil). Laurisilva forests for example do not start burning unless a considerable amount of energy is applied.

sizzzzlerz3• 9 years ago

In a book about the smoke jumpers from several years ago, one of the members made a profound statement, jokingly, probably, but maybe not. He said that instead of battling wildfires the way we do now, we just throw money on the fire and wait until the rains come.

With the continued droughts throughout the west and up into Alaska and Canada along with the effects of global warming, the forest lands are just dry tinder waiting for a spark. Having the fires grow so large, they can't be put out will become more and more common. Maybe letting them burn until the rains come is the right solution.

falcolas10• 9 years ago

One more thing that's really hurt has been beetle kill. There are stands of trees killed by beetles which have been waiting for the right spark. They've been working for years to clear out these tinderboxes, but it's hard work (especially since those efforts have to fight against the anti-logging camps).

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/pine-beetles/rosne...

jessaustin3• 9 years ago

ISTM that nothing would have been as good a firebreak against the beetle onslaught as actual firebreaks left by uncontrolled fires would have been?

falcolas10• 9 years ago

Speaking as a Montanan here.

The policy of "let some fires burn" has been in practice for a few decades now in our corner of the woods. Ever since the Yellowstone fire in the 80's, we've focused our efforts on containment instead of extinguishment (i.e. make a best effort to keep it away from human settlements); letting land lost to the fires just burn out naturally while stopping them from claiming too much land. Should we let them burn more? Perhaps.

But it's never so easy. The cost of just letting some go when they're a couple dozen or even hundred acres can spiral out of control when you're suddenly attempting to stop a 300,000 acre fire that has already burned out 16 homes and is threatening towns. Yes, firefighters die fighting fires. Civilians also die when an uncontained fire goes from a theoretical threat on the horizon to consuming their house in a matter of minutes.

Fire doesn't respect property boundaries, and can travel a tremendous speeds (upwards of 10mph). And they aren't really like floods - it's not just the forests that burn, it's the flat lands with all the nice dead grasses. Grass fires can move even faster than forest fires, given a wind to push it along.

Humans aren't the only ones affected, either. The livestock which used that land for feed still has to be fed, or face starvation. Argue all you want about the inhumanity of our treatment of livestock generally; letting them starve due to a lack of hay (tied to a lack of money) is worse.

There are some who feel that they should not have to support those affected by natural disasters. I'm sure others will be happy to return the favor.

(300,000 acres ~= 142,000 ha)

https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5399/

mschuster912• 9 years ago

Grass fires can move even faster than forest fires, given a wind to push it along.

In earlier times, farm fields actually were separated by bushes, patches of rocks, tiny rivers, whatever. Humans have flattened all of this, in order to make really huge strips of farmland that can be worked on really, really efficiently by machines. Not only has this practice destroyed the living space of small animals like rabbits or birds, but it also contributes massively to this problem as there's nothing left to stop or slow down winds :(

falcolas10• 9 years ago

Yeah - though at least we've learned a little from the dust bowl lesson.

notatoad2• 9 years ago

what i see in rural alberta still looks like most farm fields (i.e. each quarter section) are separated by a line of trees, bushes, or at the very least roads or irrigation ditches. windbreaks are no less important to agriculture now than they were 100 years ago.

planteen2• 9 years ago

Where are you talking about? That isn't true on the plains of North America. The plain was very treeless, save next to water, where there are plenty of trees. Man has created far more barriers - roads, wind breaks around farms, etc. East of the 100th meridian, most land is divided in a perfect grid with roads along section lines in both the US and Canada. Further west, the lines may be further apart, but there still are plenty of roads compared to pre-1860s when there were none.

nthcolumn• 9 years ago

A huge problem in Australia as you probably know where we do get quite a few bush-fires is down to the huge build up in combustible materials. This'd be a fairly modern problem in that the indigenous peoples used to do a lot of the house-keeping by actually setting controlled fires and managing the bush in a sustainable way for themselves. Would that also have been the case for your own indigenous population? It's so bloody dry and the bush is like a tinderbox, lightning strikes certain times of year now cause incredible destruction where years ago they'd have burnt out a few hundred acres and been done with, creating sort of natural corridors and that. I can certainly attest to the speed at which fires move having watched them leaping gorges and seeing sparks dance like sprites across the highway in front and back of my car from a fire a half mile away, fair near shat my pants I can tell you. The fire itself creates its own great wind - you can feel the heat in it. It drives itself along as fast as a car. Far as I know, native animals run towards the fire rather than away from it, and many if not most do escape out the back.

branja• 9 years ago

The Native Americans of the Appalachians used to burn the brush down in the forests and otherwise cultivate the land, yes.

