Editor's Column

Guest Columns

Notes From All Over

By: Todd A. Salberg

The Hazel Fuels Reduction Project on the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation in Northwest California provides an example of how tribal communities are using National Fire Plan funding to reduce hazardous fuels and restore tribal lands degraded by a century of fire suppression and commodity based forest management. Fire exclusion has eliminated the fire adapted vegetation communities that where created by pre-European Indian management. Without active management, the healthy productive forests encountered by early European settlers have been replaced by overcrowded fire prone stands. Fortunately, federal funding through the Healthy Forest Restoration Act provides a mechanism for tribes to restore degraded forests and integrate landscape burning into tribal forest management programs.

Native American communities across the western United States face the same forest health issues affecting other federal lands in the west. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) forest management policies guiding management of reservation forestlands have created overstocked forests that are susceptible to insect attack, disease, and catastrophic wildfire.

This is the view looking toward Signal Peak from seed-tree harvest units on the west side of Cunningham Creek drainage, Yakama Reservation, conducted from two-to-five years ago. Tribal land managers here are aiming for a mosaic look in the area.

Native American use of fire as an important tool for managing forests and woodlands is well documented. (Blackburn, 1993; Boyd, 1999) Fire allowed manipulation of vegetation on a landscape scale, through careful timing of burns at specific locations. Using landscape burning, Tribal communities were able to provide the resources they needed to prosper. They were able to sustain this practice over thousands of years without degrading the resources necessary for their continued prosperity.

When European management was imposed on fire-adapted vegetation communities, fire exclusion substantially changed the forest communities created by Indian management. Over time, open productive woodlands were replaced by dense forest dominated by shade tolerant species. Brush species filled the understory, increasing competition for water, light, and nutrients. The competition induced stress favored insects and disease. The resulting plant communities are highly susceptible to catastrophic wildfire and lack many of the cultural species most important to Tribal people.

The Healthy Forest Restoration Act was approved by Congress in 2003 to implement policies outlined in the Healthy Forest Initiative. The initiative was launched by President Bush in 2002 to address the growing fuels problem in western fire adapted forests. The act provided funding and streamlined the environmental review process for fuels projects on federal lands. On the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation (HVIR), The Tribal Fuels Management program is using this funding to implement hazardous fuels reduction projects that combine fuels treatments with traditional cultural resource management.

The fuels reduction projects use a series of coordinated treatments to reduce fuels and prepare for prescribed burning. First, understory vegetation is mechanically treated to prepare the site for burning. During this phase, hand crews using chain saws and brush cutters cut and stack thick understory vegetation to reduce fuel density and continuity. On gentle slopes the understory vegetation is mowed using a tractor or small bulldozer to reduce project costs. Second, piled vegetation is burned to reduce fuel accumulations that could damage overstory trees during underburning. Finally, the stand is underburned to treat ground litter and enhance cultural species. Treated areas are maintained using low intensity fires every three to five years.

The Hazel Fuels Reduction project provides an example of this strategy. The project area is located in the wildland urban interface (WUI) zone, around the communities of Hoopa and Weitchpec. Both treatments are in oak woodlands that were traditionally managed for production of acorns and hazel. Hazel sticks are an important component of traditional baskets, forming the foundation of most of the baskets produced by local weavers. Acorns were a major component of the native diet.

Both the Jones Point and Weitchpec treatment areas are located upslope from areas plagued by frequent arson fires. Dense understory vegetation and large amounts of dead litter presented an extreme fire hazard. Arson fires started from the state highway or tribal road running below the project area posed a significant threat to tribal resources, upslope from the treatment area.

The projects are situated on moderate to steep west facing slopes above the Trinity River. Overstory vegetation was comprised of black oak (Quercus Kelloggii), Oregon white oak (Quercus garryana), Pacific madrone (Arbutus menziesii), tanoak (Lithocarpus densiflora), and California bay (Umbellularia californica). The understory contained California hazel (Corylus cornuta var. californica), Pacific dogwood (Cornus nuttalli), poison oak (Rhus diversaloba), evergreen huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum), and sapling sized Douglasfir (Pseudotsuga menziesii).

The 200-acre project treated 110 acres at the south end of the reservation and 90 acres along the northern reservation boundary. Project funding was spread over three years. Year one, mechanical treatment was completed on 66 acres. The following spring, mechanical treatment was started on 66 additional acres and prescribed burning was completed on the 66-acres piled the previous year. The third year, all remaining acreage was mechanically treated. Prescribed burning will be completed once a suitable spring burn window permits implementation of the burn prescription.

Restoration is not cheap, averaging $850 per acre. The majority of this was used to complete mechanical treatment of understory vegetation. Average cost is $500 per acre for hand crews to cut and stack understory vegetation. Handline construction, prescribed burning, and project administration were responsible for the remaining costs. However, once restored, the areas can be maintained using periodic low intensity fire. Maintaining restored areas will cost less than $150 per acre every three to five years and will produce cultural resource benefits on top of the community protection objectives. Hazel needs to be burned every three to five years to produce the high quality sticks the basket weavers need for their baskets.

The Hazel Fuels Reduction project was successful. The treatments have been effective at meeting the community protection goals outlined in the President’s Healthy Forest Initiative and the project has produced numerous cultural resource benefits. Local basket weavers are utilizing hazel collected from the project area. Monitoring conducted in collaboration with the California Indian Basket Weavers Association shows that the project treatments produced both an increase in the quantity and quality of hazel sticks.

Overall, the President’s Healthy Forest Initiative and the Healthy Forest Restoration Act are good for tribal communities. Native Americans have actively managed western landscapes for their benefit over thousands of years. The healthy productive landscapes, as well as the techniques used to create them, where lost following European conquest of the western US. After a century of decline, Tribes now have a means to restore these landscapes and integrate traditional management with current timberbased forest management.

References:
Blackburn, Thomas C.; and Kat Anderson, Editors. 1993. Before the Wilderness, Environmental Management by Native Californians. Ballena Press.
Boyd, Robert. 1999, Editor. Indians, Fire and the Land in the Pacific Northwest

by
Todd A. Salberg
Silviculturist, Hoopa Valley Tribal Council, Forestry Division