How Do We Best Manage Western North American Forests for Wildfire?
A wildfire rages through a dry forest in Utah. Source: Drew Michael Hill
WHAT CAN WE DO TO ADDRESS THE WILDFIRE PROBLEM?
While this question is daunting, reducing fuels can influence how forests burn, even during extreme fire weather.
Despite calls to restore fire as a cultural and ecological process (e.g., The U.S. National Wildland Fire Cohesive Strategy), the dominant approach to wildfire management continues to be aggressive fire suppression (working to put out a wildfire as quickly as possible once it has started).
Attempting to suppress all or most fires has proven a highly consequential active management prescription. Fire suppression persists issues such as forest overstocking (too many trees in too small an area) and fuel accumulation (build-up of limbs, downed wood, and other plant material on the ground) which predisposes forests to high-severity fire when fire inevitably returns and leaves forests vulnerable to increasing drought stress under a rapidly warming climate.
We can begin to recapture the abundant and extensive influence of low- to moderately-severity wildfires by allowing more fires to burn during less extreme weather conditions when they’re easiest to extinguish and manage. We can also increase the use of prescribed fire, setting fires intentionally to burn through fuel loads at lower temperatures, reducing stocking over time, and shifting stands to a more open forest with a lower natural fuel load. In some cases, it is beneficial to reduce fuels by mechanical reduction (e.g., pre-commercial or commercial thinning and removal of trees), particularly when followed by prescribed burning.
Prescribed fire in action. Source: Amanda Rau
As with any adaptive management approach, it is critical to use active monitoring for data collection and analysis to inform and apply the lessons learned. Climate and wildfire adaptation strategies cannot return landscapes to any historical condition or fire regime, nor is that a beneficial goal at this point. Instead, it is urgent to build management focused on ecologically-based strategies for adapting current forest conditions to a rapidly evolving future climate.
Multiple Tribes in Oregon and Washington are actively working with cultural fire. The Indigenous Peoples Burning Network (IPBN) is a support network among Native American Communities that are revitalizing their traditional fire practices in a contemporary context. In 2021, the Oregon Prescribed Fire Council supported a cohort of Indigenous fire practitioners, partners, and community members as they convened at Andrew Reasoner Wildlife Preserve to conduct a controlled burn.
Check out this great collection of interviews to read more about preserving indigenous fire and offering solutions in the West under a changing climate from the perspective of researchers, policymakers, and firefighters in indigenous wildfire management.
ADAPTING OUR COMMUNITIES & FORESTS TO 21ST-CENTURY WILDFIRES
Growing partnerships and collaborations are building new ways to manage forests that work with fire on our terms rather than wait until it rages out of control.
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To restore forests and other important fire-adapted ecosystems, we can incentivize ecological forestry and conservation actions in forestry and across different ownerships.
Forest restoration projects are most effective when informed by science, planned with Tribes and communities, and implemented at a landscape scale (meaning projects with enough acreage to significantly impact fire behavior and resistance to drought).
Alongside planning and implementing more of these projects, we can support policy incentives to remove barriers to increased use of prescribed fires and wildfires managed for resource benefits, including incorporating Indigenous Knowledge and expertise.
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We can make wildfire less hazardous to human life and property by engaging with communities to support programs that create defensible space, building or retrofitting structures with fire-resistant designs and materials, and mitigating smoke impacts on vulnerable populations.
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To cultivate a restoration economy and a workforce to support it, we can develop markets that support the additional benefits of restoration, like clean water or carbon sequestration, where it is economically feasible and ecologically appropriate.
Supporting innovative harvest technologies, such as smaller, more maneuverable harvest equipment, can reduce the costs of harvesting smaller-density trees.
Developing the number of contractors who specialize in ecological forest restoration is essential.
Presently, not enough people have training in prescribed fire use, ecologically appropriate thinning, and other approaches to meet the demand on the ground.
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We can and should increase investment from all levels of government and the private sector to support the goals described above.
Investing in wildfire resilience will be far less expensive in the long run than facing 21st-century mega-fires with the status quo approach to forest management and wildfire suppression.
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While forest health significantly contributes to extreme fire behavior, so does a warming planet. We must develop and support policies that transition from fossil fuels to more renewable sources.
DEEP DIVE INTO ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT APPROACHES
Sustainable Northwest converted the peer-reviewed research paper titled: Adapting Western North American forests to climate change and wildfires: 10 common questions into a user-friendly story map using ArcGIS. The article was written by a team of well-respected researchers in the fire science field and published in Ecological Applications (December 2021).
