It's Déjà vu all over again

Yogi Berra, the Hall of Fame New York Yankees catcher and accidental philosopher of American common sense, gave us one of the best lines ever spoken about seeing the same thing happen twice.

“It's Déjà vu all over again.”

He meant that strange feeling that we have seen this before, heard this before, warned about this before, and somehow still find ourselves standing in the same place, watching the same story unfold again.

Forestry has more than a few of these moments...

Have you ever wondered why others cannot see something that has been plainly visible to you for years?

I had one earlier this week while reading three wildfire reports that turned into a connect-the-dots exercise. Together, they formed a déjà vu moment I could not ignore.

My moment began while I was reading one of Nick Smith’s Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities newsletters. He was discussing the importance of active forest management, including thinning and prescribed burning, as tools for reducing wildfire risk in forests that hold too many trees for the carrying capacity of the land.

This problem rarely develops at the same scale in state, tribal or privately owned forests. But it has reached crisis levels in federally owned forests in the West, where active management has been sharply constrained since the federal government added the northern spotted owl to its threatened species list in 1990, 36 years ago.

We have been having the same conversation with Evergreen readers since the spotted owl listing. More recently, our focus has shifted toward the loss of fish and wildlife habitat, not simply the loss of trees. But the two are inseparable.

Why We Keep Coming Back to the Spotted Owl

We reference the northern spotted owl often because history matters.

The 1990 spotted owl listing was not a footnote in western forest policy. It was the hinge point. It changed federal forest management, timber supply, rural communities, agency decision-making, and the public conversation about old forests.

The promise was simple: restrict timber harvest and save old-growth habitat.

Thirty-six years later, much of that habitat is overstocked, diseased, insect-ridden, drought-stressed, dead or burned.

And now, after decades of policy meant to save one owl by limiting active forest management, the federal government’s latest answer is to authorize the removal of up to 450,000 barred owls over 30 years, about 15,000 birds a year, in an effort to save the owl it failed to protect.

We do not return to the spotted owl because we want to relitigate the past. We return to it because the past defines the present.

The spotted owl became the symbol of a broader belief: that federal forests could be protected by leaving them largely alone. That belief reshaped forest policy for a generation.

Now we are living with the results.

When a policy changes the course of federal forest management, damages rural communities, destroys forest and community infrastructure, blocks active stewardship, and stills fails to protect the habitat it was meant to save - then it deserves to be examined honestly.

The Numbers Tell The Story

Since 2000, an estimated 3.3 million acres of mature and old-growth forest on federal lands have been lost to wildfire. A recent OSU report cites that federal lands have seen a net loss of 2.6 million acres of mature forest and 700,000 acres of old-growth forest since 2000.

That is astonishing when you remember that the Clinton-era Northwest Forest Plan was supposed to save millions of acres of old and mature timber from “greedy loggers and lumbermen.”

Could it be that there is some truth to this whole idea of active forest management?

It appears so.

USFS Back to Basics Approach

In an April the US Forest Service featured an article titled:

Putting Fire on the Ground

The agency states that prescribed fire and mechanical thinning reduce wildfire risk. The article describes how effective fire suppression, combined with a lack of active management, has allowed heavy fuels to build up in western forests. Those fuels now feed the large, intense wildfires that are destroying forests, homes, watersheds, and wildlife habitat.

That is no small admission.

Under Chief Tom Schultz, the Forest Service is taking what it calls a “back-to-basics” approach, with active forest management, wildfire protection, red-tape reduction, and more authority closer to the ground among its stated priorities. Schultz has said the people closest to the ground know the forest best, and agency materials now describe active management as central to forest health, productivity, and community protection.

The Putting Fire on the Ground article is one example of that shift. It is not rhetoric about process. It is about work on the ground: thinning, prescribed fire, community partnerships, watershed protection, and reducing fuels before the next fire starts.

This is the change Evergreen has been watching for.

The PERC Report

PERC, the Property and Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana, recently published a report titled Beyond Wildfire Suppression: The Economic Case for Fuel Treatments in National Forests. The report draws on new research from UC Davis economists and examines the costs and benefits of fuel treatments across western national forests.

The report summarizes forest, human health and community-related costs from nearly 300 wildfires that burned in the 11 western states between 2017 and 2023. Among the findings:

Fuel treatments, including thinning and prescribed burning, avoided about $2.8 billion in wildfire damages.
Wildfire spread and severity were reduced where treatments had been completed.
Across the West, every dollar invested in active forest management avoided about $3.75 in damages.
In the heavily timbered Pacific Northwest, every dollar invested in active forest management generated five to six dollars in reduced wildfire fighting costs.
Landscape-level treatments delivered much greater benefits than scattered, small-scale projects.

Read The Full PERC Report

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Raise your voice

After you have read the PERC report, review the very sobering

Wildfire Season Forecast

It is assembled by the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

Send the PERC report and the NIFC outlook to your House and Senate members. Ask them if they are supporting the Fix Our Forests Act.

If they are, thank them and ask what you can do to support them.
If they are not, ask them why.

Then share their answers with us - comment below.

The millions of Americans who hunt, fish, boat, swim, hike, camp, gather firewood, make their living in or near western federal forests, or simply love being there - are done pretending the underlying causes of the West’s wildfire pandemic are a mystery.

So are we.

Much of this tragedy could have been avoided had the federal government allowed timely, active forest management in so-called “owl” forests before they became tinderboxes.

The science has been visible for years. The question is whether Congress is finally willing to see it.