21 ms·

Let Forest Fires Burn

90 points by mcone 9y ago

warrenm 9y ago
There are trees that cannot reproduce unless their seed pods are baked open Animals coming back to scorched areas carry all kinds of seeds with them that love the mineral- and carbon-rich environment Some deer can grow beautiful atypical racks only when feeding in areas ravaged by fire And burning-out old growth and underbrush allows whole new generations of forest to start because their impediments to growth are gone Seems like the best thing to do is to let the fires run their course (at least the ones started naturally) .. and maybe note the risks of living near treelines like people who live near water lines know they could be flooded
- hammock 9y ago
  >There are trees that cannot reproduce unless their seed pods are baked open Aspen and lodgepole pine
  - freehunter 9y ago
    Jack pine is another, and a nearly-extinct bird really depends on these trees. The Kirtland's Warbler relies on large stands of young jack pine trees, and jack pine cones only open in intense heat of forest fires. Really sad, the birds can't survive in super cold climates and only like reproducing in jack pine forests, so the ending ice age and the formation of the Great Lakes trapped the birds in the northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan. They can't move into the Upper Peninsula or Canada where jack pine is more common because it's too cold, and can't move further south because there aren't any jack pine forests further south. As the number of wildfires has declined, so has the number of large stands of young jack pines. This has had a devastating impact on the Kirtland's Warbler, who already had their natural habitat decimated.
    - TommyBombadil 9y ago
      Giant Sequoia is another: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoiadendron_giganteum#Ecology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoiadendron_giganteum#Ecolo...
  - warrenm 9y ago
    I knew somebody'd find the species names
- Gustomaximus 9y ago
  There is middle ground here when you control combustible material around property and let the larger parts of the bush/forest do their thing in a fire. Here is an example of this ongoing process/advise in Australia: https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/fire-information/hazard-reductions https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/fire-information/hazard-reduction...
goda90 9y ago
It's well known that because of fire fighting, there are build ups of flammable material causing subsequent fires to be bigger and hotter. I wonder if theres a point where if we just let the fires burn, they'll be so hot that the natural benefits will be lost and the forest damaged for much longer than usual. Maybe we need to ease into it by not putting out the fires, but still keeping them from getting really intense.
- stephengillie 9y ago
  I was certain this policy had been implemented decades ago. I remember seeing video of firefighters starting small, controlled fires to consume built-up debris. I must be having a 1984/Mandela/old moment.
  - crunksht 9y ago
    You are correct: https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/dbnf/home/?cid=stelprdb5281464 https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/dbnf/home/?cid=stelprdb528146...
  - LordKano 9y ago
    I distinctly remember seeing some conservation types on a tv series, I believe it was Mr. Wizard's World, doing a controlled burn to reduce the intensity of later wildfires.
woliveirajr 9y ago
Sometimes small and constant fires clean up the area, cleaning up dead leafs and so on. Constantly stopping those fires can lead to accumulation, until a great and wild fire comes and destroys more than the "nature following the natural fate" would have.
aphextron 9y ago
The problem with this is local politics. "Let wildfires burn" sounds great when it's not your multimillion dollar vacation home going up in smoke. Yes, in the long run it would be better for everyone involved. But we humans are anything but longsighted when it comes to dollars and cents.
- knieveltech 9y ago
  Remember, you don't hate Mondays, you hate capitalism.
  - msla 9y ago
    You don't hate capitalism, you hate badly-regulated capitalism. Besides, homes burn just as much in a socialist society.
    - int_19h 9y ago
      Ah, but in a socialist society you then get a new home, because the entire population is in the mandatory risk insurance pool for that, effectively. (Quality of said homes is a different and orthogonal question.)
      - msla 9y ago
        In a socialist society, you'd live where the state puts you, and any back-talk would be regarded as a mental disease (sluggishly-progressing schizophrenia, for one the USSR like to use) and treated as such. Also, I doubt the socialist state would be able to supply a new home before I was ready for a state-supplied grave.
        int_19h 9y ago
        I grew up in a socialist society - indeed, the very one that you mention. You're right that you wouldn't get your pick of where to live in most cases. But you're wrong that they wouldn't supply you with some living space right away, if the one you were living on is gone. It would be a shitty living space more likely than not (e.g. a communal apartment), but you'd have a roof over your head for sure.
msla 9y ago
Letting fires burn is standard policy at this point. We learned it the hard way, particularly after the Big Burn, or the Great Fire of 1910. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_1910 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_1910 It is uncontroversial to let isolated fires burn, but fires close to houses must be contained and fires close to towns must be contained.
- kibwen 9y ago
  I'd say later than 1910, see the 1988 Yellowstone fires: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_fires_of_1988 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_fires_of_1988 "Before the late 1960s, fires were generally believed to be detrimental for parks and forests, and management policies were aimed at suppressing fires as quickly as possible. However, as the beneficial ecological role of fire became better understood in the decades before 1988, a policy was adopted of allowing natural fires to burn under controlled conditions, which proved highly successful in reducing the area lost annually to wildfires." "In contrast, in 1988, Yellowstone was overdue for a large fire, and, in the exceptionally dry summer, the many smaller "controlled" fires combined. The fires burned discontinuously, leaping from one patch to another, leaving intervening areas untouched. Intense fires swept through some regions, burning everything in their paths. Tens of millions of trees and countless plants were killed by the wildfires, and some regions were left looking blackened and dead. However, more than half of the affected areas were burned by ground fires, which did less damage to hardier tree species. Not long after the fires ended, plant and tree species quickly reestablished themselves, and natural plant regeneration has been highly successful." I visited Yellowstone a decade ago, and remember seeing the great wide swathes of equally-sized small trees growing in the aftermath of the burnt-out areas. I met a few older people who had seen the park before the fire and were sad at its present state (some even said it was "ruined", though this has to be hyperbolic, as Yellowstone is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen), but to me it was a beautiful thing to get to witness the cycle of rebirth on such a grand scale.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    > some even said it was "ruined", though this has to be hyperbolic, as Yellowstone is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen I visited Yellowstone before, during, and after those fires. The view was ruined from one point of view - a lot of variety in tree size and age was lost in those fires, to be replaced with uniform coverage. A large party of the beauty of Yellowstone can be attributed to its wildness - how untouched by human hands it is. Yellowstone's forests post fire... felt tamed. No matter how much of an illusion it is, that wildness is something we all feel and seek while in Yellowstone. This has gotten better over the decades since, with trees no longer being as uniform in size and coverage, but it's still possible to make out the scars of those fires, if you know where to look.
elihu 9y ago
I asked a firefighter what she thought about controlled burns awhile back. She said that one of the advantages of controlled burns is that you can set them when conditions are favorable so that they won't get out of control and burn areas they didn't want to burn just then. So, the "just let it burn" strategy when fires start might lead to a lot more property damage than a strategy of proactive burning. Also, from a carbon footprint point of view, it seems advantageous to mix burning and logging, so that not all the carbon returns straight into the atmosphere.
- wahern 9y ago
  So, the "just let it burn" strategy when fires start might lead to a lot more property damage than a strategy of proactive burning. The U.S. is _huge_. There's too much land to do controlled burning. And an intentionally set fire is morally perilous, so there are strong incentives to avoid burning except where it's easy and obvious; that is, _away_ from housing or in only very small patches to create fire breaks. Also, from a carbon footprint point of view, it seems advantageous to mix burning and logging, so that not all the carbon returns straight into the atmosphere. But loggers are gonna take the good trees and leave behind the young ones, precisely the opposite of what a fire would do. I know this isn't how it's supposed to work on paper, but the incentives aren't well aligned. A natural fire isn't going to lobby Congress to increase its quota of high-value trees. I think any practical land management plan that has a shot at restoring forest health requires letting many more natural fires burn, and to burn more widely. The dilemma is that things are so bad that these fires are much more dangerous than they'd normally be. But I don't see how you ever get over that hump unless you can send out an armada of autonomous, self-replicating robots to cut down the underbrush. Perhaps we'll just have to wait for that solution.
  - discodave 9y ago
    The US is only 25% bigger than Australia and has more than 10x the population.... soo the argument that the US is too big doesn't really hold much water. * 3.797 to 2.97 square miles * 323 / 24 million
strebler 9y ago
Sure, sure, let the fires burn. It's an easy argument to make when it's not your property. What about when the fire does over $3 billion dollars in direct damages, burns 1.5 million acres and forces the evacuation of over 80K people [1]? I'm fine with tax dollars going towards trying to prevent that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Fort_McMurray_Wildfire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Fort_McMurray_Wildfire
- eesmith 9y ago
  One of the arguments, which the NYT piece mentions, is that decades of fire suppression causes a fuel buildup so that if/when a fire does occur, it is much larger, more dangerous, and harder to manage. For example, https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2016/0504/Did-fire-suppression-actually-help-cause-Alberta-s-huge-wildfires-video https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2016/0504/Did-fi... points out: "In order to prevent fire like this week’s, Alberta has engaged in a robust fire suppression program, says MacDonald. But because the province has suppressed natural fires that burn off underbrush ever 50 or more years, forests are full of fresh tinder. “Alberta has engaged in a robust fire suppression program that changed the age structure of the forest,” MacDonald told the Monitor. “Typically, forests in that part of Alberta would burn every 50 to 200 years. But with strong fire suppression, there has been a tremendous buildup of fuel.”" As a politician, would you rather say "we'll have a forest fire in the area every 10 years" or "we'll make sure there are no fires" .. and conveniently or optimistically omit the "until after I'm long gone, but then we'll have a real doozy of a blaze which will be worse than all of the little fires put together". In addition, as that Wikipedia article points out, fire fighters came in from other provinces, the national government, and even South Africa. Do you think the local people paid for all of that? Effectively this fire fighting acts as an insurance subsidy. It's possible to build houses to withstand wildfires, as people have done in Australia and southern California. These designs work best when fires are more frequent, because those fires are less intense, with less fuel to burn. However, these designs are also more expensive. If people are convinced that the fires will be suppressed, they are not going to spend the money, and the building codes won't change to require better wildfire resistance. Nor is it easy for individuals to switch to safer building designs because when the fires do come they will be much more intense than it should have been without decades of fire suppression.
pvaldes 9y ago
The problem is that mature trees store things that humans need badly to survive. When a forest burn entirely you can say goodbye to a lot of much needed water for years, and there is also a problem with carbon. We want carbon stored in the trees, not to be released in the air. And the soil layer needs decades to be created, but can vanish in a week. You can't just think in terms of 10 years. This creatures can live thousands of years. What is very good for some animals, plants and fungi can be also very bad for other animals, plants and fungi. A net of burn areas isolating islands of intact areas would be a better solution probably providing a patched environment with lots of oportunities. And we should remember that some very old forests reach a mature level that is fire resistent (plenty of humidity in soil). Laurisilva forests for example do not start burning unless a considerable amount of energy is applied.
sizzzzlerz 9y ago
In a book about the smoke jumpers from several years ago, one of the members made a profound statement, jokingly, probably, but maybe not. He said that instead of battling wildfires the way we do now, we just throw money on the fire and wait until the rains come. With the continued droughts throughout the west and up into Alaska and Canada along with the effects of global warming, the forest lands are just dry tinder waiting for a spark. Having the fires grow so large, they can't be put out will become more and more common. Maybe letting them burn until the rains come is the right solution.
- falcolas 9y ago
  One more thing that's really hurt has been beetle kill. There are stands of trees killed by beetles which have been waiting for the right spark. They've been working for years to clear out these tinderboxes, but it's hard work (especially since those efforts have to fight against the anti-logging camps). http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/pine-beetles/rosner-text http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/pine-beetles/rosne...
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    ISTM that nothing would have been as good a firebreak against the beetle onslaught as actual firebreaks left by uncontrolled fires would have been?
    - falcolas 9y ago
      Depends on how recent the burn was. Within a year, maybe two? Perhaps. After that? Plenty of new trees to chomp down on. And unless explicitly directed, forest fires rarely create anything that could be considered to be a "break" between two sections of forest. Usually more like a "blob" in the middle of a forest.
falcolas 9y ago
