WildEarth Guardians

Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Dry year will test fire plans

Success must combine ecological realities with protection of life, property
Contact: WildEarth Guardians

The flames that consumed homes and tens of thousands of acres of grassland in Oklahoma, Texas and eastern New Mexico, that led to evacuations in forested areas of southern Colorado in January and are burning in northern Arizona also carry early warnings that we are likely facing our earliest fire season ever. We hope it's not also our deadliest.

The year 2005, though wet, was the warmest year on record on the planet. And we are in the midst of one of the driest winters ever in the Southwest. The combination of vegetation growth, drought and global warming led to this situation.

This will be a trial year for the visionary National Fire Plan, both for homeowners and the federal government.

In 2000 the U.S. Department of Agriculture adopted the National Fire Plan, which recognizes the essential ecological role of fire and sets direction for safeguarding forest-interface communities. The plan calls for allowing more fires to burn naturally in backcountry forests, thereby protecting firefighters, saving taxpayer dollars, restoring forest ecosystems and protecting communities.

The plan puts the burden on homeowners and the government to take precautionary steps to ensure that homes are saved and the lives of firefighters and homeowners are spared.

To prevent fire disasters from occurring, one of the primary strategies of the fire plan is for homeowners to take responsibility for their own safety in fire-prone forests. Effectively protecting homes from wildfire requires treating the home itself and its immediate surroundings, not increasing logging in our national forests.

The Forest Service has determined that the conditions in the 200 feet immediately surrounding a home are what determine its fate in the event of a wildfire. Fire-wise guidelines call for fire-resistant construction materials, trimming and mowing of flammable vegetation and removing woodpiles and propane tanks from the immediate vicinity of the home, among other measures.

Southwestern forest ecosystems, the wildlife they sustain and the abundant clean water they provide are seriously threatened by government fire- and fuels-management practices. Fire will always visit our forests, and we cannot fireproof them. But we can fireproof our communities.

As with floodplains, there are places where fire is certain and foreseeable: States and counties must adopt zoning and ordinances that deter building in the "fire plain" to avoid preventable disasters and enormous taxpayer bailouts. A whole set of financial incentives that promote development in fire-prone areas, putting dwellers and firefighters in harm's way, needs to be revisited.

With extremely scarce resources, the federal government will have to make critical decisions this year about where to suppress wildfires and where not. Although the Forest Service has produced fire-management plans that allow natural wildfires to burn, many national forests are failing to implement those plans and spend hundreds of millions of dollars on unwarranted fire suppression, wasting tax dollars, ignoring science and promoting unhealthy forests.

The Forest Service continues to suppress the overwhelming majority of natural fires. Since 2001, the Forest Service spent approximately a half-billion dollars, or an average of $99 million annually, to suppress 98 percent of wildfires in Arizona and New Mexico.

WildEarth Guardians believe there is a rapidly growing fire-industrial complex. Lucrative private contracts for aircraft, heavy equipment and labor, coupled with ever-expanding housing developments, threaten to drive a detrimental policy of fire suppression at all costs.

Despite fire-management plans calling for the use of wildland fire as a management tool, few forests have ever done so. The Gila National Forest, a pioneer in fire use, is just one of three national forests that even considers the use of wildland fire outside of designated wilderness. That means fire is not being allowed to play its natural role in restoring health to our forests.

Fire's early arrival this season will certainly test our planning and preparedness as envisioned in the National Fire Plan. We wish for the safety of our firefighters and people with homes in our forests. We also believe that fires must be able to fulfill their ecological role where appropriate in the critical months and years ahead.

*The writer is forest program director of WildEarth Guardians, a Santa Fe-based organization whose goal is to safeguard the Southwest's native wildlife and plants.*

This op-ed by Bryan Bird was published in the Arizona Republic on February 14, 2006.