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Thursday, October 7, 2004

Guest View: Treat National Forest With Respect

By Bryan Bird

    As a longtime careful observer of activities on the Cibola National Forest, I was very disappointed to see the seriously flawed Guest View by Ann Adams (Mountain View Telegraph, Sept. 23).
    In this era of tumultuous forest conditions and humans moving into the forest interface in record numbers, a knowledgeable and honest dialogue is critical.
    The Forest Service recently announced that it will initiate the first "Healthy Forest Restoration Act" project in the Manzano Mountains. The Tajique Project would manipulate forests through logging and prescribed burning on 17,000 acres and would include nearly 30 miles of new road construction. Citizens will have no opportunity to propose different approaches nor see the impacts of other alternatives under the new law.
    Adams suggests that the use of cattle and logging are preferable to prescribed fire. This is a position that is entirely informed by emotion rather than science. This dialogue will be too important to base on opinions; it must be based on the best available science.
    Certainly, fire can have negative impacts, but in a forest ecosystem that evolved with fire and relies on fire for many of its characteristics, those slight negatives are outweighed by its positive effects. Southwestern forests cannot be "healthy" without some degree of prescribed or natural fire; some have said fire is to western conifer forests as rain is to tropical rainforests. We have the capability to protect homes (Forest Service science supports this) and burn in a season when air quality can be controlled.
    Fire can be problematic for soils and water quality when it burns under catastrophic conditions, but assuming that those conditions always exist is indefensible. Most fires burn in a "mosaic" pattern where effects are severe in some spots and even unburned in others, with a spectrum in between. If prescribed fire is conducted carefully and under the right conditions, especially with home protection measures in place, very few negative impacts will result and the forest will be better prepared for the next, inevitable fire.
    On the other hand, the Tajique HFRA Project will build nearly 30 miles of roads using heavy equipment for logging access. The science is very clear on the impacts of crisscrossing forests with miles of roads, especially in watersheds that supply critical water. There can be almost no justification for these impacts in a system that is already on the verge of collapse.
    These forests deserve a light touch, not heavy-handed management from the past.
    Rather than build roads and re-initiate all of the problems associated with grazing cows (e.g. the suppression of grasses and forbs that, when allowed to grow, keep thickets of pine seedlings at bay, hold soils in place and maintain ground-clearing fires), the Forest Service should employ local people to clear around homes and prepare more remote forests for beneficial prescribed burning. Now is not the time to resurrect the very same practices that brought our Southwestern forests into such dangerous conditions; these lessons have already been learned. We should use the very best science and techniques to re-introduce natural processes that keep our forests in a state of natural balance.
    Bryan Bird works with the Sierra Club's National Forest Protection and Restoration Campaign in Santa Fe.