海角大神

What should wildfire prevention look like? Three experts urge action.

Summer in California has burst into flames yet again. Some 600 wildfires have scorched more than 1 million acres of land over the past two weeks, forcing the evacuation of an estimated 120,000 people and destroying in excess of 1,000 homes and other structures. The cataclysm of infernos 鈥� sparked in many areas by dry-lightning strikes 鈥� has killed seven people and inflicted an untold toll on livestock and wildlife.

In recent years, the spectacle of burning landscapes and ash-smeared skies has attained a harrowing familiarity for Californians, with fires torching chaparral shrublands in Southern California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, and mountain forests in the Sierra Nevada. A confluence of factors has wrought a perennial menace, including overgrown forests and grasslands, climate change and drought, aging utility grids, and increased development in wildlands.

To better understand the recurring crisis, the Monitor spoke with a trio of wildfire researchers: Lenya Quinn-Davidson, a fire area adviser with the University of California system and director of the Northern California Prescribed Fire Council; Bill Stewart, co-director of Berkeley Forests at the University of California, Berkeley; and Marti Witter, a fire ecologist with the National Park Service based in Southern California.

They discussed the merits and drawbacks of various approaches 鈥� prescribed fire, thinning, natural burning 鈥� to reduce the dead trees and other fuels that feed wildfires; prevention strategies that federal, state, and private land managers should enact; and potential long-range solutions for limiting wildfire destruction. Interviews have been edited and condensed.

Q: Beyond widely accepted reasons for wildfires growing in size, severity, and frequency, why hasn鈥檛 California made more progress in slowing the trend?

Ms. Quinn-Davidson: Our fire management and our land management haven鈥檛 kept pace with the scientific understanding we have of fire in California. There鈥檚 this fear of active land management 鈥� prescribed burning, thinning 鈥� that sometimes gets in the way of us making good choices. If we鈥檙e not protecting the resources we care about and we鈥檙e not taking action, then we will continue to lose them to big fires.

Mr. Stewart: Many of the fires around the greater Bay Area are in areas that didn鈥檛 burn 30 years ago because they were cattle ranches. They had cattle on them, and that helped reduce fuels. Now those areas have turned into parks or 5- and 10-acre residential lots. So much development has been about what鈥檚 aesthetically pleasing, so we鈥檝e ended up with a landscape that, during hot and dry seasons, there鈥檚 a lot more fuel and it becomes a much riskier situation.

Ms. Witter: One thing that鈥檚 underappreciated is how much fires are driven 鈥� and this is true nationwide 鈥� by human ignitions and human activity.聽Lightning-driven ignitions [that cause widespread destruction] are much more uncommon.聽There has been very little serious attention paid to prevention of fires caused and sustained by human activity.

Q: The state has upped its efforts to reduce forest overgrowth. Does there need to be even more of that? Can that help with controlling wildfire and restoring forest health?

Ms. Witter: The state thinks that if they do enough fuels projects, it鈥檒l solve the problem. But in those systems that need fire to remain healthy, you鈥檒l never reach the target levels [of fuel reduction] using prescribed fire because the areas are too big. That means you have to let a lot more natural fires burn and monitor them. But that鈥檚 always so controversial. The fire agencies say, 鈥淵up, let that one burn,鈥� and then people鈥檚 homes or forests get damaged, and the agencies are held liable.

Ms. Quinn-Davidson: We need to be thinking about active forest management with prescribed fire and thinning, and deploying those in strategic ways that allow us to leverage natural wildfires on the bigger landscape level. We know we鈥檙e not going to be able to thin or prescribe burn all the area that needs it, so we need to be able to use wildfire to do some of that work for us.

Q: The federal government owns more than half of California鈥檚 聽of forest land and has been less aggressive about fuel reduction. Is that contributing to the state鈥檚 problems?

Mr. Stewart: There are national parks in California 鈥� Yosemite and Sequoia 鈥� that have had stable fire management practices since the 鈥�60s. They still have big wildfires, but they reintroduced prescribed fire over time and brought some resilience back to their forests. They鈥檝e made the landscape more of a mosaic so there isn鈥檛 continuous fuel in every direction. The [U.S.] Forest Service and federal wilderness areas have not achieved that. They鈥檙e still a problem. They have to reintegrate fuel treatments with forest management, but they say, 鈥淲e鈥檙e not sure we can do that because someone is going to yell at us.鈥� We鈥檙e still fighting the timber wars in the West.

Ms. Witter: I don鈥檛 often go to fire and fuels management conferences. But when I do, I鈥檓 struck by how frustrated everyone is at their inability to get work done [due to bureaucratic hurdles]. Even people who just want to put prescribed fire on brown dirt to manage wildfires are totally inhibited in doing what they need to do.

Q: Part of California鈥檚 challenge is that most of its fire prevention resources go toward putting out fires. Is there more that local communities could be doing to share the burden as far as treating land and fuel reduction?

Ms. Quinn-Davidson: I find that a lot of the state fire management agencies like Cal Fire [California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection]聽and some of the federal agencies 鈥� there鈥檚 an attitude that the public is a problem. We need to move beyond that. I work with a lot of community members and private landowners, and there鈥檚 a pretty strong desire for more prescribed fire, more thinning, more work on fire. People want to be involved and want to understand what they can do so they鈥檙e not sitting around waiting for Cal Fire or the Forest Service to take care of the problem.

Ms. Witter: A lot of the state and federal people are overwhelmed and overworked by fighting fires. With prevention, you have to be on the ground all the time. It has to be people in the community who are there and able to carry through the work that needs to be done.

Q: There isn鈥檛 always agreement among federal, state, and private land managers about how to lower fire risks, which often leads to inaction. How can that be changed?

Mr. Stewart: Part of the issue with trying to have more coordination is saying, 鈥淲e鈥檙e going to have one grand plan everywhere.鈥� But the approach that works in one part of the state doesn鈥檛 necessarily work in others. So what we need is to try different approaches and see what works. Experimentation on a grand scale is really needed on public lands because if everybody keeps waiting until we agree on one plan, nothing will change.

Ms. Quinn-Davidson: We need more coordination because we lack a shared vision of how we鈥檙e going to live with fire. We know it鈥檚 not going away. So we need public agencies, communities, Native American tribes, private landowners 鈥� everybody has to be involved. We really need to aspire to get to that place where there isn鈥檛 this division between experts and the public, where we鈥檙e all kind of one fire-adapted culture.

Q: The era of megafires in California has been decades in the making. How can public agencies begin to counter that over the next few years?

Ms. Quinn-Davidson: We need to create a more robust and sustainable fire workforce. Right now, they鈥檙e so beat down at the end of fire season 鈥� especially as fire season is getting longer in California 鈥� that there鈥檚 basically no capacity the rest of the year to do any of the proactive stuff we need to be doing. So we need to create more jobs, and those jobs need to be dedicated to fire management and land management.

Mr. Stewart: We鈥檝e been trying to convince the Forest Service to look at what the does, which is combine fuels management with timber harvesting to produce revenue. Right now, the Forest Service is afraid to generate revenue and reinvest it because they鈥檙e not supposed to produce profits off public lands. But that鈥檚 their challenge, because at this rate, they鈥檙e never going to treat more than a hundred acres a year.

Ms. Witter: There are all kinds of prevention plans. We don鈥檛 need more prevention plans. We need prevention action.