Nakamura: We Must Address California's Changing Wildfire Dynamic

[Mike]

As summer heats up, so does the wildfire threat. Californians are bracing for what experts describe as a potentially severe wildfire season, but it hasn't always been this way.

Californians today experience different kinds of wildfire than Gold Rush-era Californians did. Today's forests often burn hotter and with greater environmental consequence.

This is in part our own doing.

Our land management and fire suppression policies have left many public forests dangerously overgrown. Forests that once sustained 50 to 80 trees per acre now struggle to support more than 500 trees per acre. Biodiversity is suffering. Wildfire size and intensity is increasing.

That affects water and air quality, wildlife habitat, carbon emissions, firefighting costs - and increasingly, human lives and homes.

People have been suppressing fire in the Sierra Nevada for nearly a century. We have extinguished naturally occurring low-intensity fires that, according the U.S. Forest Service, clear the forest of excess fuels about every 20 years. Having stopped those fires for more than 80 years, we have allowed four cycles of fuel to accumulate.

We have changed the characteristics of California's forests and altered the natural fire regime.

If we want to restore our forests and protect communities, we must manage forest resources proactively.

Fortunately, we have the science, technology and manpower to restore our forests and protect watersheds. We can even reduce greenhouse gas emissions and generate clean energy in the process.

Unfortunately, we seldom get the opportunity to do so.

Foresters and fire ecologists understand how to reduce fuel loads and conserve forest resources. We know historic fires seldom reached the tree crowns. We know reducing fuel loads can help keep surface fires on the ground, and that ground fires move more slowly, burn less intensely and are less costly to fight than crown fires.

We rely on much more anecdotal experience, however, than we would like. During the 2003 Old and Cedar wildfires in Southern California, for instance, firefighters reported the phenomenon of blazes racing downhill as fast as they typically speed uphill. We can examine charred landscapes after a fire, but rarely do we have the opportunity to study fire behavior and forest responses before wildfire strikes.

When we get those opportunities, they prove invaluable. The Cone Fire that burned through the Blacks Mountain Experimental Forest in 2001, for instance, showed conclusively that different forest thinning approaches could bring a raging crown fire to the ground.

We need more empirical evidence and we need it on a larger scale. But there's a catch-22.

One the one hand, there is widespread agreement within the environmental and forest management community that more research would lead to conclusive evidence and help minimize California's wildfire threat. But many projects are blocked by endless appeals, which denies the means of obtaining the empirical data.

This conflict highlights a disconnect in our environmental laws that fail to consider the long-term benefit of actions that may have short-term risks. We do ourselves a disservice if we prevent action that may have the long-term benefit because that action may have short-term risks. California would be better served by a system that balances short-term risks and long-term benefits.

There is another challenge too. One of political capital and political will.

Fuel reduction takes time and projects don't always prove their full value right away. There is little political capital to be gained by instituting policies whose benefits may not be realized until after one's term of office.

Despite the enormity of California's forest health and wildfire crisis, in crisis there is opportunity. In this case, Californians have the opportunity to supply more of our own wood and energy while saving money, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating wildfire threats.

It starts with reducing fuel loads and restoring forests, and that needs to start now.

Gary Nakamura is an extension forester with the UC Cooperative Extension Service in Redding. He is a California Registered Professional Forester and a public member of the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection.