A Call to Action A US National Emergency: A Lack of Forest Maintenance Resulting in Destructive Wildfires By Michael T. Rains During the latter part of my almost 50-year career with the US Forest Service, I was called upon to help craft, with the Department of the Interior, what would become known as the National Fire Plan. The official title of the report is Managing the Impacts of Wildfires on Communities and the Environment. It was written 20 years ago. The critical feature of the National Fire Plan was “hazardous fuels reduction improves forest health and its resiliency to fire.” Unfortunately, not much has changed in terms of landscape resiliency since then. In fact, land conditions have deteriorated. For example, in 2001, there was an estimated 38 million acres on our national forests considered to be at high risk from destructive wildfires. Today, the estimate is about 90 million acres. My final National Leadership Council meeting with the Forest Service was in Washington, DC, on December 3, 2015. At that meeting, we talked about the next 100 years of conservation and creating more resistant, resilient landscapes as benchmarks of success. “Now is our time,” the chief concluded. I retired in 2016. Soon it will be six years since that historic meeting when so much was said. Looking back, real progress has been almost nonexistent. Wildfires rage, winter arrives, and then we forget. The 2021 fire season is far from over and already almost five million acres have burned, about 30 percent more, to date, than the destructive 2020 fire year. We cannot wait any longer. It’s time for America to address what has become a national emergency. Accordingly, in 2018, I decided to organize my thoughts into a Call to Action. The official title of the document is longer: Lack of Forest Maintenance Resulting in Destructive Wildfire . But most simply refer to it as a Call to Action. The phrase is not new. But I wanted this Call to Action to address a national emergency: the lack of healthy, resilient forests—forests are more than just trees—and associated large, high-intensity wildfires that destroy everything in their path. The mantra of this Call to Action is simple: “Sound forest maintenance ensures effective fire management.” The initial Call to Action was posted more than a year ago as a petition (see also the Evergreen Foundation). As of September 2, 2021, 4,880 people had signed the Call to Action. Honestly, the number should be at least five million! Please read the petition and, if you can, add your name to the growing number of supporters. The Call to Action is updated weekly with new numbers and comments. It includes a: The Dixie Fire burned much of the town of Greenville, California, in August. As of September 15, the fire had burned more than 1,500 square miles. Photo by Felton Davis/Flickr. • National Emergency Commitment • Statement of Intent • Vision • Strategy • 10-Year Plan of Work The national emergency commitment is a declaration by federal, state, and local governments to maintain America’s forests so that large destructive wildfires will be reduced. The statement of intent announces the nature of a long-term campaign and critical leadership. The vision is to ensure America’s forests are healthy, sustainable, and more resilient to disturbances in order to protect people, landscapes, and communities from the destruction of large, high-intensity wildfires. Additional investments are key to success. In the mid-1990s, about 16 percent of the Forest Service budget went toward the fire effort. It is now more than half the agency’s budget. If the 2022 proposed budget prevails, that figure will approach 70 percent. The need for additional resources to increase forest maintenance cannot be overstated. A funding gap has been created, and it has never been closed. The estimate: up to an additional $5.5 billion annually for about five to seven years. Yes, it’s a big number, but as the impacts of forest maintenance materialize, less and less funding Continued on page 18 national (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) standard. See the “Share NRM Today ” page for more information. Opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of NRM Today . Disagree with a writer’s opinion? Write a letter to the editor. Author guidelines . Contributions of articles that focus on recent NRM news, research, tech-nologies, and practices are welcome. Subscribe for free after registering. Please consider supporting NRM Today . October 2021 ® NRM Today NRM Today Natural Resources Management Today P.O. Box 1092 , Welches, OR 97067 www.nrmtoday.com Editor, Publisher, & Bartender Steve Wilent 503-622-3033 Steve@nrmtoday.com Copy Editor Extraordinaire Lorna L. Notsch llnotsch@gmail.com Queen of Finance/Administration Lara J. Wilent Lara@nrmtoday.com Guidance Councellor Marcus Aurelius Advertising : Contact Steve Wilent, 503-622-3033, email: Steve@nrmtoday.com. Copyright © 2021, NRM Today Share it fairly. NRM Today content is li-censed under the Creative Commons Attribu-tion-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Inter-2
Natural Resources Management Today October 2021: Page 2
