The first independent report card on Uncle Sam's use of prescribed burns and forest thinning to reduce the threat of wildfire in the urban interface gives the federal government mixed grades.
Overall, the federal government needs to improve its record keeping and increase public participation in planning fuel reduction treatments, according to the analysis by the Forest Guild, a nonprofit national organization of natural resource professionals.
The 31-page study focused on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Medford District and the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest but also paired the in-depth regional study with a national overview of the legal and administrative hurdles facing fuel reduction projects.
However, it gave the BLM's Medford District, which does more interface treatment than the local national forest because of its lower elevation land adjacent to private parcels, high grades for public involvement in its projects.
"What we were interested in finding out was whether the Healthy Forest Initiative (HFI) was as disastrous as some thought it would be or as wonderful as supporters had proposed," observed Zander Evans, research director for the Santa Fe, N.M.-based group.
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The initiative came two years after Congress had approved the National Fire Plan, a document detailing the needs and the budget to improve firefighting capabilities and forest health nationwide through thinning and removal of debris.
As a result of the initiative, Congress passed the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003, cosponsored by U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Hood River, which supporters said would create jobs, improve forest health and protect communities.
Working with Evans, who has a doctorate from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, on the analysis was Green Springs resident George McKinley, a guild member who owns forest land and operates a small portable sawmill. For the analysis, the two studied more than 100 federal fuel-reduction projects in southwestern Oregon.
"I think the report shows that in our region the BLM has worked pretty well to balance regulations with shifting demographic and forest trends to proactively address important issues related to fuel risk and forest health, particularly in the wildland-urban interface," McKinley said.
Until the federal government improves its reporting and monitoring, it is impossible to fully evaluate the ecological and social impacts of fuel reduction, the analysis reported.
"If you look at the accountability from a national perspective, it's hard to come to any firm conclusions — the Government Accountability Office report last year was apt," McKinley said, referring to the GAO report which found difficulties in tracking the implementation and effectiveness of the HFI projects.
"The analysis is pretty much right on as far as its conclusion," said Ed Reilly, a resource planner in the BLM's Medford District who worked with Evans and McKinley in their analysis.
"Some people had been concerned there would be much higher activity with less scrutiny from the public," he said of the implementation of HFI. "This report shows that things actually continued on in a similar activity level with similar environmental assessments.
"What happened was that we got the HFI authority and a more engaged public at the same time," he added.
As for improving accountability, systems are being created to address those issues, he said.
"But its very difficult to answer how effective a project is until a fire occurs there," he said, although noting that a fuels reduction project is intended to moderate a wildfire, not stop it cold.
The guild is encouraging the agencies and rural communities to work together, Evans said.
"We're all shooting for the same goal," he said. "We all want communities to be safer and the forests to be healthier.
"One of the things we found was where agency personnel worked closely with communities, those projects were much more likely to be successful," he added. "In southwestern Oregon, it tends to happen more often than it does nationally."
However, they noted that residents in Jackson and Josephine counties are more active than most Americans when it comes to environmental issues. The community-led fire plans are evidence of that activism, they note.
Although HFI focused on streamlining the regulatory system and reducing avenues for the public to challenge federal land management decisions, it did not decrease the amount of environmental documentation that agencies file, the analysis concluded. There was also little change in the number of projects taken to court, it added.
However, the HFI has enabled small federal projects that focus on non-controversial treatments more rapidly, it concluded.
Moreover, the report noted that prescribed burning was an under-utilized tool in the fuel reduction program.
To address the need for increased community participation, the guild has created a workbook to assist rural communities in monitoring fuel reduction treatments.
Both the analysis and workbook are available at forestguild.org/fuel_reduction_evaluation.html online.
Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or at pfattig@mailtribune.com