Speaking as a Montanan here. The policy of "let some fires burn" has been in practice for a few decades now in our corner of the woods. Ever since the Yellowstone fire in the 80's, we've focused our efforts on containment instead of extinguishment (i.e. make a best effort to keep it away from human settlements); letting land lost to the fires just burn out naturally while stopping them from claiming too much land. Should we let them burn more? Perhaps. But it's never so easy. The cost of just letting some go when they're a couple dozen or even hundred acres can spiral out of control when you're suddenly attempting to stop a 300,000 acre fire that has already burned out 16 homes and is threatening towns. Yes, firefighters die fighting fires. Civilians also die when an uncontained fire goes from a theoretical threat on the horizon to consuming their house in a matter of minutes. Fire doesn't respect property boundaries, and can travel a tremendous speeds (upwards of 10mph). And they aren't really like floods - it's not just the forests that burn, it's the flat lands with all the nice dead grasses. Grass fires can move even faster than forest fires, given a wind to push it along. Humans aren't the only ones affected, either. The livestock which used that land for feed still has to be fed, or face starvation. Argue all you want about the inhumanity of our treatment of livestock generally; letting them starve due to a lack of hay (tied to a lack of money) is worse. There are some who feel that they should not have to support those affected by natural disasters. I'm sure others will be happy to return the favor. (300,000 acres ~= 142,000 ha) https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5399/ https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5399/
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > Grass fires can move even faster than forest fires, given a wind to push it along. In earlier times, farm fields actually were separated by bushes, patches of rocks, tiny rivers, whatever. Humans have flattened all of this, in order to make really huge strips of farmland that can be worked on really, really efficiently by machines. Not only has this practice destroyed the living space of small animals like rabbits or birds, but it also contributes massively to this problem as there's nothing left to stop or slow down winds :(
  - falcolas 9y ago
    Yeah - though at least we've learned a little from the dust bowl lesson.
ktRolster 9y ago
This quote from the article is important: Still, considerable disagreement remains among scientists about exactly how forests should be managed.
- eesmith 9y ago
  Really? I thought that was a wishy-washy statement. As you crank up the tightness of "exact", you'll always get more and more disagreement. Is there any large science-based policy decision where there is 100% agreement among scientists, or where there hasn't been considerable disagreement between some of them?
  - ktRolster 9y ago
    If scientists who have studied the field for years disagree, then we (who barely know anything about it) should be careful in choosing sides.
    - eesmith 9y ago
      Exactly. There's is no field where that statement isn't true. Take CFCs in the atmosphere, affecting the ozone layer. DuPont scientists were against the Montreal Protocol, saying things like "We believe there is no imminent crisis that demands unilateral regulation" (quoted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol ). So saying simply that there is disagreement is wishy-washy and unimportant.
davidbanham 9y ago
In Australia we do a lot of controlled burning through the winter. They're called "hazard reduction burns" and are carefully planned operations involving lots of firefighters and appliances. The aim is to burn the leaf litter and other fuels, but not let the fire get hot enough to kill established trees. You start to see signs of regrowth very quickly. HRs are usually done in the late winter. By mid spring the landscape is an incredible sight of bright green new growth out of black tree trunks. There are a lot of species of trees and plants native to the Australian bush that need fire as part of their breeding and growth cycles. It's integral to land management here.
- dmoy 9y ago
  The US does a lot of controlled burning as well.
  - King-Aaron 9y ago
    We specifically call them 'hazard reductions' or 'prescribed burns' here now, because of the numerous times 'controlled' burns became rapidly uncontrolled... :P
- bamboozled 9y ago
  Not sure if you've ever been to parts of Australia where "fire-stick farming" [1] is still practised? It's really amazing to witness being performed. These places don't seem to ever have wild damaging fires like other parts of Australia, due to a lack of fuel build up, and the environment in these places always look "immaculate", almost like a freshly cleaned apartment. The smell of these slow burning fires through winter is really nice. I've spent a lot of time on the East Coast of Australia too, where the "bush" is managed the European way, and there is a lot of problems with wild fires, invasive species (introduced) and a less healthy looking landscape. The hazard reduction burning in Australia seems to be more about establishing parameters to protect property more than anything else? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire-stick_farming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire-stick_farming
  - davidbanham 9y ago
smileysteve 9y ago
I am under the impression that fire departments regularly practice "controlled burns" to destroy brush and have fires occur "naturally", during damp times and away from properties. At least I am under this impression from controlled burns happening in Talladega National Forest and Cohutta wilderness.
- vkou 9y ago
  They used to do a lot more of them. Unfortunately, with cuts to that part of their budget, controlled burns in the Pacific North-West are a thing of the past. Instead of spending money and time on controlled burns, we now spend money and time on fighting uncontrollable firestorms.
nitwit005 9y ago
The missing step is often that we continue to let communities pop up in these areas that we fully expect to periodically burn down. Of course, we often still let people build their houses in flood planes, but we seem to be slowly getting better at that.
