Fire Season:  The Real Costs of Fires (Part 3)

The 2012 wildfire season in the U.S. is largely a fading memory.  That is unless you live or work in one of the forests that fell victim to one of the worst fire seasons in years.  In parts 1 and 2 of this series we looked at those men and women who help protect our forests and how a changing climate is driving losses at an ever escalating pace. 

What Does a Forest Fire Cost?
The USDA Forest Service, the nation's lead on forest fires, spends approximately $2 billion (that's BILLION) annually on forest fire suppression. Total costs are approaching one-half of the agency's entire budget.  But, that's just part of the story.

In a 2010 report entitled "The True Cost of Wildfire in the Western U.S.," the writers reference research that suggests that the real cost of a fire is two-to-thirty times the cost of suppression.  So, using this year as an example, the true cost of wildfire losses in the U.S. was somewhere between $4 and $60 billion!

What's Included in Those Costs?
In addition to suppression to account for the total costs of a forest fire one must take into account the direct loss of forest value, the costs of rehabilitation (planting is just a tiny part), structural property losses and things like loss of wilderness values, impacts to water, and increases in health care costs such as treatment of asthma.  Before you jump to the conclusion that such costs are just imaginary, one recent fire near Denver, Colorado, carried with it $150 million in direct costs to cleanup damage to the city's water supply.  Clean water is in the words of the credit card commerical, "priceless."

Using these figures as guides we can see that the modest costs of "fireproofing our forests" with forest restoration/thinning efforts and use of controlled burns yields a very high return.  That said, it is often difficult to get convince society to invest money to avoid a problem.  Yet, once that problem has occurred, we have no choice and we just find a way to pay for the fix. 

As the old Fram oil filter commercial said, "You can pay me now or pay me later."  The costs to America's forests and all associated with them are just too precious to wait for the inevitable.

Carlton N. Owen

Fire Season: All Fires Are Not Created Equally – Part 2

“Fire season worst in decades.”  “Disastrous (Bastrop) wildfire, worst in Texas history.”  These headlines, similar to ones that might have appeared in the 1870s to 1920s, are actually from 2011-2012.  What’s going on?

Taking a look at some of the largest single fires in U.S. history – for instance in years when a total of more than 20 million acres burned -- some individual fires charred between 3 and 4 million acres.  We know that many or those larger fires were in areas that had been heavily cut-over.  That’s still a lot of acres.  But, clearly losing an acre of cut-over land isn’t the same as an acre of old growth forest – whether one considers ecological or economic loss.

If you are having difficulty imaging 20 million acres, look at a U.S. map.  The States of South Carolina and Maine each have about 20 million acres of land.

Acres Lost are Growing, Again
The longest running campaign in Ad Council history, Smokey Bear and his well-known warning, "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires," was introduced in 1944.  And it worked!  The Smokey website notes that “the Forest Fire Prevention campaign helped reduce the number of acres lost annually from 22 million to 8.4 million (in 2000).” The sad part in that true statement is that 8.4 million acres is well above the average of preceding decades.  

The point we are straining to make is that the total acres burned – whether the fires are in shrub habitats or forests – after several decades of “relatively” small losses, are getting bigger every decade.  For instance, the average wild-land acreage lost to wildfires in the 1980s was just over 2.5 million acres.  That grew by another million acres in the 1990s.  But, astonishingly, in an era of increased detection and firefighting tools, the first decade of the 2000s saw that number nearly double to more than 6 million acres -- with some years approaching 10 million!  

Right Message for the Right Time
Responding to the massive outbreak of wildfires in 2000, the Smokey campaign changed its focus to wildfires and the slogan to "Only You Can Prevent Wildfires."   Even Smokey had to acknowledge that in fire-based ecosystems like much of America’s western and southern forests, all fires aren’t created equally. 

Forestry and Its Seasons: Fire Season Part 1

We have all kinds of seasons.  As fall approaches, it’s football season.  There’s allergy season, the holiday season, and the Four Seasons – both those aligned with the calendar and of Frankie Valli fame.  Forestry has its seasons as well.  There’s the planting season, the growing season, and in the northern U.S. the infamous “mud” season.  Then there’s the one that gets the most media attention and that is all-too-sadly growing -- fire season.