Authors: Susan J. Prichard, Paul F. Hessburg, R. Keala Hagmann, Nicholas A. Povak, Solomon Z. Dobrowski, Matthew D. Hurteau, Van R. Kane, Robert E. Keane, Leda N. Kobziar, Crystal A. Kolden, Malcolm North, Sean A. Parks, Hugh D. Safford, Jens T. Stevens, Larissa L. Yocom, Derek J. Churchill, Robert W. Gray, David W. Huffman, Frank K. Lake, Pratima Khatri-Chhetri
SNW WILDFIRE RESILIENCE
In 2020, Sustainable Northwest launched our Forest program's rapidly growing Wildfire Resilience Initiative.
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The Southwest Integrated Forest and Fire Treatment (SWIFFT) project is an ambitious 2-year public-private partnership to accelerate forest health and wildfire risk reduction treatments on the ground adjacent to communities and critical assets west of Medford and into the Applegate Valley.
This collaboration between public agencies, communities, and philanthropy is an innovative, results-driven model that demonstrates near-term benefits while advocating for replication and increased investments commensurate with the scale of the problem.
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The West Bear All-Lands Restoration project supports collaboration between the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), non-governmental organizations, state and federal agencies, communities, municipalities, and individual private landowners to reduce the risk of large-scale uncharacteristically severe wildfire in Southwest Oregon. The project area includes 27,000 acres of strategic thinning and fuel treatments designed to restore forest health and reduce risk to 7 of the 50 most at-risk communities in Oregon. Over $11 million has been secured to date for project implementation, providing direct benefits to 5,500 homes and other structures and creating and retaining dozens of jobs in the region.
This project involves a stewardship agreement with Lomakatsi Restoration Project. This non-profit, grassroots organization develops and implements forest and water restoration projects in Oregon and Northern California. Initial West Bear work has included partnerships with an Intertribal crew and other regional service providers to design and implement community wildfire resilience treatments adjacent to Talent, Phoenix, and Jacksonville.
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In partnership with the Oregon Prescribed Fire Council and the Northwest Fire Science Consortium, we are working with Federal Forest Collaboratives and building new models for restoring fire-adapted forests.
The Oregon Prescribed Fire Council hopes to enhance the fire-adapted natural ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest by expanding the responsible use of fire. The Council serves fire practitioners, state & federal agencies, academic institutions, Tribes, and interested individuals by:
Providing training & assistance.
Creating a platform for discussion.
Supporting policy changes that would lead to better fire practices.
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In early 2021 we launched the Western Oregon Cascades Recovery Effort (WOCRE). This partnership convenes organizations working with the impacted landowners in the footprints of the 2020 Labor Day wildfires.
Starting with the urgent work of forest recovery from the 2020 wildfires, WOCRE is a venue connecting the constellation of public and private institutions to leverage additional resources, bolster technical support, and foster opportunities for peer learning.
WOCRE works with multiple entities and networks across different watersheds to support technical assistance and outreach, streamline the landowner assistance, and create the pipeline of shovel-ready projects needed for forest recovery.
SUPPORT POLICY PERMANENTLY FUNDING OREGON'S WILDFIRE LEGISLATION
We recommend these Top Five Priority Policy Actions for Living with Wildfire:
Increase federal wildfire resilience funding to $5 billion annually to treat 50 million acres of forestland across all ownerships.
Invest in strategic fuels reduction in priority landscapes and fire-adapted communities consistent with the USFS Confronting the Wildfire Crisis Report.
Pass legislation at the state and federal levels to significantly increase the use of prescribed fire on public and private land.
Develop incentives at the state and federal levels to increase biomass utilization that supports forest resilience treatments.
Support collaborative engagement, workforce training, and tribal and community capacity building to deploy increased investments and sustain wildfire resilience and forest health.
COMMUNITY RESOURCES
Visit wildfire.oregon.gov to:
Sign up for emergency alerts and evacuation information.
Learn how to develop an emergency plan, evacuation checklist, a go-kit, and a family communication plan.
Research whether your county has an emergency response plan for wildfire and/or smoke management.
Learn more about wildfire resiliency and fire-adapted communities here.
For Washington residents, check out the Washington Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network. This network has great resources for folks to connect to their communities and work together to get prepared for wildfires
Living in the Pacific Northwest, we're all impacted by wildfire. As we learn from the megafires we've recently experienced and prepare for future fires, it's a good practice to research risk and explore ways to defend your living space and build resilience in your community.
For wildfire policy questions, contact:
Dylan Kruse, SNW Vice President, at dkruse@sustainablenorthwest.org
For questions about SNW’s forest and wildfire management work, contact:
Trent Seager, SNW Director of Science, at tseager@sustainablenorthwest.org
For questions about SNW’s forest and wildfire projects and partnerships, contact:
Greg Houle, Wildfire Resilience Program Manager, at ghoule@sustainablenorthwest.org
Cadence Purdy, Private Forestlands Program Associate, at cpurdy@sustainablenorthwest.org