- falcolas 9y ago
  Or in zones where there are catastrophic earthquakes on a regular basis. Or hurricanes. Or tornadoes. Or blizzards. > we often still let people build their houses in flood planes The best farmland is on flood plains; good luck with holding them back. Let's be honest for a moment: there's no place in America which is safe from every regularly occurring natural disaster. Yet we still live here.
  - sizzzzlerz 9y ago
    Absolutely true. But we need to expose the dangers of building and living in these hazardous areas and make the owners share significant portions of the costs of protecting them. Here, in California, you can buy earthquake insurance but at a high premium and high deductabl but everyone is quite aware of the fact that the earth can shift any time. The same should be the case for building in areas subject to wildfires, or avalanches, or tidal surge, or tornadoes, or hurricanes.
    - falcolas 9y ago
      > make the owners share significant portions of the costs of protecting them Well, practically speaking, we do. In the form of taxes, which are redistributed according to need by FEMA and associated agencies. This is definitely one place I would not trust a for-profit insurance company given the typical cautions around fire insurance for a home - use it only as a last resort or find yourself unable to get coverage.
      - sizzzzlerz 9y ago
        In the event of a major catastrophe, it really won't make any difference who is carrying the insurance. They're all going to run out of money and will only pay off the early birds or a fraction of the policy's coverage to all. And by major, here, I'm think an 8 earthquake rupturing the San Andreas fault from San Diego to the Tehachapis or a multi-state cat 5 tornado swarm in OK, NE, KS, IA, and MO. Are they likely? Sure but improbable. The joker, however, will be the effect of global warming and what its going to do to the weather.
SandersAK 9y ago
Some forests are self-regulating when it comes to fire. Some forests are not. What defines forest is actually pretty complicated, even for Federal and state agencies. Controlled burns work in conjunction with thinning practices and bone-piling (stacking big burns away from other areas). The root of the problem has been and continue to be that structurally we separate "fuels" and "prevention" teams in the forest service. Where Fuels deals with assessing when and how to burn, and Prevention operationalizes it and also does fire fighting. Lastly, fire management suffers from a lack of talent and shared learning as fire career paths involve people moving to different regions which are geographically incredibly diverse. You don't fight fire in the east side of Oregon like you do in Florida. The lack of cohesion, mixed with a serious lack of funding, and a lot of common misconceptions publicly leads to a mishmash of fire management across the country. source - was a firefighter. left because of all these issues.
- namlem 9y ago
  Do you think it would help to hold some sort of conference every year or two about firefighting techniques and science?
  - SandersAK 9y ago
    They do have conferences. I think the bigger issue is that there isn't really a good budget for this stuff. Most of the budget goes to handling fires that are really out of control, and there's more and more of those every year. If you doubled the budget, hired fuels teams with scientists at the head of the teams (instead of fire fighters) and applied that budget to thinning and controlled burns, you'd probably have much safer more defensible forests areas. Also, there's a huge gray area around what fires to prioritize and when to fight them. A good example of "letting it rip" and "let them log" was the Egley complex fire in 2007 (one of my last fires!): https://www.forestsandrangelands.gov/success/stories/2009/nfp_2009_or_fs_manf_fuels.shtml https://www.forestsandrangelands.gov/success/stories/2009/nf...
- jonnycoder 9y ago
  Speaking of eastern Oregon, the environmental lobby has a huge influence on this as they sue the USFS quite often. They never did salvage log from the Canyon Creek fire right?
agumonkey 9y ago
Anybody know websites to discuss ideas and tech about forest fire fighting ? (be it thermodynamics, organization, monitoring, chemistry etc)
jessaustin 9y ago
It seems that USA's War On Fire has had the same results as its other Wars, On Drugs and Terrorism: more fires with more harmful results. We will be the laughingstocks of history, if humanity somehow survives us.
framebit 9y ago
Jared Diamond discusses western US wildfires in his fascinating book Collapse. Interesting perspective for anybody interested in this topic.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
zamalek 9y ago
I very much agree with this theory. The problem is that fire does not respect the anthropocene. We have changed the wilderness in nontrivial ways (e.g. forestry). Fuel is far more abundant and dense. Every species (including plants) on the planet evolved to deal with a certain amount of fire - including the appropriate degree of propagation. We've unavoidably upset that balance and so a radically different solution is required. Although I don't know what that solution is, it looks nothing like what we are doing today.
cortexio 9y ago
So euhm last time i told HN "You should stop reading retarded nytimes articles", i got downvoted. Can u guys downvote me again? because my opinion hasn't changed.

