Cleantech and Climate Change Podcast - Will the Fires of the Future be Prescribed or Wild?

Cleantech and Climate Change Podcast - Will the Fires of the Future be Prescribed or Wild?

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to today's Cleantech podcast, whichis a republish of a twenty eighteen interview
with Paul Hesberg, an expert onwildfires and senior research ecologist at the Pacific
Northwest Research Station. Five years ago, he talked to me about managing our
forests with control burns, thoughtful landdevelopment, and how homeowners can actually be

(00:20):
more proactive themselves with their own propertiesbefore wildfire season. He discusses how if
we take a proactive approach collectively andallow for more prescribed burning, it will
make economic sense as well as savehomes and lives. He also points out
that smoke from control burns is lesstoxic than particulates from wildfires. Fast forward

(00:42):
to twenty twenty three, and I'vejust lived through my own personal experience in
the Okanagan on the west Side witha McDougald Creek fire. I'm now seeing
controlled burns after the fire burned outof control and almost two hundred properties burned.
The air quality was extremely hazardous andtoxic here for days. No doubt
they'll be long term effects. Paulsays, the question moving forward for all

(01:03):
of us is really about are thefires going to be prescribed or wild and
we have more control than we think. Please listen to this very knowledgeable man
and use it as a resource movingforward in contact your local, provincial,
and federal government with your insight andideas. For our listeners that don't know
your background, can you give usa brief history and then take us to

(01:26):
your current role as a research landscapeecologists. Yeah. I obtained a doctorate
at Oregon State University in about nineteeneighty four and since then I've been studying
inland Northwest landscapes, changes to them, and the servants processes for about the

(01:49):
last thirty four years. And inmy lab, we have we reconstruct landscapes.
We look at their conditions in theearly and late twentieth century and we
document the key change and then wetranslate those changes into how they influence disturbance
processes like barkul up breaks and wildfires, things like that, and then we
study these large landscapes. We're sortof being a visually to observe larger scale

(02:15):
phenomena. And one thing that wesee in province after province is that things
like fire exclusion, grazing, pastharvesting methods, those think collectively have created
a significant increase in the area offorest, and that's occurred in most forest
types, and this lack of firehas eliminated once extensive patchworks of grassland,

(02:38):
shrublands, forest woodland. Woodlands arelike savannahs and then recently burned ground,
and this what we call early cyrilpasswork, is highly influential to the landscape.
These burned and recovering areas helped therest of the forest to be forest
in fact, so these non forestareas end up being important to forest.

(02:59):
They helped to regulate the flow ofmore benign fire across the landscape because the
primary fuels are flashy grasses and shrubs. And the density of the forest we
found in many of these reconstructed landscapeshas increased in the dry pine and mixed
conifer forest too, So these changestogether more forest area and denser forest to

(03:21):
chip the scale towards visiting more commonand extensive crown tires and away from this
more varied fire ecology. So you'retraveling around the country right now and you're
definitely one of the most cited expertson this topic, Can you talk about
strategies that can be implemented to preventand manage these fires moving forward, and

(03:43):
how we can be more proactive versusa reactive approach. In this you bet,
we actually have a lot of optionsmoving forward. We can reduce the
severity of many of the wildfires thatwere currently facing the climate steadily warming and
that influences the annual area burned,and annual area burned is going to increase

(04:06):
in the coming decade substantially. Someforecasts suggests two to four times the area
burned since two thousand it will burnby twenty thirty. But it's fuel abundance
and it's availability to burn that drivesthe severity of the intensity of many of
today's fires, especially as they affecttree mortality. To reduce fires of area,

(04:30):
it's critical to address the fuels thathave accumulated over the period of fire
exclusion, which in many places iseighty to one hundred hundred and twenty years,
and a lot of fuels accumulate.There are numerous methods that we can
use. We can use prescribe burning, for example, that's intentionally burning when
the weather and the fuels allow,so that we get moderate fire effects.

(04:51):
We can combine prescribe burning after mechanicalfinning. Sometimes these restorative treatments are expensive,
and so it's helpful to underwrite someof the treatments if in fact there's
a commercial opportunity. In addition,prescribe burning can't occur in some stands where

(05:12):
the densities are too thick and there'stoo many fuel ladders. So mechanical tinning
helps us to create conditions that wecan regulate prescribe burning more effectively, and
we can do mulching, and wecan use managed wildfire, so that the
application that we use is determined bythe conditions that foresters and fire managers find.

