Forestry Experts Say Trump's Idea to Weaponize Wildfire Resiliency a "Myth'

Last month when U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced plans to continue the USDA’s efforts to rescind the agency’s 2001 Roadless Rule, she claimed to be doing so in order “to protect America’s forests and communities from devastating destruction from fires.”

“For nearly 25 years, the Roadless Rule has frustrated land managers and served as a barrier to action — prohibiting road construction, which has limited wildfire suppression and active forest management,” Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said in a press release. “The forests we know today … are dangerously overstocked and increasingly threatened by drought, mortality, insect-borne disease, and wildfire.”

Yet many professionals familiar with the rule say that its rescission will do just the opposite. It’s part of an ongoing trend, they say, to weaponize “wildfire resiliency” as a cudgel to advance an agenda that will do the opposite — empower extractive industry under the auspices that increased logging activity will decrease fuel for wildfires.

They say that a vision for federally managed lands completely circumscribed by roads that allow for total fire suppression is a “myth,” one that will ultimately exacerbate wildfires.

Timber production

In April, Rollins declared an “Emergency Situation Determination” on 112.6 million acres of National Forest System lands, directly tying that ostensible emergency to a March 1 executive order calling for “immediate expansion of American timber production.”

“Our inability to fully exploit our domestic timber supply has impeded the creation of jobs and prosperity (and) contributed to wildfire disasters,” that order stated. It directs departments of Interior, Commerce and Agriculture — through agencies such as the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service — to expand and expedite timber production on virtually all federally managed lands.

“This is kind of new and unprecedented in just the scale, in its application,” Tom Wheeler, executive director of EPIC, told the Times-Standard in April. “Before, it was looking at the specifics of a particular area and whether it warranted bypassing ordinary environmental law. Here, what they’ve done is they’ve just declared … everything to be part of an emergency.”

Wheeler characterized the emergency declaration as “six pages that work to undo thousands of pages of federal laws and regulations.”

Garrett Rose with the Natural Resource Defense Council said that “if realized, these actions will pollute watersheds, increase wildfire impacts on communities, worsen air quality, and degrade forest ecosystems, all while further isolating the United States from more sustainability-oriented global markets and undermining the country’s status as a global leader.”

In May, Rollins doubled down on rhetoric that likened timber harvest to wildfire fuels reduction, saying, “Our nation is blessed with an abundance of resources and there is no reason we cannot responsibly harvest and use these products right here at home” and claiming to be “delivering on our commitment to protect communities, make forests healthier and more resilient” by complying with the executive order.

Klamath National Forest fires

One area that is currently experiencing several large-scale wildfires is the Klamath National Forest. The 1.73-million-acre span of forest — which runs throughout much of Siskiyou County extending into southern Oregon — is, as of Friday, host to the 2,600-acre Blue Fire, the 970-acre Log Fire and a portion of the 9,700-acre Dillon Fire (though that fire is primarily located in the adjacent Six Rivers National Forest).

The Log Fire, which sits on the southwest extremity of the Klamath National Forest near the Marble Mountain Wilderness, has expanded to 970-acres as of Sept. 5. (USFS/Contributed)

Were one to believe the rhetoric of the Trump administration, it might follow that the forest needs more roads and more timber operations to create fire breaks. That doesn’t comport with the actuality of the situation, though, according to experts in the region.

Will Harling, restoration director with the Mid Klamath Watershed Council, told the Times-Standard that the idea of establishing roads and fire breaks throughout every part of the nation’s public lands was not only unrealistic, it would ultimately likely be disastrous for wildfire prevention.

“That whole philosophy that if we had every inch of this ground roaded, we could put out every fire and keep fire out of here, it’s a myth,” Harling said.

Particularly in mountainous regions like the Klamath National Forest, Harling said, increasing timber extraction is unlikely to halt the emergence of large megafires. Likewise, Harling said, fast-moving fires are rarely held on mid-slope roads (which are themselves a significant vector for starting fires), and timber extraction schedules timed to maximize the marketability of timber could further delay prescribed fire treatments that are proven to actually stop wildfires when done at scale.

“There’s no way we’re gonna log our way out of our fire problem in the Klamath Mountains,” said Harling. “I think roughly 30% of our landscape is even potentially accessible via roads and equipment. The whole philosophy that early fire response and detecting fires rapidly and then jumping on them and putting them out at a very small acreage is fundamentally flawed, for every battle we win ensures we lose the war. We put out wildfires effectively when conditions are mild and would likely have mostly beneficial effects, saving those fuels to burn in uncontrollable fires in the heat of summer.”

Harling noted that frequent fires on the ground, particularly in densely forested, inaccessible areas like the Klamath Mountains, have historically been key in preventing megafires from developing. He pointed to fires in the Marble Mountain Wilderness in the Wooley Creek drainage where “fire-on-fire interactions” have broken up the spread of wildfires during extreme fire weather.

Firefighters on the Dillon Fire worked to combat extreme fire behavior last Tuesday with temperatures in excess of 100 degrees and gusty dry thunderstorms materializing in the evening. ( Bart Kicklighter/Contributed by Six Rivers National Forest)

Natural resource agencies gutted

At the same time that the Trump administration purports to be expanding timber production on public lands to advance a wildfire resiliency agenda, the administration has been actively working to reduce the labor force that manages forests and combats wildfires.

“We’re seeing a purging of diversity within these agencies, and a lot of the legacy of land knowledge is being lost as people accept deferred retirements … and (are) replaced by people whose main skill is they’re willing to follow orders from higher-ups regardless of whether it benefits the community or the land,” Harling said. “The same thing we’re seeing in the higher levels of D.C. government is also happening within our land management agencies.”

A news release from California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office in June claimed that, as a result of Department of Government Efficiency-led cuts, “USFS has already lost 10% of all positions and 25% of positions outside of direct wildfire suppression, and a reorganization proposal to be announced soon is likely to include significant additional reductions.”

Reporting by trade news outlet Government Executive noted that roughly 5,000 USFS employees had accepted buyout offers this year, and noted that the forest service temporarily waived a cap on the amount of time temporary workers could work this August, an unusual move that could signal desperation.

“They’re recognizing that ‘we don’t have the staffing that we thought we did’ and they’re trying to get ahead of a possible trainwreck,” former USFS operations section chief Bobbie Scopa told Government Executive.

Megafires and climate change

“There’s a real sense in which the very real crisis of mega fires, which is very much a consequence of climate change — it’s just absolutely indisputable on the science that higher temperatures and lower precipitation are driving larger wildfires — they’re driving an earlier start to the season and a later end of the season,” Scott Greacen, conservation director at Friends of the Eel River, told the Times-Standard in August. “Notwithstanding all that, there’s a real sense in which the timber industry and their allies in the Republican administrations we’ve had for the last several years have used wildfire as a pretext to do the kind of development they would already prefer to do.”

“They’ve at least made representations that their intent is to dramatically increase the timber production on American public lands,” Greacen added. “We’ve heard the same rhetoric before, but you know, there are a lot of ways in which this administration is doing things that the far right and the right have been proclaiming their intention to do for a long time. And a lot of people kind of didn’t take them seriously after a while because they seemed so out of touch with reality, but here they are doing it.”