It's past time to get serious about wildfires

By Ellen Engstedt-Simpson
Montana Wood Products Association

Last Monday the Montana Legislature's Fire Suppression Interim Committee conducted a public meeting in Hamilton. The committee will travel to Lewistown, Miles City, Seeley Lake, Thompson Falls, and Libby in the coming weeks for similar public meetings to gather input from Montanans regarding wildfires and their impact on us.

The Legislature during a September 2007 Special Session established this committee and mandated the study to include an investigation of firefighting operations on all Montana lands and the success of those operations; efficient use of fire suppression resources; impacts of operations on private land and the effective use of private resources to fight fires; and, policies of state and federal forest management and how those policies may contribute to an increased number of wildfires, greater safety risk to firefighters, or compromised effectiveness of fire suppression efforts.

As exhibited at its Hamilton meeting, committee members clearly are interested in not only the specific charges of the study, but in finding solutions to the growing problem of catastrophic wildfires and the risk placed on the lives of our citizens. Further, the legislators understand the importance of Montana's wood products infrastructure as a component to solving the huge problem of overstocked and sick forests contributing to the massive fires. However, they understand too that the problem lies largely on federal forest lands and the inability of those land managers to act in a timely manner in order to treat the ground either before or after a wildfire sweeps through.

One of the presentations to the committee was the fact that the most effective way to treat the land is with large landscape projects usually containing a watershed that provides drinking water to communities. Those who preach that thinning should only take place around structures fail to understand that there is a need to move farther away from the wildland urban interface because there are resources outside those areas that must be healthy in order to provide clean water and safe wildlife habitat. The homes of the critters should be protected along with the homes of the humans living in the forest land.

There are other ramifications to Montana and our citizens because of the catastrophic wildfires that grow larger and hotter with each passing season. The State of Montana is currently attempting to justify to the Environmental Protection Agency why the state's ambient air quality monitoring data collected from June through September 2007 exceeded the EPA standards. There are no events other than the extreme wildfires experienced over that four-month period that could have caused the unhealthy condition of the air we all breathed last summer. This was made abundantly clear when health alerts were issued repeatedly cautioning those with respiratory problems, the elderly, and small children to stay indoors. What a terrible way to spend summer in Montana!

A study conducted by Dr. Thomas Bonnicksen, a professor emeritus of forest science and a former department head at Texas A&M University, estimates approximately 59 tons of carbon per acre is created in a fire of the magnitude we currently experience. Using the 800,000 acres of forest land lost in Montana during 2007, but not counting another 150,000 acres of grassland lost, the estimate for CO2 pumped into the air in Montana pencils out to 47 million tons. Unfortunately, the carbon dioxide from the trees burning is not the only source of pollution. If the trees are not removed and new seedlings planted, the dead and down material will continue to rot and put even more CO2 into the air for as much as 50 years.

Those who say fire is natural and we simply have to live with smoke gagging us each year are grossly wrong-headed. With active forest management we can reduce the fuel loads and make the forests safe again. Catastrophic wildfire was not a frequent occurrence in Montana's historic forests and it should not be frequent now. The type of fire historically was a cleansing of the forest floor with low on the ground burning at a slow pace, not crown fires with 300-foot flames covering hundreds of thousands of acres and burning hot enough to sterilize the soil for many generations to come.

It is way past time for citizens to rise up and say we have had enough of the destruction to our forests and risk to our very lives. Hopefully, the Montana Legislature and its interim committee will hear what the citizens are saying and will develop solutions to put our state back on track with active management of not only state and private land but also the sick federal forests.