Mz• 9 years ago

Some years back, the federal government in the US decided to get strict about protecting certain natural areas. This resulted in a build up of dry brush because people were not allowed to do things like collect firewood. The end result was some of the worst forest fires in US history.

Humans need to be good stewards to the land and stop framing themselves as somehow not a part of "nature."

waterphone• 9 years ago

Yes, the native populations often did the same in the Americas. But in the early 1900s, the U.S. decided its forests were an important resource—both as a source of timber for military use and to have timber sales to raise money, and declared war on wildfire with full suppression tactics universally applied. Now recognized as a mistake, tactics have changed, but we'll be suffering the consequences of 100 years of fire suppression for a long time.

xl• 9 years ago

I'very always wondered how you tease that apart from the native people simply not having the ability to combat naturally caused wildfires. When we suppress them, we employ a ton of technology (from chainsaws to C130s full of red dust) that weren't available back then.

acchow• 9 years ago

focused our efforts on containment instead of extinguishment (i.e. make a best effort to keep it away from human settlements)

The line between extinguishment and containment blurs as human settlement expands.

Also, shouldn't humans just stop settling near forests altogether? Easy way to incentivize this - stop extinguishing the fires - they're supposed to burn anyway.

coryrc3• 9 years ago

Firefighters are dying to protect the private property of people who live in the forests so they can save money not building a fire-safe house. We need regular burns to keep the brush down, but we can't because rich people's houses are in the path. The forest was there first; it's time to stop protecting people from financial loss because of their poor decisions.

falcolas10• 9 years ago

Rich, poor, farmers, ranchers, middle class; all kinds have property in forests. And firefighters work to protect them all pretty much equally.

nnfy• 9 years ago

This isn't a simple class thing. Rural areas aren't just populated by rich evil bankers with mountaintop villas; they're predominantly settled by poor rural whites who have owned land for generation and do not have the means to easily leave.

jgh• 9 years ago

I believe, at least in California, households that have taken some effort to make their property more resilient to fire are given higher priority. I heard an interview with a firefighter on the radio talking about this a few weeks back.

Gustomaximus4• 9 years ago

In Australia we regularly have 'back burning' or 'controlled burns' where the fire brigade waits for a cool, non windy day and sets a bush fire around houses. This happens every few years so that when bush fires occur the area around houses has less combustible material and either places dont need firefighters or the firefighters can more easily protect property, letting the fire do its thing in non-critical areas.

Also through bush land they cut roads which also service as firebreaks, that way bush fires hit these gaps and should stop a proportion of the time.

Anyway, my point is I dont know we need to hate on 'rich people's houses' because 1) I would say even more ordinary people have houses in the bush, at least in Australia, and this feels like personal hatred without knowing your area and 2) Australia has clearly shown people can manage an enviroment (with occasional exceptions) to live within a bush/forest fire area.

I'm not sure how supported or funded this is in the states. And in Australia we have large volunteer groups of bush firefighters that help with back burns and when larger outbreaks of bush fires occur to increase manpower.

twothamendment4• 9 years ago

For what it is worth, the huge fire linked to by the parent wasn't in a forest, but I suppose people shouldn't live outside of a city?

For some of us, living in a city seems as stupid as living outside of one seems to others. Each has their risk, but when a person is mugged or killed in a city I don't blame them for a poor decision.

sliverstorm3• 9 years ago

But it's never so easy

Yeah, sure, there's problems. But mother nature cares not. The fuel load will continue to build until it burns, unless we remove it ourselves. That's the shortsightednes of "let fires burn but...", IMO. One day it will burn, whether you like it or not, unless you're willing to pay from now until kingdom come for manual fuel reduction. The only question is will it burn on our terms or hers?

In our area, there were a number of properties that were lost, because the owners did not follow the rules about fuel control around their property, allowing boughs onto their roof and not clearing back from the buildings. I pin a lot of the policy problems on those sorts of folks. They haven't realized we have to live with fire, like the pines around us. Stopping it is a losing game.

twothamendment4• 9 years ago

"...unless you're willing to pay from now until kingdom come for manual fuel reduction..."

We can't do this everywhere, but I reduced the fuel on my property for exactly $0. No government grants, no tax payer money - the timber paid for it. As a bonus it was done in the winter so it disturbed very little ground.

motowilliams• 9 years ago

Another Montanan here as well.

