The Heat is On!

Wildfire season is upon us - the “us” being the Southeast and the entire West.

The heat is on - literally and figuratively.

The figurative heat is reaching the boiling point in Congress, thanks to some heavy lifting by Arkansas Congressman Bruce Westerman - the only forester in Congress - and U.S. Senator John Curtis of Utah.

Westerman, who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, is the architect of the Fix Our Forests Act, H.R. 471.
Curtis is shepherding the Senate version, S. 1462.

Although it is 1,416 miles from Westerman’s hometown of Hot Springs, Arkansas, to Curtis’s hometown of Provo, Utah, both communities border national forests with very active forest health, restoration, and fuels management programs.

Two Forests, Two Very Different Landscapes

Arkansas’ 1.8-million-acre Ouachita National Forest contains more than 60 native tree species, but shortleaf pine is by far the dominant species. The region is home to dozens of primary breakdown mills and conventional logging companies. Statewide, 24,500 men and women are directly employed in mills and logging companies.

The report below documents the presence of the logging and sawmilling industries in Hot Springs, the county seat of Garland County. Hot Springs borders the Ouachita National Forest.

By contrast, Utah’s 2.2-million-acre Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest holds about a dozen tree species, but lodgepole pine and aspen dominate 52 percent of the forest. There are a few primary breakdown mills, but many more remanufacturers and custom mills sell posts, beams, and logs for log homes. Together, they employ about 6,100 men and women.

The PDF below provides a great deal of information concerning the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest and the wood-processing complex it supports.

Taken together, these two reports tell you everything you need to know about why Congressman Westerman and Senator Curtis are leading the bipartisan effort to pass the House and Senate versions of the Fix Our Forests Act.

Why Ownership Matters

About 80 percent of Arkansas’ 19 million acres of forestland is privately owned, so, as you might expect, there aren’t many wildfires. In 2023, a mere 5,629 acres burned.

By contrast, the federal government owns a much larger share of Utah’s forested landscape. Not surprisingly, Utah’s wildfire losses were greater than Arkansas’ in 2023 - 18,061 acres compared to 5,629 - but nowhere near as awful as Montana’s 123,133 acres.

Of Big Sky Country’s seven national forests, spanning 17 million acres, net growth is positive in only one: the 2.2-million-acre Kootenai National Forest. Mortality exceeds net growth and removals on the other six national forests. Together, they span about 15 million acres - an area nearly 20 times larger than Rhode Island.

Why This Should Matter to the West

Should any of this information matter to lumbermen or loggers working in the 11 western states?

It should.

The trend lines represented by growth and mortality follow the same general trajectory on millions of acres managed by the U.S. Forest Service across the West.

It should also matter to the 45 million voters in the 11 western states. Most recreate in national forests. Many who treasure these forests don’t realize that the loss of millions of acres of fish and wildlife habitat in stand-replacing wildfires is tied directly to decades of political, legal, and administrative resistance to active forest management - including thinning, fuels management, and restoration work.

The Opposition to Active Management

The fact that so much of the West’s federal forest estate is dying, dead, or already burned does not seem to move those who oppose current Forest Service efforts to reduce wildfire risk, thin forests that are too dense for the carrying capacity of the land, and replant millions of barren acres.

We have long been admirers of the Property and Environment Research Center, based in Bozeman, Montana. PERC’s latest report, Beyond Wildfire Suppression, documents what we - among others - have been saying for decades about the root causes of the West’s wildfire crisis. It also provides science-based solutions we hope the political classes will embrace.

We know we sound like the proverbial broken record, but the truth still hasn’t gained enough traction in the places where it matters most.

As Mark Twain, perhaps our country’s greatest essayist and humorist, once observed: “Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story.”

But the truth isn’t the least bit funny.

The history of this game needs to be leaned into, not politely stepped around. Every time federal forests are locked up, restoration work is delayed, or timber supply is strangled, someone benefits and someone suffers. The winners are rarely the rural communities, small mills, family logging businesses, or forest workers who live closest to the consequences. The forests suffer too - first from neglect, then from insects, disease, drought, and fire.

Historically, the biggest players are far better positioned to survive a regulatory squeeze - and benefit from it. We have seen it before. The northern spotted owl restrictions were publicly dressed up as environmental protection...but one of their most practical effects was to cut the legs out from under small landowners, small mills, and family logging businesses.

It's no wonder that some - not all - large forestland owners have a history of quietly obstructing restoration work on federal lands. They do not want competition from logs thinned from federal forests.

