Drought?

[Wayne SW/MO]

True. Once the trees are all cut down the risk of forest fire becomes pretty low...except that fires and disease are most closely associated with clear cuts and "normal logging practices".

http://yeoldeconscio...e.com/art6.html

If you look at the whole picture you see that as usual it comes down to a mix of little or nothing for the target, but a lot of petting of the noise makers.

trees can be harvested, it just has to be done the right way. The beetle killed trees have a value, but envonmental groups resist havesting them.

I don't believe all the fires in CO are in pine forest though and drought and scrub bring hot fast fires that only normal rain and humidity can contain.

[Tim Smith]

If you look at the whole picture you see that as usual it comes down to a mix of little or nothing for the target, but a lot of petting of the noise makers.

trees can be harvested, it just has to be done the right way. The beetle killed trees have a value, but envonmental groups resist havesting them.

I don't believe all the fires in CO are in pine forest though and drought and scrub bring hot fast fires that only normal rain and humidity can contain.

Almost none of the current fires in CO are in pine beetle forest until yesterday when the High Park fire jumped the Poudre River.

I don't know how much tree removal was resisted by environmentalists, but there are a heck of a lot of beetle killed trees cut around places like Breckinridge.

[Al Agnew]

Actually, the usual logging practices are part of the cause of destructive fires. Old growth uncut forest usually consists of big, widely spaced trees with grass and low brush underneath. That's the way it was before European settlement in the West, and natural fires along with those set by the native Americans kept it that way, burning the low growth periodically. The big trees have fire resistant bark and were tall enough that the fires burning the low stuff didn't spread up into the crowns. Once the big trees were cut, it opened up the ground to a lot more sprouting of seedlings. The second growth forest was a lot thicker as well as lower, and there was a lot of fuel as well from the leavings of the timber cutting. Fire suppression didn't help, allowing a lot more second growth to survive, dropping more and more fuel as the trees got bigger and those less able to compete in the crowded conditions died and dropped. Even in the old growth that was left, without natural fires keeping the low growth down, it meant a lot more fuel that was taller and more likely to spread to the crowns of the bigger trees.

Now, things are totally messed up. I'm very familiar with Yellowstone Park, for instance. Many years of fire suppression let smaller growth build up among the bigger trees, so that when fires finally happened, everything burnt. Once everything burnt, it was just like a clear cut without the scraps left from clear cutting; open ground that soon sprouts extremely thick brush and second growth forests. Most of what burnt in the great Yellowstone fires is now covered very thickly in small trees so thick that you can hardly fight your way through them. Any fire in those areas now will be hot, fast, and complete, starting another cycle of growth of very thick brush and small trees that makes perfect fuel for the next fire. Even if fires were suppressed in those areas it would take centuries before the forest got back naturally to some kind of healthy old growth situation.

Go outside the parks into the national forests, and you find those older clearcuts covered in brush just as thick and just as susceptible to fires. The only way to do logging that would make the fire situation less dangerous would be to go in and thin the forests of all but the biggest trees, and then use regular controlled burns to keep down the brush and seedlings until the trees you left were big enough to be resistant even to big fires. But that, of course, is exactly the opposite of the goal of logging, which is to harvest the best trees.

The pine beetles and other pests are simply another wild card. I'd even venture to say that, once those trees are dead long enough for the needles to drop off and rot on the forest floor, they will furnish LESS fuel for big fires than healthy but drought-stressed trees. A big fire will burn the thick, live trees a lot hotter than the dead trees that don't have needles.

A friend of mine in Montana spends his summers fighting fires all over the West, depending upon the fire fighting industry for much of his living (and yes, there is a huge fire fighting industry furnishing manpower, equipment, vehicles and aircraft, and fire suppression chemicals). He admits that much of what he does is ineffective. They can to some extent protect critical human areas from being burned, but they very seldom stop or even control a fire without a lot of help from the weather.

[Tim Smith]

Well put, Al.

[Wayne SW/MO]

Old growth uncut forest usually consists of big, widely spaced trees with grass and low brush underneath. The big trees have fire resistant bark and were tall enough that the fires burning the low stuff didn't spread up into the crowns.

True and in fact I've hunted in small areas of natural stands of Pondorosa that had fires go through the area and while the trunks would show signs of the fire the trees would be healthy. Again though the government was the fly in the ointment. The FS moved from clear cutting to sending cruisers in to mark for thinning, but unfortunately the money swung around to stop all cutting because of the bad tastes left from clear cutting.

