The Lookout
Volume 5 Issue 4-August 14, 2010

We had planned to bring you the results of Congressman Schiff's hearing about the Station Fire. However, because the House of Representatives was called into a special session, the hearing has been postponed. Also, The Secretary of Agriculture, The Chief and Senators from California along with several California house members have asked for investigations of the handling of the fire, including missing telephone recordings made during the early stage of the fire from a Forest Service office. So we are waiting to report on the situation till we have good accurate information and will update you as soon as possible.

There are many other issues of importance and we'll talk about them in early September along with a summary of the Annual meeting, NAFSR's discussion with the Chief. and other information about significant Forest Service issues.

1910 Idaho Fires

August 20, 2010 will mark the 100th Anniversary of what has become known as "The Big Burn" when some 3 million acres and many communities in Idaho and Montana were destroyed or heavily damaged and 85 people lost their lives in a fire holocaust. Commemorative events are planned to recognize this horrible disaster through out Northern Idaho and Western Montana. You can find a list of events as well as an Internet museum of the fires by going to: 1910 Fire Commemorative Information Site through your search engine. The site is sponsored by Region 1 of the Forest Service and provides a comprehensive history of the tragic event in words, maps and pictures.

Forest Service Reunion

The planning committee for the 2012 FS Reunion has set the dates and location of the meeting in 2012. The reunion will be held at the Vail Mountain Marriott, Lionshead, Vail, Colorado, September 17 to 21, 2012. Prime time for fall colors, crisp fall weather, wonderful rates, and just an outstanding facility with wonderful views and atmosphere. More information about the reunion will be in future issues of The Lookout.

Meeting with the Chief

Chief Tom Tidwell will join NAFSR members and Board of Directors at NAFSR's annual meeting at Sea-Tac Airport outside of Seattle, WA on the morning of August 23 for a discussion of Forest Service issues. We will report on this important discussion as soon as possible after the annual meeting concludes. For more information about the meeting and the agenda go to FSX.org

The Weeks Act
The year 2011 will mark the centennial of the Weeks Act - the "organic act" of the eastern national forests. Not only did the law immediately lead to protection of eastern watersheds from further development and exploitation, it made possible the long-term effort to replant and restore the eastern forests. As one historian has noted, "No single law has been more important in the return of the forests to the eastern United States."
And your editor has to add a personal note about the impacts of this act. In 1923 in Warren, PA, the Forest Service set up shop to purchase the lands that would become the Allegheny National Forest. H. R. Bishop, in charge of the project, hired a young man looking for a job to be a member of a land survey crew. My Dad spent the next 43 years of his life with the Forest Service on the Allegheny, and many of his retirement years continuing to work with his home community to support the forest. His love of the forest and the Forest Service influenced me to throw in with the outfit, a decision never regretted.
For more information about The Weeks Act, its importance to American forests and the celebrations planned to honor this important legislation go to: www.foresthistory.org/ASPNET/Policy/WeeksAct/i... There will be more information about the Act in future issues of THE LOOKOUT
The NAFSR Miracle Workers

Several NAFSR members used their management and organizational skills gained from years of experience with the Outfit to make a major contribution to providing transitional shelter for people in Haiti, which is still without any semblance of adequate shelter since the January 2010 earthquake. Retirees Lyle Laverty and Rich Stem recruited retirees Dan Nolan, Bruce Short and Bjorn Dahl along with several U.S. Army retirees to form an "ICS Short Team" to tackle the problem of building transitional shelter units that would last two to three years till more permanent housing was available. The immediate goal was to focus on shelter for some of the 20,000 people still living in tents in the Port-au-Prince soccer stadium. The team worked under the auspices of the Salvation Army and U.S. Agency for International Development.

Lye made a three-week assessment trip to Haiti in February 2010 and knew the team was facing a challenge. However, there was no question of the critical need for better shelter. He said the living conditions he saw in Haiti were indescribably bad. Using the information Lyle had gathered, the team developed a conceptual plan for basic housing that would be fast to build, meet specifications of the sponsoring organizations and get people out of the tent city and into shelter with a floor, metal roof, plastic panel walls and the chance to live decently.