As the Lolo Peak Fire burns 6 miles from my house it is frustrating to me that the DNRC's hands are tied by regulation that prevents them thinning and keep our forests healthy. It is both a revenue stream for our school system and an important role in keeping the woods healthy. Unfortunately both wildlife and habitat conservation has some aspects that are counter-intuitive to most folks when they ask why taking an animal or taking a tree actually helps in the long run. This isn't meant to be a pro/anti regulation stance but a call for balance.

There is also the most important factor in fighting these fires and currently that number is 2, as in we've lost 2 firefighters during this season's wild fires.

twothamendment4• 9 years ago

This might set a record for the number of Montanan's posting! I'm in Montana too and spent last night watching 4 fires started by lightning. Some places not too far away were evacuated. We had ash and embers raining down last night. It is crazy to see let it burn articles without a companion that promotes healthy forest management by logging. I'm all for contain and let burn, but the amount of fuel on the ground in places is insane.

I had my own property logged - luckily you can still do that. I cleared around my house and thinned out the rest. It didn't destroy the forest, it created jobs, created some lumber and some pulp for paper. In a few years the remaining trees will grow straighter, stronger and better resist insects. How is this bad? It is frustrating to see so much public land overgrown to the point it can't be used and isn't good for wildlife.

Good forest management has to include some logging. If you disagree, please stop using paper, especially toilet paper.

Thanks to all the men and women who rush towards the fire when others are leaving. Listening to them on the radio last night - they were doing a great job under pressure and while dealing with some nervous people.

ktRolster2• 9 years ago

This quote from the article is important:

Still, considerable disagreement remains among scientists about exactly how forests should be managed.

eesmith4• 9 years ago

Really? I thought that was a wishy-washy statement.

As you crank up the tightness of "exact", you'll always get more and more disagreement.

Is there any large science-based policy decision where there is 100% agreement among scientists, or where there hasn't been considerable disagreement between some of them?

ktRolster2• 9 years ago

If scientists who have studied the field for years disagree, then we (who barely know anything about it) should be careful in choosing sides.

davidbanham2• 9 years ago

In Australia we do a lot of controlled burning through the winter. They're called "hazard reduction burns" and are carefully planned operations involving lots of firefighters and appliances.

The aim is to burn the leaf litter and other fuels, but not let the fire get hot enough to kill established trees.

You start to see signs of regrowth very quickly. HRs are usually done in the late winter. By mid spring the landscape is an incredible sight of bright green new growth out of black tree trunks.

There are a lot of species of trees and plants native to the Australian bush that need fire as part of their breeding and growth cycles. It's integral to land management here.

dmoy• 9 years ago

The US does a lot of controlled burning as well.

King-Aaron• 9 years ago

We specifically call them 'hazard reductions' or 'prescribed burns' here now, because of the numerous times 'controlled' burns became rapidly uncontrolled... :P

bamboozled• 9 years ago

Not sure if you've ever been to parts of Australia where "fire-stick farming" [1] is still practised?

It's really amazing to witness being performed. These places don't seem to ever have wild damaging fires like other parts of Australia, due to a lack of fuel build up, and the environment in these places always look "immaculate", almost like a freshly cleaned apartment. The smell of these slow burning fires through winter is really nice.

I've spent a lot of time on the East Coast of Australia too, where the "bush" is managed the European way, and there is a lot of problems with wild fires, invasive species (introduced) and a less healthy looking landscape.

The hazard reduction burning in Australia seems to be more about establishing parameters to protect property more than anything else?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire-stick_farming

davidbanham2• 9 years ago

I'm aware of the practice, but haven't specifically sought out fire stick farmed areas to travel to. I'll have to check some out.

The literature you've read is _probably_ mostly focused on the Rural Fire Service (RFS) HR program. Their focus is protection of life and property in settled areas.

The land management burns are undertaken by National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS). RFS often assists with these to provide extra manpower.

I imagine the various State Forestry agencies also have similar programs, but I don't know anything about them.

cakedoggie3• 9 years ago

Still, there are a far too many houses allowed to be built in fire zones.

smileysteve• 9 years ago

I am under the impression that fire departments regularly practice "controlled burns" to destroy brush and have fires occur "naturally", during damp times and away from properties.

At least I am under this impression from controlled burns happening in Talladega National Forest and Cohutta wilderness.

vkou• 9 years ago

They used to do a lot more of them. Unfortunately, with cuts to that part of their budget, controlled burns in the Pacific North-West are a thing of the past.