It all revolved around money, thinning is expensive when compared to clear cutting and dries up political contributions. Just that simple.

[Tim Smith]

True and in fact I've hunted in small areas of natural stands of Pondorosa that had fires go through the area and while the trunks would show signs of the fire the trees would be healthy. Again though the government was the fly in the ointment. The FS moved from clear cutting to sending cruisers in to mark for thinning, but unfortunately the money swung around to stop all cutting because of the bad tastes left from clear cutting.

It all revolved around money, thinning is expensive when compared to clear cutting and dries up political contributions. Just that simple.

Back hair. That's the government's fault too.

The timber industry has virtually unlimited leverage in the Forest Service. There's not much light between them.

And it's funny that timber harvest ever got rolled into this discussion at all.

Timber harvest has been increasing over the years.

http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplrp/fpl_rp653.pdf

[MOPanfisher]

If memory serves me the big fires in yellowstone were not caused nor assisted by years of fire suppression, I believe the NPS had many years of history of not fighting wildland fires unless they were threatening man made structures, the rest were left to burn themselves out like nature had always done. The size and scope of the big yellowstone fires made such an impression in the media that pressure was placed upon the NPS to fight that one, honestly I am not sure of the current policy. I was in yellowstone a few years after the big fires, large parts of the burned areas were standing fire killed timber, with a tremendous amount of undergrowth due to the opened canopy after the fire. It seemed like every elk in the park was in those burned areas feasting on the new growth. Fire like so many things in like is both good and bad depending upon how it is used (or abused).

USFS is a different creature, they will fight the fires as the standing timber crop represents a large amount of $$ of lumber going up in flames and the nature of people to want to build their homes next to the National Forests and enjoy mother nature, (except for bears, mountain lions, snakes, deer eating their shrubs and the occasional devastating fire). When the conditions are all right for a devastating fire, drought, fuel, humidity, and wind, once it starts containment is a very very expensive and often elusive goal. Many times it only buys some time or changes the direction of the fire somewhat, through some fantastic work by the firefighters. When the wind is whipping those hot dry flames through the crowns usually it takes a weather change to be able to control the fire, rain, loss of wind, higher humidity etc., even the attempts to set backfires and burn off a large black line often fail when a 50 MPH wind is blowing hot cinders for thousands of yards into more dry fuel just waiting to go up in flames. The people that put their lives on the line day in and day out, from the smoke jumpers, to heavy equipment operators, to pilots to local fire departments trying to save a neighborhood for the all consuming beast of a hot, wind driven fire are heroes!

[Daryk Campbell Sr]

and the nature of people to want to build their homes next to the National Forests and enjoy mother nature, (except for bears, mountain lions, snakes, deer eating their shrubs and the occasional devastating fire).

... Well put.

[Al Agnew]

Yellowstone management changed their policy on putting out fires a decade or two before the big fires happened...just took that long for a big fire to happen. They still have the policy now of letting most fires burn.

The firefighters are brave people worthy of respect and admiration, but like I said, they'll be the first to say that in most of the big fires, they are fighting a losing battle unless the weather is on their side.

[MOPanfisher]

While difficult for many people to grasp our ecosystem didn't evolve in a smoothe easy way, what is here now was not always here, what was for 50 100 years a beautiful stand of mature timber has almost certain been decimated by fire more than once in history. The only thing really consistent about nature is that is hates a status quo. It will always be trying to move a river channel, erode down a mountain range, raising or lowering the average temperature, or trying to burn or drown, or cover with snow something. What we as humans try to do is to exist as best we can, while trying to bend nature to our will, sometimes we think we are winning or have won (1993 flods) then we are reminded that we are not really in control, sort of like a little kid wrestling with his dad, seldom does "dad" ever use the full strength, but if he does nothing the kid can do will really matter.

How did we get way out here anyway, yep it is hot and dry in some places and wet in others that is nature. So far this year it hasn't been all that bad at my house, in the last 3 weeks I have gotten 2 different 1" rains, sure helps to make the cut hayfield green up, but not enough to make the creeks run or put much moisture deep into the soil. As my grandmother said you just as well like the weather you have, you certainly can't change it. Mother nature will always have the big guns in our battles.