From pine forests of the coastal southeast to the dry forests of the inland mountain west and the desert southwest, fires just like wind throw, floods, and bugs, are part of the normal forest cycle.  In fact forest firers occur naturally on every continent except Antarctica.  What isn’t so normal about the cycles that we’ve seen for the last few years and perhaps that serve as harbingers of the future is the size and intensity of fires in the U.S. and Canada.

Primary Causes of Wildfires
Most fires are started by natural causes – especially lightning.  However, fires escaping from open trash burning or a tossed cigarette aren’t rare enough.  Even more devastating are those fires which are intentionally set.  In fact, both in the 1940s and even more recently there have been documented attempts by Axis member Japan to Al-Qaeda who have attempted to use forest fires to drive disruption and fear.

Changing Times
Climate:  While wild-land forest fires have always packed a devastating punch, several factors are combining to make things even worse.  Whether you believe in the scientific reality of climate change – natural, human induced, or a combination of effects – there is little argument that weather patterns have shifted.  Many areas are experiencing droughts and little snow pack, leading to drier forests and more intense fires when they do come.

Bugs:  Insects and diseases are another very notable cause.  Perhaps none eclipse the native Mountain pine beetle and the 48 million acres of dead and dying trees across the western states.  These dead trees are ready-made for fires.

Unnatural Conditions:  The Endowment focuses all of its activity in “working forests.”  In short, we don’t “do” wilderness and we aren’t funding short-rotation woody agriculture.  Those working forests – what most folks would view as “natural” forests whether planted or naturally regenerating – depending on the species and location, have certain norms that make them more-or-less fire resistant.  Using the theory that one picture is worth a thousand words – here’s a string of three pictures that we think is worth millions of words.

This series of photos was taken of exactly the same spot on the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana by the USDA Forest Service.  Starting on the left (1909) after a harvest in an area where fire had been excluded since 1895.  The Second is in 1948 and the final in 2004.  Note the changes in vegetation.  If fire passed through the stand on the left it would have done little damage.  The one in the middle would have experienced some loss but many larger trees would have survived.  However, the current stand which is exemplary of all-too-many of America’s forests today in fire-prone areas would surely be a total loss.

Carlton N. Owen

Land Stewards and Their Helpers

What do 15,000 folks in Hawaii have in common with more than 686,000 in New York?  They are owners of a piece of America’s forest.

Earlier this week I received a copy of the USDA Forest Service’s State and Private Forestry Annual Report – April 2012.  It was accompanied by a much longer Appendix comprised of State and Territorial fact sheets.  Receiving  this in the midst of the now full-blown race for the White House , and all of the sound bites about “too much” or “too little” government, got me to thinking about the men and women who own America’s forests and those who help them tend it.

Who Owns America’s Forests
We are indeed one of the most blessed nations on the planet.  Parts of those blessings arise from the fact that one-third of our expansive land is blanketed with tree cover!  And, not too far down the list of blessings comes in the fact that all 308 million of us as American’s own a part of that forest heritage whether it be held in trust in National Forests, state forests, parks or other public lands. 

The part of this picture that too many of us take for granted is that the largest slice of that “forest pie” is not owned by us individually nor collectively, rather, some 35% of that forestland –some 251 million acres – is held by families and individuals.  And a lot of them … nearly 11 million owners.

In our system of government they clearly “own” the trees and the land.  Yet, there are many public benefits that accrue to us all without our direct engagement either in the form of payment or responsibility.  Those private forests help clean our air, filter and provide our drinking water, and serve as homes to a vast array of wildlife.

Managing a Forest Takes a Village
Harkening back to another line from yet another Presidential campaign, I recall the one that served to once again divide us when Hillary Clinton published her book, “It takes a Village.”  This borrowed line from an African proverb about the impact that all in a community have in helping to raise a child, has similar implications when we think about forests.

Yes, clearly the landowner carries a heavier responsibility and burden than do others (just as do parents).  Yet, few landowners walk that road alone (again, just as do parents).  Most call on the services of a consulting forester to help them develop and implement a management plan to achieve their objectives.  Few landowners – private or corporate – maintain the necessary firefighting equipment to call upon when disaster threatens.  Nor, do many own their own mills to serve as a market for their raw materials.

