Experts: Forest Service's New Wildfire Suppression Policy Dangerous

Last week, the head of the U.S. Forest Service ordered federal firefighters to put out every wildfire across the nation as quickly as possible.

The seemingly commonsense move was praised by many residents of California's rural areas, where drought has created a dangerously dry landscape and fires are exploding. Several lawmakers, as well as Gov. Gavin Newsom, had been publicly pressing the Forest Service for a stronger commitment to safety.

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Some fire experts, however, aren't so sure about the new mandate. They say the order appears to be more about crowd-pleasing politics than fire protection. Under the directive, the Forest Service is no longer allowing small fires to burn, nor lighting prescribed fires of its own, which both clear out thick, overgrown forests and reduce the intensity of future fires. They say this is the real danger.

"A blanket policy like this is a relatively poor idea," said Matthew Hurteau, professor of biology at the University of New Mexico, who specializes in fire ecology and has written about the value of controlled burning in western forests. "If we treat less of the forest with less fire, we're going to have higher fuel loads and increased risk of seeing the kind of fires we're seeing right now in California."

Hurteau and others acknowledge that controlled burns carry a risk of getting out of hand and, in a tinder-dry year like this one, swift fire suppression may well be the best tactic. But they worry that eliminating the option of burning altogether marks a dangerous slide into old Forest Service ways. For decades, federal firefighters pounced on every blaze they could, creating a buildup of vegetation that has helped make wildfires the menace they are today.

While the Forest Service says it will lift the burning moratorium once it's safe to do so, some worry that with climate change, things won't get any safer. The landscape will only get hotter and drier, and wildlands will continue to accumulate combustible trees and brush.

"When are we going to get out of these conditions?" said Craig Thomas, founder of the Fire Restoration Group, an organization that advocates for better forest management. "Maybe two weeks in December? Two weeks in January? Think about where we're headed."

In an interview with The Chronicle, U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore recognized the benefits of controlled burning. But he said given the dozens of wildfires raging across the West this summer, with homes and communities going up in smoke, the agency's limited resources need to focus solely on fire suppression.

"When you have drought conditions like we have, you don't have time to have (other) conversation(s)," he said.

Benefits of proactive burning

Proactive burning of forests and grasslands is increasingly recognized as one of the most effective ways to stem the tide of catastrophic fire.

As a natural component of many ecosystems, fire not only helps wipe out excessive vegetation, it promotes the growth of healthier, more resilient landscapes. Both letting existing wildfires burn and intentionally lighting new fires, when it's safe to do so, offer benefits across vast areas. The tactics are generally more comprehensive and less costly than other management strategies, such as thinning forests with chain saws.

The Forest Service, after nearly a century of rushing to put out every fire, has committed in recent decades to doing more controlled burning. In California, the agency burned an average of 52,000 acres annually over the past three years, records show, nearly doubling what it averaged the first half of the previous decade.

Still, fire experts say there needs to be a lot more burning done to make the state's wildlands more impervious to the big, destructive fires seen in recent years. Some suggest controlled burns should cover at least 1 million acres of California annually. That's close to what wildfires in the state have burned each year, on average, over the past decade.

Last summer, the Forest Service and the state set a joint goal of igniting prescribed fires, or using other forest treatments like timber harvesting and tree thinning, across 1 million acres each year. They don't expect to achieve the goal for several years, though.

Cal Fire, the state's firefighting agency, generally does less burning because its jurisdiction is mostly private lands, where it has limited power. The Forest Service, by contrast, owns huge parcels where it can dictate what's done. Nearly 60% of California's forests are under federal jurisdiction.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who oversees the Forest Service, told The Chronicle last week that after this fire season, he hopes to boost forest management work in California and the rest of the country. New funding for burning and other forest treatments, he expects, will come from the federal infrastructure bill and other legislation supported by the Biden administration.

"They contain significant, I mean significant increases in resources that will allow us to not just do a year or two of good work but potentially a decade of good work," he said.

Controlled burning moratorium

The Forest Service's moratorium on controlled burning, announced Aug. 2, followed criticism of the agency for responding too slowly to fire this year.

A handful of Republican lawmakers, including Rep. Tom McClintock of Elk Grove ( Sacramento County), questioned why firefighters hadn't moved more quickly to put out the Tamarack Fire, which ignited July 4 on federal land south of Lake Tahoe. The Forest Service didn't send crews to the blaze until six days after it started. During that time, strong winds carried the fire across more than 20,000 acres, threatening the Alpine County community of Markleeville.

"What legal authority authorized the U.S. Forest Service to allow this wildfire to burn?" McClintock wrote in a letter to the agency.

Forest Service officials said their response to the fire was delayed because several fires had erupted in the area and they had no choice but to prioritize some over others. The Tamarack Fire had begun as a single tree struck by lightning in a spot where there wasn't much vegetation. It was believed to be less of a threat than nearby conflagrations. Officials said their response had nothing to do with wanting to let the blaze burn.

It didn't help the agency's case that a month earlier, residents of Siskiyou County also charged the Forest Service with being too lax about putting out fire, in this case the Lava Fire on the flanks of Mount Shasta. Federal officials admitted they made an error in thinking this fire had been extinguished when it hadn't been. The fire went on to char more than 25,000 acres, including homes in the city of Weed.

Still, many accused the Forest Service of treating both the Lava Fire and Tamarack Fire as a controlled burns and suggested that such a "let it burn" policy was inappropriate. Gov. Newsom was among the critics.

"There's a culture that too often is 'wait and see,'" he told President Biden during a teleconference on wildfires last month. "We can't afford that any longer."

Despite the Forest Service's insistence that crews have been responding to fires as fast as they can — not letting them burn as Newsom and others have suggested — chief Moore issued a directive halting all controlled burning.

Moore told The Chronicle he did it to clarify the misconception.

"I thought it was just better to be clear about what we were doing," he said. "It's people's perception that we are watching fires for natural resource benefit. We're not."

Moore became head of the Forest Service just last month. He's already staring down a fire season that he's called a "national crisis." But having been plucked by the Biden administration from a post in California as regional forester for the Pacific Southwest Region, he's familiar with the issues surrounding wildfire.

Figuring out the right balance

As much as politicians and forest managers may want to keep fire off the landscape and still clear dangerous amounts of vegetation for the future, fire experts underscore that you can't do both.

"I wish there was an easy way we could get out of this dilemma we've gotten into," said Scott Stephens, professor of fire science at UC Berkeley.

Like other experts, Stephens says achieving the right balance between safety today and safety tomorrow comes only by continuing to burn proactively, when appropriate. Even before the ban, he noted that the Forest Service was very cautious about proceeding with controlled fire, making sure the burns were safe and didn't take resources away from fighting fires.

"It's not just willy-nilly," Stephens said. "You have to have a plan in place. You have to have a checklist. You have to go to your forest supervisor."

While in California controlled burns would probably not pass muster with the current drought conditions, experts say parts of the Southwest may be ripe for controlled fire. Monsoon rains have been drenching the landscape there.

Hurteau, at the University of New Mexico, worries that going too long without the ability to burn will only make conditions on the ground more dangerous.

"The political pressure that can come from that lack of understanding about fire has the potential to force us back to this full-suppression approach," he said. "We know that's a loser idea. We're experiencing the effects of that, magnified by climate change, right now."

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