(05:34):
It's also conditioned by the social licensethat's available within the local surrounding community
of a forest. There isn't anycommercial opportunity. Thinning would obviously have to
be subsidized for its and practical Sometimesthe fuel buildup is so great after a
century of fire suppression and for ourexclusion, that fire alan treatments are impossible

(05:56):
because fire behavior will be extreme orunpredictable, even if the burning many cases
after naturally occurring ignitions under moderate fireweadfire managers can use these natural agnissions to
burn up surface fuels and thin outthe trees. That's a particularly effective treatment
it can't be done everywhere, andthen maintenance treatments are usually involved at three

(06:18):
to five years. Cycles that involvedcontinue to prescribe burning. There isn't a
lot of smoke associated with these maintenanceburns. Malting involves breaking up the shrub
and understory fields with the mechanical maltinghead and mixing those broken up pieces in
mata soil. Just recently, theUSDA Secretary Sunny Purdue announced the new strategy

(06:43):
for treating over stocked forests in theUS to reverse this trend. Can you
talk about his strategy and how yousee this rolling out and if you think
it will be effective. So,the report that just came out signals of
change in the skull direction of managementin the USDA Force Service, and it

(07:06):
will begin to deal at an appropriatescale with wildfire and other forrest health problems.
And in order to implement it's clearthat they're going to work closely with
partners and stakeholders to accomplish that.And then it makes sense that the agency
would lead with announcing a change inmanagement focus and the rationale behind the change,

(07:28):
and that later they would follow withdetails on how they intend to accomplish
those ends. And so those detailshaven't come out as yet. So essentially
we have the had an announcement ofthe new strategy, and it's going to
be important as events unsold to takenote of how the planning and implementation will
occur, to better understand the intentionsof the strategy and the methods that are

(07:48):
going to be featured to achieve itsends. Do you have any indication from
your perspective how long this will taketo go loader this is the shift in
the initial stages of discussion. Idon't. I don't. I think there's
an awful lot of good minds workingon it, and I'm as anxious as

(08:09):
you all to see how this unfold. So for people that might dissute the
strategies you've unfolded, can you giveus some examples of towns or districts or
countries that are already using control ofburns and the fire prevention that's that you've
discussed and there's success, so thatwe can say, yes, it does
work. Sure. So there's anumber of communities that are are working on

(08:39):
a national strategy that's got buy infrom the tribes, national parks, wilderness
areas, national forests, state statesacross the West it's called the National Cohesive
Wildland Fire Management Strategy, and thereare communities throughout the United States that are

(09:01):
actually making headway. The strategy hasgot three legs. The first is to
develop fire adapted communities, so thatmeans homeowners, businesses, housing developments.
They get their homes, yards andtheir landscaping ready for the fires that are
coming. And it's pretty clear thefires are coming, and they apply the
International Woollye Code and they begin tomore wisely consider where and where they're not

(09:24):
going to develop. There's sixty seventypercent of the new housing starts are in
the slammable and dangerous mass, andso having communities really look seriously about where
they're going to develops really important.It's about prevention and proaction rather than reaction.
The second step is to maintain asafe and effective fire suppression effort.

(09:46):
I means putting out fires that duskwe can, and they're going to gobble
up the landscape and burn down homes. But when there are natural ignitions and
the fire weather cooperates, we canallow a number of these natural agnitions to
work safely. Has managed wildfire's basicallysending out trees and burning up dead wood,
and there are a number of foreststhroughout the West where this is being

(10:07):
accomplished during the wildfire season. Andthe third leg of the stool is to
manage for resilient landscapes, so thatmeans we change the way fires and fire
behavior can come to our forests andour communities before the wildfire season. And
that's with some of these restorative treatments. And we can use a lot of
the treatments that I discussed earlier inyour questioning to accomplish those sort of three

(10:33):
legs of the stool. Some examplecommunities that live Lake Tahoe Community National Forests
in Montana that are managing the Blackfootand the Swan River drainages. In Wenassey,
Washington, where I live, we'reactually implementing quite a bit of this.
Ashland, Oregon is a leading location, well to Colorado Yosemite National Park,

(10:54):
Summit County, Colorado. These areexamples of places where folks early getting
their act together and they're moving out. So when you look at the economics
of this, I'm assuming they've gota big win. So can you give
us an idea of what data lookslike when you look at the economic savings
of taking a leading role proactively versusyou know, the rising costs of dealingless

(11:18):
fighting fires and the loss of propertiesand lives that we're seeing. Me bet,
it's a really great question. Sothe current data suggests that the post
fire expenses to forests and impacted communitiesfire out way the suppression costs by five
to twenty five times and in merrecasesby more than one hundred times. So
if you figure annual suppression costs inthe US typically exceed two to three billion

(11:43):
dollars, these numbers alone suggests thatproactive investments and the billions make a good
economic sense. Likewise, there's theexample data to show that thinning and birding
treatments effectively protect treated for US fromfire effects as long as the thinning splashes.
If the flinning flash is left behind, the situation is often made worse.