Indeed, forest ownership and management is a complicated business.  Among the many blessings we have are the well-trained men and women of the primary federal natural resources agency – the USDA Forest Service – and their state-based compatriots at the forestry commissions and state forestry services that have for decades been there when the fires were raging, the bugs attacking, and after the harvest with seedlings to help start that new forest.

In a time of dumbing-down of very complex issues into one-line sound bites, it is important that we all remember and say a word of appreciation to the men and women who steward America’s private forests and those who help them tend it.  I for one am very thankful for the professionals at the federal and state level who answer that calling in concert with the range of private businesses who help make up the forestry village.

Written by: Carlton Owen

Keeping Forests as Forests While Helping Disadvantaged Families

In the rural south, one of the primary and historic sources of rural African American wealth—land ownership—drains out through land loss, damaging the potential of communities to capture and regenerate wealth.  Within the context of a comprehensive system of landowner support, expanding and improving the practice of sustainable forestry can help plug the land leak by demonstrating the productive capacity of the land, creating new income for landowners, increasing land value, stabilizing land ownership, and slowing the conversion of working forests to development.   That’s the theory behind the Endowment’s newest project – “Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention.”

Ownership Losses Undermine Families
Black farmland ownership peaked in 1910 at 16 to 19 million acres.   By 2007, this number had dropped to 3.3 million acres.  In a very recent indication of the scale of ownership, the Center for Heirs Property Preservation in Charleston, SC mapped 41,000 acres of heir property in the rural counties surrounding them.  Heir property is land with unclear title and complex family ownership due to lack of wills, making it particularly vulnerable to loss.  It is believed that a large percentage of heir property landowners are African American.

Despite dramatic land loss across the rural south, farm and forest land continues to be an important source of African American family wealth, with a total value of $14.3 billion in 1999.  An estimated 43% of Black farmland owners have forestland totaling 1.2 million acres.   About 16% of Black-owned farmland is in forests with the average forestland holding being 43 acres.

Drivers of Change are Many
The causes of under-utilization and involuntary loss of rural African American land are numerous and complex. In addition to fragmented family ownership (heir property), financial pressure from development and consequent rising taxes, failure to maximize potential income from land due to lack of information, limited access to government programs, and lack of credit are contributing factors.

Moreover, support for African American forest owners is fragmented and difficult to access.  Historic discrimination and subsequent lack of trust have resulted in under-utilization of USDA Rural Development, Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), USDA Forest Service (USFS), and state extension forestry programs by African American landowners.  Additionally, nonprofits in the region that do provide support to African American landowners are often very under-resourced and, as a result, lack capacity.  Currently, USDA programs to address past deficiencies in government outreach to minority and limited resource landowners create a particular opportunity for nonprofit/government collaboration.

Best Hope Found in Collaboration
There is a long history of grassroots, nonprofit, and philanthropic involvement in the field of African American land retention and communities and practitioners have made much progress in understanding and addressing African American land loss. Through “Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention,” the Endowment seeks to learn from, leverage, and move forward the work that has been and is being done.

Opening Remarks to the Canada/U.S. Forest Health Summit - Carlton N. Owen - June 28, 2012

I am humbled to be opening this first-ever Canada/U.S. Forest Health Summit and to be a part of this important event with each of you.
 

In terms of notoriety this event may not garner the attention that the 1^st American Forestry Congress did when convened in 1882 in Cincinnati and later that same year in Montreal.  Historians report that it helped galvanize the fledgling forestry community.  That shouldn’t have been too difficult on the U.S. sides as there was only one professional forester in the entire country at the time.

Neither does it rise to the level of interest nor attendance as did last week’s RIO +20 Earth Summit.  Yet, we have high expectations given the people engaged and the stakes at hand.

I know this will be a disappointment to those of you who are used to sessions of this import being conducted bilingually.  My first trip to Canada – Quebec City in the mid-70s -- was my first times to have the privilege of hearing an international leader speak in person.  Prime Minister Brian Mulroney provided the keynote.  For a young forester from rural Mississippi, it was awe inspiring to hear him speak first in sparkling English then to switch flawlessly to flowing French.  As I was moved by the spirit of his second language it dawned on me that he really wasn’t that much ahead of me.   I too am bilingual -- my first language is fluent “southern;” and I speak broken English.