Our forests must be managed and thinned if we are serious about reducing environmental stress caused by insect and disease infestations, long-term drought made worse by low and uneven snowpack, inadequate spring rains - and the inevitable, increasing danger of the wildfire profile that accompanies these conditions.

If you have been meaning to subscribe, now is the time.

Evergreen cannot run on good intentions alone.

Independent forestry journalism takes time, travel, research, interviews, editing, photography, web publishing, and decades of earned trust.

It is work - and like the work you do, it has to be supported.

If Evergreen helps you understand the decisions shaping our forests, communities, and future, please subscribe or contribute today.

Subscribe. Contribute.
Help keep Evergreen independent.

Subscribers receive access to many of Evergreen’s back issues in our Archives.
Our archives hold a deep record of forestry reporting, history, policy, people, and practice.
Looking for a specific issue or topic?
Let us know, and we will help you find the Evergreen
coverage you need.

Prefer PayPal?
You can set up an ongoing donation, and we will honor it as a subscription with the same benefits.

Support forest-to-community health.
Support Evergreen.
THANK YOU!

Why "Fix Our Forests" Matters

All of these closely related events circle back to the bipartisan Fix Our Forests bills sponsored by Arkansas’ Bruce Westerman and Utah’s John Curtis.

Why?

Because if our federal forests aren’t managed - thinned periodically, with a dose of prescribed burning to reduce woody debris - we will never be able to reduce the risks posed by insect and disease infestations that precede catastrophic wildfire.

Forest Service Reorganization

Kudos to the Trump Administration and Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz for having the determination and courage to face the political firestorm unleashed by anti-forestry activists.

Here is the link to the Forest Service website that explains the agency’s reorganization plans:

Spend some time on this website some evening.

Among the things you will find is a podcast hosted by Michelle Harven for PBS affiliate WAMU in Washington, D.C.

Her guests are Chief Tom Schultz; Bill Avey, board member of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees; Julia Reyes, chief of staff for the Union of Concerned Scientists; and Steve Gutierrez, a former wildland firefighter and business representative for the National Federation of Federal Employees.

I found this podcast fascinating and highly informative.
I hope you will too.

A Message for REITs and TIMOs

It would be wonderful if the leadership and lobbyists representing Real Estate Investment Trusts and Timber Investment Management Organizations - REITs and TIMOs - listened to Ms. Harven’s podcast as well.

These are among the nation’s largest timberland ownership structures, but some seem to have forgotten that firestorms do not respect property lines.

If I had money invested in one of these entities, I’d be asking leadership how they calculate the time cost of money - harvest rotation age - against the cost of watching a forest incinerate in a firestorm.

I would also be asking who compensates the neighboring landowners, communities, and taxpayers when the inevitable happens.

To be clear, I am not referring to the many mid-sized timberland owners, including Portland-based Stimson Lumber Company and Freres Wood in Lyons, Oregon. Both companies have demonstrated foursquare leadership on the necessity of managing federal forests - and there are others who understand that unmanaged federal forests do not burn in isolation. They threaten neighboring landowners, rural communities, mills, infrastructure, wildlife habitat, ecosystems, water supply, the local economy, as well as the forest products economy itself.

Stimson's CEO Andrew Miller would actually like to build a new mill in Libby, Montana.

Imagine that.

But he won’t do it until the Kootenai National Forest can assure him of a stable and adequate supply of federal timber to augment what the company harvests from its own lands in Northwest Montana.

Sadly, the Kootenai can’t promise him anything as long as serial litigants can keep tying up timber sales with appeals, lawsuits, and procedural delays while frightening people who do not understand the consequences of doing nothing.

A Tip of the Hat

Finally, a tip of the hat to Brian Fennessy, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and his boss, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, for echoing the reorganization and rapid-response messages Chief Schultz is shouting to the high heavens.

We don’t know Fennessy or Burgum, but we know Tom well, and we trust him to do the right things for our deeply troubled federal forests.

Keep NIFC Close

Also, a shout-out to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. There is no better or more current source of information concerning active wildfires, on-the-scene reports, or weather patterns that drive wildfire behavior.

The link to their website needs to be on your cell phone and the desktop in your office:

It could save your life or the lives of your crews in what looks to be a godawful fire season.

If you are a logger or wildland firefighter, may the Good Lord watch over you, your crews, and your families in what is forecast to be one of the toughest wildfire seasons on record in the West.