Smoke
Yep - Decades of forest mismanagement coming to a head. Bark beetles and drought aren't helping things either.
This
I think the healthy tree per acre in a ponderosa forest is like 25, its 1000 today! Thin it! Talk about shovel (saw) ready jobs!!!
And This.
I've got the inside scoop and I'm here to tell you guys that it's going to be a long road to hoe. We are finally getting on track in the US Forest Service since only a few years ago.
The problem begins with an old policy of putting every fire out by the next day. Back in the 1920's or 30's the USFS came out and declared wildfires a bad thing and every fire needed to be put out as quickly as humanly possible. Smokey the Bear played his part in the propaganda by letting everyone know wildfire is evil.
They didn't have a good fix on what we call, today, Fire Ecology. Wildfire is a good thing IF it isn't suppressed for so long that the forests get choked out with too many trees per acre and seas of brush that isn't managed. Management can come by mechanical means, prescribed fire, and natural fire. In regards to Fire Ecology, nature really knows what's best for itself. Certain cones need fire to seed, like Giant Sequoias. They have found that in the 100% fire suppression years we had no new growth of the big trees.
In a healthy tree stand density, like Pishta mentions, fire will simply clean up the forest floor whereas a stand density that is too thick fire can decimate the whole landscape. When fire burns too intense in an area it can neutralize the soil and trees will not regrow, only invasives and brush that becomes too thick and created the fuel density problem all over again. We call this Type Conversion and it's happened all over the place out here in the West.
The cycle has gone like this: Fire is evil and since the Industrial Revolution more and more people have been moving into the forests and building communities, Those people love to have their homes nestled in the trees or don't understand the concept of defensible space. Smokey the Bear told us to put every fire out as fast as possible. The forest becomes too dense because of this and fires in turn became more difficult to control. Fires have become unmanageable and burn too intensely. Entire stands and communities burn. More voluminous smoke creates a worse air quality issue than a fire that burns in a healthy forest.
Remember, there was no forest management at all before the early 1900's. Mother nature managed the forests. Look at the pictures and read the accounts. The land was amazing before man started managing it. It has only gotten worse and worse. The blame rests on all Federal and State Foresters (not the wildland firefighters) of the past.
I should note that there is a separation in the Federal Land Management Agencies between the
Foresters and
Firefighters. The Foresters are the biologist with degrees in forestry and recreation. Fire and Aviation Management (FAM) employees, like myself, have rolled our eyes for years at management practice that are dictated by the much higher paid Foresters. We have known for years how and why we get the kind of burning conditions we get and often have a better idea of how things should be. It's like any "Engineer / Blue Collar" dynamic. We have butterfly counters with Bachelor Degrees making 2x's what a firefighter makes. We have a guy fresh out of college telling a Fire Chief with 30 years Wildland fire experience how and when to burn prescribed fires.
For decades the Fire Management Program has relied on seasonal firefighters to help us out in the summer's fighting fire only to get laid off in the winter when all the prescribed fire takes place. We simply have not had the manpower to do as much prescribed fire in the winter and spring as we would like to do. Ask any permanent employee if they slow down in the winter and they often tell you they are busier. At the end of a long "Prescribed Fire" season I often say how I wish Fire Season would hurry up and get here so we could slow down! We are stretched thin and never burn/treat as many acres as we feel adequate or prepare enough fuel breaks.
Budget and pay are huge factors. The Foresters have gotten used to making due with inadequate budgets to correct the problem. A huge issue is letting go of half our workforce for the winter. We need 100% staffing all year to transition from fighting wildfires in the summer to burning prescribed fires in the winter. We also need better pay. People are leaving in droves to go to municipal firefighting jobs, State jobs like CalFire, or leaving the industry all together.
Our job is classed through Office of Personnel Management as 0462 - Forestry Technician. A Federal structure Firefighter is 0081 and they are akin to municipal firefighters. OPM finds equivalent civilian paying jobs and sets the payscale for a government job. Reason dictates that a 0081 - Firefighter gets paid as a city firefighter does. They drive red trucks and fight structure fires (rarely). 0462 - Forestry Technicians literally gets the equivalent wages of a landscaper yet we fight way more fire than a 0081 - Firefighter in more hazardous and remote conditions. If there is one good thing in the mega infrastructure bill it is a job series change for us Wildland Firefighters. The Forest Service has finally recognized that they are bleeding experienced staff and must pay and retain more firefighters. Entry level Federal Wildland Firefighter pay is less than minimum wage in California, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.
Over the past 5 years the Federal Land Management Agencies have come around to doing more prescribed fire and treating more land. There has been a huge focus on it but the problem is so enormous with so much land and only 1/2 the workforce on hand when we can finally get good windows in the weather (winter). It takes the public a long time to see a benefit. Also, most forest homes are surrounded by State managed land and they are even further behind the Federal government on this shift toward doing more prescribed fire. I can relate it to the military: Troops on the ground call for new/fresh equipment or tactics due to conditions on the battlefield. The Generals in charge have to run it through the White House and the Pentagon. When it finally gets analyzed the troops on the ground either get nothing or very little of what they requested. The war is fought from the top and decisions are
not allowed to be made by those with the most knowledge of the situation.