Canada and the U.S. have much in common.  We know the oft-repeated facts about the longest undefended border between any two countries and that 400,000 people and nearly $1.5 billion in trade crosses daily. 

I will not go into the history of my own organization, the first-ever charitable foundation resulting from a trade dispute between our two governments and our respective industries.

Instead I want to focus on a few lesser known facts.  Such as the facts that while our land areas are nearly equal in size, Canada hosts a quarter more forest acres (or hectares).  In honor of the 100^th anniversary of the Calgary Stampede (also being celebrated at the Embassy today), I note that while our population is nearly ten fold that of our neighbor to the north, we are home to nearly 25 times as many horses, mules and asses – something that probably isn’t a surprise to some, but recall, I’m speaking about livestock here.

When taken together our combined area in tree cover represents a swath of rich forests exceeded only by one other country on earth.

In Eric Rutkow’s book American Canopy, from which I’ve borrowed liberally for these remarks, we are reminded that our shared lands are home to:

          The world’s biggest trees – giant sequoias

          The world’s tallest trees – coastal redwoods;

          The world’s oldest trees – bristlecone pines; and

          The biggest single organism on earth – a stand of quaking aspens

He also notes that historian Brooke Hindle observed, we are a “society pervasively conditioned by wood.” 

President Obama in issuing a challenge that rolled out his America’s Great Outdoors Initiative just a few months ago noted the importance of forest and open space conservation.  It is so important that even in the midst of a great war that literally pitted brother against brother, President Abraham Lincoln signed legislation known as “The Yosemite and Big Tree Grant” led to what is today Yosemite National Park.  Ken Burns noted that this morphed into America’s “grand experiment” with National Parks and, I would add, National Forests.

Wood built our respective cities while the advent of cheap pulp from wood in the late 1800’s drove the price of paper down to the point that books, newspapers, and other printed media fired literacy across the populace.

Sterling Morton, the Secretary of the Nebraska Territory a tireless advocate for the first Arbor Day in the then state of Nebraska, noted that “Arbor Day is like no other holiday.  Each of those reposes upon the past, while Arbor Day proposes for the future.  It contemplates, not the good and the beautiful of past generations, but it sketches, outlines, establishes the beautiful for the ages yet to come.”

A statement in a 1914 report of the Pennsylvania Chestnut Blight Commission noted that, “It seems necessary to call sharp attention to the real lesson to be learned form the chestnut blight epidemic –
the necessity of more scientific research upon problems of this character; to be undertaken early enough to be of some value in comprehending, if not controlling, the situation.”

America’s past is replete with Presidents who loved trees and forests.  Note this comment.  “By all accounts, a tree lover of the highest order, a man who spent his free time, in his own words, ‘driving around planting lots of trees’.”  You’ve probably already guessed that it was Roosevelt … the man who for many years listed his profession as “tree-grower” rather than lawyer.  What you might not have guessed is that it was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, not his cousin Teddy for whom we owe so much for his foresight to protect wide swaths of American forests.

In an Earth Day talk, future Illinois Senator Adlai Stevenson II after seeing a photo of Earth taken by Apollo 8, noted, “We have reached for the moon and beyond, and looking back through space we have been confronted by the insignificance of the planet that sustains us.”  Political lines disappear in space.

We have made much progress in the Century past that saw forests go from things to be cleared to precious resources to be protected.  Yet, climate change threatens to undermine in a few short years what it took a Century of human progress to advance.  Wildfire is reaching levels not seen in a hundred years and tree mortality rates have doubled.

In the survey of collaborative works on forests and forestry going on between our two countries done in prep for this summit perhaps the most telling aspect is just how much cooperation and collaboration is going on without a formal strategy or top down direction.  In fact the results of that review suggested that our respective scientists do it because they can, rather than because they need to.

I’d offer that it is only at your respective levels of leadership when considering all of the information, all of the challenges, and all of the opportunities, that we can come to the conclusion that we can’t afford to wait any longer to look for ways to build on that strong foundation for even grander achievements.  Clearly the “we need to” is there.