The wood needed to frame and floor the temporary housing came from the dead forests of Colorado. Millions of acres of insect killed lodge pole pine on the National Forests posed a critical fire hazard, and putting some of the dead trees to use would help reduce the hazard. Dead lodge pole was an ideal building material, dry, lightweight but strong, easy to work and available in almost endless quantities.

So with the building materials in the pipeline, the team went to Haiti to focus on project management. They managed the recruiting and training of Haitian people to do the shelter construction, for pay, provided construction supervision by journeyman construction people and handled on a daily basis never ending "challenges" of logistics, planning, communications and operations.

By mid July of this year Lyle reported the first project of 600 units to house 3,000 people was complete. These transitional shelters were simple rectangular structures either 10 ft. by 14 ft. or 10ft by 20 ft. in size and with no frills. But they offered people the opportunity to live in a place to call home until permanent houses can be built.

Managing the project had challenges such as language, government red tape, culture, supply chains and working in the debris left by the earthquake. But as Rich Stem said, "One of the neat things about the project is how we went down there overcame the challenges with the ICS organization, and our training and experience with the Forest Service giving us the ability to adapt and build 600 units in five weeks."

So people in Haiti have shelter and jobs, some people in Colorado have jobs making lumber, dead trees are being used rather than rotting or burning and several retiree rocking chairs may be up for sale. Other NGO's were left scratching their heads wondering how these old guys got so much done in such a short period of time.

The Forest Service retirees are currently back home, but soon they'll head back to Haiti with the goal of building another 1200-1300 units.

Klamath National Forest is a Champion for Local Coalition Efforts

Special to The Lookout, thanks to NAFSR member Bruce Courtright: Fort Jones, California - July 29, 2010 - What happens to a community when the top level officials from a local Forest Service office collaborate with decision makers from the County, local stakeholders and private land managers? That community gains a tremendous opportunity for social and economic growth that is rarely seen in rural America today - especially in Siskiyou County, California.

Forests in Siskiyou County are in critical need of restoration by thinning small-diameter timber and removing woody biomass that has contributed to poor forest health and greatly increases the risk of catastrophic wildfire in the area. The historical number of acres burned in Siskiyou County since 1900 has reached 2.2 million. Additionally, Siskiyou County is faced with a declining traditional timber industry resulting in a loss of jobs, high unemployment, declining community vitality and has experienced long term economic distress. Management practices by forest managers today is different than in prior years and with many years of fire suppression, forests are dense, have fewer large-diameter trees, and have an abundance of small, tightly spaced trees and underbrush.

A volunteer group known as the Scott River Watershed Coalition of Firesafe Councils (Coalition) emerged through the recognition of the tremendous build up of hazardous fuels. Its purpose is to collaborate on watershed-scale projects and issues and is made up of six active firesafe councils. Firesafe councils are volunteer groups pursuing long-range strategic planning and generating fuel reduction and defensible space projects. Through the collaborative projects implemented in the watershed, the US Forest Service and other federal agencies have contributed approximately $2.5 million of grant funding towards making the region's forests healthier and protecting this Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) area.

The Coalition and the Klamath National Forest, Scott/Salmon Ranger District have created a successful collaboration model through participating agreements and collective project planning. The Forest and District level management and planning personnel have supported and participated in the strategic planning of hazardous fuel reduction projects within the watershed and have championed the acquisition of third party grant funding. Likewise, the Coalition has supported and participated in the planning of forest management projects on public lands, which has helped to gain public support. This ongoing collaboration has also lead to a liaison concept whereby the Coalition provides critical landscape information to fire management teams that may come into the area.

Successful results from this ongoing collaborative model includes the treatment of more than 1,650 acres of hazardous fuels reduction on private lands in the Scott River watershed, has created and provided approximately 20 permanent jobs and training for 10 interns who have chosen the natural resources pathway for career development. Other pursuits have emerged out of the Coalition model include stewardship planning, development of Community Wildfire Protection Plans, the Siskiyou County Biomass Utilization Group (SBUG) and the National Institute for the Elimination of Catastrophic Wildfire.

