Changes to federal policy are needed to foster forest resiliency in the West

Western North American forests have had a long-standing relationship with fire. Wildfires were raging in the West long before humans arrived, and many plants and animals in these forests have evolved in ways that depend on fire. The ecological disturbances caused by these events are vital for vegetation regeneration, invasive species control and maintenance of soil fertility.

Forest fires are an ecological necessity, but they are getting more frequent and intense. While climate change and increasing occurrences of human ignition are contributing factors, poor fire management practices, particularly at the federal level, are exacerbating this problem.

Specifically, the West’s “fire regimes,” or the characterization of fire behavior that prevails in an area over long periods of time, are rapidly diverting from that of historical fire regimes. When determining fire regimes, fire frequency, severity and extent are considered, among other factors.

Since the 1980s, land area burned in seasonally dry Western forests has been increasing. Since the 2000s, land area burned in seasonally moist and cold forests also has been increasing. Even some of the most naturally resilient trees, like giant sequoias, are becoming victims of wildfire at unprecedented rates.

It is generally agreed that the fostering of forest resilience is a foundational component of sustainable forest management. But today, federal policy fails to prioritize this objective. For example, among the goals the U.S. Forest Service is tasked with, the fostering of forest resilience has very low legal salience and is not emphasized in any statutes that guide USFS decision-making.

Forest management policy has also failed due to its prioritization of fire exclusion and suppression. Fire exclusion practices aim to deliberately eliminate fire — both natural and anthropogenic — from a landscape. Fire suppression efforts, like the select cutting of large, old, early seral tree species can meet short-term demands, but consequences are often observed in the long run.

According to Lenya Quinn-Davidson, fire advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension, ecosystems that have intact fire regimes and do not have a history of fire exclusion are consistently more resilient to the effects of climate change compared to those that do have histories of fire exclusion.

Three alterations should be made to federal forest management policy to better adapt Western forests to changing fire regimes:

First, forest resilience should be prioritized over short-term fire suppression efforts in federal policy, specifically in the USFS’s proceedings. Future benefits of forest resilience should not be heavily discounted in federal cost-benefit analyses.

Next, forest management authority should be offset to local entities whenever possible. This can be done through the involvement of interagency teams and through the incorporation of advice from local counsel regarding federal management plans.

Lastly, federal policy should foster a refined fire research agenda, so that forest behavior can be better understood, even as it changes with climatic conditions. There is a lack of cross-applicability between prescribed and wildfire research and utilizing datafrom prescribed fire science to understand wildfire could result in misinformed political decisions.

Interactions between wildfire disturbances and forest ecosystems are highly complex and constantly evolving. No-action alternatives might be tempting in light of constantly changing climatic factors, but if forest resilience is not upheld in today’s federal policy, America’s forests might eventually reach a threshold in which they fail to regenerate after fire events.

The need for ongoing research on wildfire, the involvement of local councils in forest management, in addition to the development of federal policy that prioritizes forest resilience over short-term demands, is essential to maintain Western North American forest health, especially amidst a warming climate.

Arianna Drechsler is a fire ecology research technician in Willamette National Forest. She is a student at Marquette University and member of the American Conservation Coalition.

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This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Three ways to improve federal forest fire management practices in West