(12:05):
The real lynchpin is getting that slashburn, and we all want to live
smoke free and that's not an option, and so getting the slashburn is about
managing the smoke and the fulcrum sortof. The pivot point is that we're
either going to have less smoke fromprescribe burning or loss more smoke from wildfires,

(12:26):
and it's the wildfire smoke. It'sdamaging to humans. It's highest in
the PM two point five missions.So changing our smoke management rules to allow
for more prescribe burning is at theheart of making a great deal of forward
progress. So the postfire expenses,the savings that we can produce with proactive

(12:52):
work, I think is really thenut of it. And to free ourselves
up to do that, we actuallyhave to be able to make more managed
sky burning smoke. It's basically abetter smoke. So so looking at the
contributing factors, just from your perspectiveand from the data that you've seen,
how much of climate change is afactor and how much is it just that

(13:15):
we're not doing this right. Well, it's for me, it's a little
bit glib to think about it aswe're just not doing it right. Climate
change an awful lot of the managementthings that have collectively contributed to sort of
this epidemic of trees. Those wereunwitting events that's sort of unfolded over time.

(13:39):
A warming climate is responsible for theexpanding annual area burn. That's a
real thing as well documented, andannual area burn is likely to increase,
but increased fuels explained increased fire severityto a great extent, and I think
it's important to be clear that publiclands weren't intentionally mismanaged and off times that's

(14:01):
put on those land managers. Thefactors that collectively contributed to increasing fire hazard
does the unfortunate consequence of not knowinghow they would work together to create these
conditions. For fifty years, sixtyyears, we are amazing and putting out
nearly all fires, but we didn'tknow that. From nineteen thirty five nineteen
eighty five, we were aided bya much cooler and moisture climate and it

(14:24):
made our efforts at fire suppression lookamazing, and so folk thought, hey,
I think we can keep fire outof the woods. And then the
climate shifted to warmer and drier conditionsafter nineteen eighty five. We've learned a
lot from stuttying historical conditions, changesto the landscape and how they've changed in
the modern era. So when youstop and think about it, the one

(14:46):
factor that we can really influence isthe fuels that have accumulated. The increased
forest area may increased density, andwe can learn from the historical landscapes directions
that we can move to create morea zillion for us. I think a
lot of people right now are feelingliving in these areas. They're feeling helpless,

(15:07):
They're they're terrified of each season isgetting worse. So looking at it
from you know, a global issueand a local issue, how can we
play a role. How can westart as individuals, you know, taking
a role to be part of thisstrategy and changing things moving forward. We
have one hundred and ninety three millionacres of national forests. These are public

(15:31):
lands, These are the people's forus, there are for us. We
can work with our local communities inour local forests, take the initiatives to
accomplish the restorative work. We canmake our homes safe for wildfire before the
fires come. There's an awful lotof resources at firewise dot org. If

(15:52):
homeowners can make to get their landscaping, their yards, their homes ready for
fires, so that if a firecomes in the surround area, firefiers will
be able to protect their home andthey'll save their home. We can work
with the force of the surround usand forge agreement and how we want to
manage these lands going forward. There'sgoing to be an awful lot of fire

(16:17):
and smoke in the future, andwhat we really have available to us is
the possibility of changing the kind offire that we have. Is theyre going
to be prescribed or is there goingto be wild Is the smoke going to
be coming from prescribe burns or fromwildfire burns. There's basically a good fire
bad fire conundrum here, and wehave the opportunity to roll up our sleeves

(16:40):
as communities decide what we want andget it done. I've been going on
a tour giving a public presentation calledthe Era of Megafires, and we've gone
to over one hundred Western communities inthe last three summers talking about this.
And communities are smart, they getit, and they know what they have
to do, and I think wejust have to get about the business of

(17:03):
getting it done. Folks need totalk about what they value, what they
want, and then make an effectiveplan with their local force to achieve those
values and goals. And they needto focus on shared values and shared goals
rather than the differences which seems tobe highlighted so much today in the media.
We need this sort out the methodsthat we can all live with to

(17:26):
achieve those ends, And most ofall, we need to make it clear
to our elected officials at all levelswhat we're willing and unwilling to live with
as end results, and work withthem to obtain those end results. On
a personal closing note, I alwayslike to ask a personal question at the
end. There's an initiative in Vancouver. It's an art initiative. It's called

(17:48):
All the Trees, and there's anarea that in Point Grade where people are
writing letters to a tree and they'veactually got artists, Indigenous people answering them.
So, if you were going towrite an email or a letter to
tree, what would you say?Since this is your life, this is
you know, what you understand,what you research, what would you say

(18:10):
to the trees right now? Whatwould I say to the trees. I've
been studying wildfires and their roll inthe forest for a long time, and
I would say to the tree thatI understand that you too must live with
wildfire. It's a it's a beginningand an end for trees and for forests.

(18:36):
It's the cycle of renewal. Forestsbegin after fires. They grow in
their young, vital and as theyage they're thinned by fires. Sometimes they're
burned, and I would say tothe tree, thanks for the service you

(18:56):
perform. You provide habitat as alife tree, You provide habitat as a
snag. You provide habitat as adownlog. You amend the soil as charcoal
after fires, You serve us fora thousand, fifteen hundred years and one
of these farms. It's amazing whatyou provide for us. Thank you that

(19:18):
beautiful. Thank you very much.Thanks for joining us today, and hopefully
we can do a follow up ina year and see that there's some progress
being made. Awesome. Thanks.Don to be a guest or sponsor this
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(20:25):
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