While our local decision makers and community volunteers continue to pursue opportunities for improving forest health and public safety the single most critical need is funding. Implementing environmentally conscience projects takes a tremendous amount of planning and funding to ensure a successful outcome for everyone. The Coalition will continue to seek watershed and those living within it.
By Rhonda Muse, Program Coordinator, Northern California Resource Center, Fort Jones, CA

Washington View: Federal policies helped spark California wildfires
The following essay came across my desk, and I thought it worthwhile to share with you since it is a refreshing observation from someone not in the forestry world, but certainly with a good understanding of what is happening to the forests/editor

Once again, dozens of wildfires are raging across California, reducing entire forests to cinders and displacing thousands of families. As they burn, these fires pump millions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) -declared by the federal Environmental Protection Agency as a dangerous pollutant - into the air.

Ironically, this environmental and human devastation is due in part to federal environmental policies.

For decades, federal forest management policy has been, in effect, not to manage forests. Because of pressure from environmental groups, many federal and state forests are off limits to harvest and even to "housekeeping" activities, such as thinning, clearing undergrowth and removing dead and diseased trees. The philosophy is, let nature take its course.

Unfortunately, nature cleans its house with fire. Undergrowth and diseased trees provide the fuel; lightning or the errant camper provides the spark.

The West and Pacific Northwest are blessed with vast forestlands that, if managed to keep green and growing, can be our most potent weapon in reducing greenhouse gases. Trees absorb and store CO2 and emit life-giving oxygen. Young growing trees absorb the most CO2 and produce the most oxygen.

But when they burn, these same trees release their stored CO2, choking the skies with smoke and polluting the air with millions of tons of greenhouse gases. Researchers estimate that the CO2 emitted by a single California wildfire in one week is equivalent to 25 percent of the monthly emissions from all fossil fuel burning throughout the state.

The study, conducted by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado at Boulder estimates that U.S. fires release about 290 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year, the equivalent of 4 to 6 percent of the nation's CO2 emissions from all fossil fuel burning.

Think about it. American taxpayers are spending billions of dollars to protect air quality, yet misguided federal forest policies can wipe out much of that benefit in a few weeks.

President George W. Bush tried to address the situation with his Healthy Forests initiative, which put people to work clearing brush and salvaging diseased trees while bringing in income from salvage logging companies. Unfortunately, environmentalists stopped the effort in its tracks.

While a hands-off attitude may be popular in some environmental circles, history has shown the consequences of that policy. In 1988, the U.S. Parks Service allowed several smaller forest fires in Yellowstone National Park to come together and engulf 800,000 acres, nearly incinerating the historic Old Faithful Inn.

The consequences of a massive wildfire today would be catastrophic. A century ago, the Big Burn scorched three million acres of forests from Boise into Canada and from east of Spokane to west of Missoula. Today, more than 13 million people live in that area.

Even our firefighters are being handcuffed in the name of environmental protection. Recently, a federal judge rejected the way the U.S. Forest Service uses fire retardant to fight wildfires because it couldn't ensure that the retardant wouldn't harm threatened and endangered species. The judge did not address the harm a raging inferno would cause to those same animals.

One has only to watch the nightly news to see the devastation caused by wildfires. Add to that the human and economic cost to battle the fires and the environmental degradation that results.

Congress and the President must restore sanity and common sense to our federal forest management policy. Sensible management, clearing dead and diseased trees and reducing underbrush is a much more responsible policy than "burn, baby, burn."

Don Brunell is president of the Association of Washington Business, Washington State's chamber of commerce. Visit http://www.awb.org.

The National Association of Forest Service Retirees publishes the Lookout. The editor is John Marker, jf37m@aol.com 541-352-6154, 6681 Hwy. 35, Mt. Hood, OR 97041