The closing sentences from American Canopy are as follows: “The nation” -- and I would posit, the continent – “tends to rediscover its tree resources only in periods of catastrophe.  The rest of the time many of us motor along with indifference, leaving the issue to the government, corporations, and the permanent environmental movement.  But this is a risky approach.  America’s forests and trees” – and the continent’s – “are more necessary now than ever.”

We’ve purposely chosen to take a modest step with this convening by intentionally limiting the discussion to forest health – a challenge that we share.  That’s not to say that we can’t do even more, rather, we must make a good start.  The forest health crisis that is, in and of itself, big enough.

We are a continent that is indeed blessed with rich and diverse forests.  They are the source of the greenest of building products, life-giving water, abundant wildlife, the source of recreation that leads to spiritual re-creation, and so much more.  If we cannot sustain those forests in healthy and productive condition, what we will have lost is irreplaceable.

Those of us who are forest scientists or scientist of any ilk, are usually very good at telling others what we do and how we do it.  Studies tell us this helps us connect with people’s rational side.  Yet, Simon Sinek in his book, Start with Why, notes that the deepest connections come not as a result of the rational brain; rather, the emotional one.  That’s something that we a scientist don’t want to hear.  He notes that people don’t buy what we do or how we do it until they understand why we do what we do.  Among our many challenges over the day ahead will be to ensure that we don’t fall prey to spending all of our time on the “what and how” and rush past the “why”!

As we begin our day together it will help if we have a few – but very few -- ground rules.

First, this is your time.  We ask you to be present and engage deeply for the future of North America’s forests.

Second, let’s make few assumptions.  It will do us little good to spend our time thinking of the world the way the economist did when he was shipwrecked on a deserted island with only a case of canned beans.  The economist first assumed that he had a can opener.  My admonition to us all is to operate within the realm as we currently know it – with current policy and financial realities – and not to assume a better political climate or unlimited sources of new funds. 

-Carlton Owen

Collaboration vs. Conflict

For decades the driving questions have been… “Jobs or environment?”  “Protection or degradation?”  Are those really the only choices?  Is the courtroom the only place one can go for answers?

More and more thinking people – both those who would label themselves first as business people or those who prefer the tag of environmentalist – are finding that the old ways just don’t work.  Our problems are too complex, the trade-offs too costly, and the win-lose just doesn’t cut the mustard.

Since its inception a mere five-plus years ago, the Endowment has sought the path of bringing together the brightest minds from a variety of perspectives to look for shared values and interests that will lead to collaboration, positive action, and results. 

Forest Conservation; Forest Health; and Water
It’s at the core of our work in the forest policy arena as displayed in the more than three-dozen organizations that comprise the Partnership for Southern Forestland Conservation who are working together to advance solutions to maintain landscape scale areas in working forests; it’s front and center in the work of the Forest Health Initiative where genetic scientists, conservation leaders, and public policy officials are considering the potential of modern biotechnology bound by common concern about the exploding impacts of pests and diseases as manifest in millions of acres of dying forests; and, it’s at the epicenter of our work in linking water consumers (all of us) with the source of our life-sustaining water – upstream forests and those who own and manage them.

Views from an Environmental Oracle
In a recent speech that accompanied his acceptance of an award from one of our partners in developing the National Conservation Easement Database – NatureServe – Bill Ruckelshaus encourages collaborative decision-making as we confront the ever-present and ever-evolving challenges of balancing environmental health and public freedoms.  Ruckelshaus, at nearly 80, has been at the forefront of America’s navigation of environmental regulations both in establishing them and having to implement them (having served as EPA’s 1^st and 5^th Administrator; and, working in private business with Weyerhaeuser Company) and is among the nation’s deepest thinkers on the topic. 

“We’ve got to try…a new approach to problem-solving, … [one that] relies on a resurgence of civic virtue and the resulting collaborative decision-making processes. … When you see two principals shaking hands … and everybody else is watching them do that, it’s like something magic has occurred. Instead of fighting each other, they’ve decided to work together. And that’s when progress starts.”

—Bill Ruckelshaus

To view the video … http://connect.natureserve.org/BWB2012/AwardPresentation

Timing Hints: Peter Goldmark’s intro:  0:22-7:22; Mary Klein’s remarks:   7:34-15:36; Bill Ruckelshaus:  16:33-46:43