Instead of spending money and time on controlled burns, we now spend money and time on fighting uncontrollable firestorms.

nitwit005• 9 years ago

The missing step is often that we continue to let communities pop up in these areas that we fully expect to periodically burn down.

Of course, we often still let people build their houses in flood planes, but we seem to be slowly getting better at that.

falcolas10• 9 years ago

Or in zones where there are catastrophic earthquakes on a regular basis. Or hurricanes. Or tornadoes. Or blizzards.

we often still let people build their houses in flood planes

The best farmland is on flood plains; good luck with holding them back.

Let's be honest for a moment: there's no place in America which is safe from every regularly occurring natural disaster. Yet we still live here.

sizzzzlerz3• 9 years ago

Absolutely true. But we need to expose the dangers of building and living in these hazardous areas and make the owners share significant portions of the costs of protecting them. Here, in California, you can buy earthquake insurance but at a high premium and high deductabl but everyone is quite aware of the fact that the earth can shift any time. The same should be the case for building in areas subject to wildfires, or avalanches, or tidal surge, or tornadoes, or hurricanes.

jessaustin3• 9 years ago

No one is talking about farmers. They're usually smart enough to locate their houses up the hill. The problem is towns, cities, and especially rural housing developments in floodplains. This year, we had local residents bemoaning their devastating flood losses while pointing out that the water rose even higher two years ago. [0] ?%?!#$? What is wrong with people?

[0] http://www.ky3.com/content/news/Taney-County-residents-clean...

SandersAK3• 9 years ago

Some forests are self-regulating when it comes to fire. Some forests are not. What defines forest is actually pretty complicated, even for Federal and state agencies. Controlled burns work in conjunction with thinning practices and bone-piling (stacking big burns away from other areas).

The root of the problem has been and continue to be that structurally we separate "fuels" and "prevention" teams in the forest service. Where Fuels deals with assessing when and how to burn, and Prevention operationalizes it and also does fire fighting.

Lastly, fire management suffers from a lack of talent and shared learning as fire career paths involve people moving to different regions which are geographically incredibly diverse. You don't fight fire in the east side of Oregon like you do in Florida.

The lack of cohesion, mixed with a serious lack of funding, and a lot of common misconceptions publicly leads to a mishmash of fire management across the country.

source - was a firefighter. left because of all these issues.

namlem• 9 years ago

Do you think it would help to hold some sort of conference every year or two about firefighting techniques and science?

SandersAK3• 9 years ago

They do have conferences. I think the bigger issue is that there isn't really a good budget for this stuff.

Most of the budget goes to handling fires that are really out of control, and there's more and more of those every year.

If you doubled the budget, hired fuels teams with scientists at the head of the teams (instead of fire fighters) and applied that budget to thinning and controlled burns, you'd probably have much safer more defensible forests areas.

Also, there's a huge gray area around what fires to prioritize and when to fight them. A good example of "letting it rip" and "let them log" was the Egley complex fire in 2007 (one of my last fires!): https://www.forestsandrangelands.gov/success/stories/2009/nf...

jonnycoder• 9 years ago

Speaking of eastern Oregon, the environmental lobby has a huge influence on this as they sue the USFS quite often. They never did salvage log from the Canyon Creek fire right?

SandersAK3• 9 years ago

I don't remember but between hunters, hippies, logging, blm, and forest service it can be a real bureaucratic nightmare. Irony is that they actually all want the same thing.

agumonkey• 9 years ago

Anybody know websites to discuss ideas and tech about forest fire fighting ? (be it thermodynamics, organization, monitoring, chemistry etc)

jessaustin3• 9 years ago

It seems that USA's War On Fire has had the same results as its other Wars, On Drugs and Terrorism: more fires with more harmful results.

We will be the laughingstocks of history, if humanity somehow survives us.

framebit• 9 years ago

Jared Diamond discusses western US wildfires in his fascinating book Collapse. Interesting perspective for anybody interested in this topic.

zamalek• 9 years ago

I very much agree with this theory. The problem is that fire does not respect the anthropocene. We have changed the wilderness in nontrivial ways (e.g. forestry). Fuel is far more abundant and dense.

Every species (including plants) on the planet evolved to deal with a certain amount of fire - including the appropriate degree of propagation. We've unavoidably upset that balance and so a radically different solution is required. Although I don't know what that solution is, it looks nothing like what we are doing today.

Let Forest Fires Burn

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