90 points by mcone 9y ago

There are trees that cannot reproduce unless their seed pods are baked open Animals coming back to scorched areas carry all kinds of seeds with them that love the mineral- and carbon-rich environment Some deer can grow beautiful atypical racks only when feeding in areas ravaged by fire And burning-out old growth and underbrush allows whole new generations of forest to start because their impediments to growth are gone Seems like the best thing to do is to let the fires run their course (at least the ones started naturally) .. and maybe note the risks of living near treelines like people who live near water lines know they could be flooded

hammock 9y ago
>There are trees that cannot reproduce unless their seed pods are baked open Aspen and lodgepole pine
- freehunter 9y ago
  Jack pine is another, and a nearly-extinct bird really depends on these trees. The Kirtland's Warbler relies on large stands of young jack pine trees, and jack pine cones only open in intense heat of forest fires. Really sad, the birds can't survive in super cold climates and only like reproducing in jack pine forests, so the ending ice age and the formation of the Great Lakes trapped the birds in the northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan. They can't move into the Upper Peninsula or Canada where jack pine is more common because it's too cold, and can't move further south because there aren't any jack pine forests further south. As the number of wildfires has declined, so has the number of large stands of young jack pines. This has had a devastating impact on the Kirtland's Warbler, who already had their natural habitat decimated.
  - TommyBombadil 9y ago
    Giant Sequoia is another: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoiadendron_giganteum#Ecology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoiadendron_giganteum#Ecolo...
- warrenm 9y ago
  I knew somebody'd find the species names
Gustomaximus 9y ago
There is middle ground here when you control combustible material around property and let the larger parts of the bush/forest do their thing in a fire. Here is an example of this ongoing process/advise in Australia: https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/fire-information/hazard-reductions https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/fire-information/hazard-reduction...

goda90 9y ago

It's well known that because of fire fighting, there are build ups of flammable material causing subsequent fires to be bigger and hotter. I wonder if theres a point where if we just let the fires burn, they'll be so hot that the natural benefits will be lost and the forest damaged for much longer than usual. Maybe we need to ease into it by not putting out the fires, but still keeping them from getting really intense.

stephengillie 9y ago
I was certain this policy had been implemented decades ago. I remember seeing video of firefighters starting small, controlled fires to consume built-up debris. I must be having a 1984/Mandela/old moment.
- crunksht 9y ago
  You are correct: https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/dbnf/home/?cid=stelprdb5281464 https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/dbnf/home/?cid=stelprdb528146...
- LordKano 9y ago
  I distinctly remember seeing some conservation types on a tv series, I believe it was Mr. Wizard's World, doing a controlled burn to reduce the intensity of later wildfires.

woliveirajr 9y ago

Sometimes small and constant fires clean up the area, cleaning up dead leafs and so on. Constantly stopping those fires can lead to accumulation, until a great and wild fire comes and destroys more than the "nature following the natural fate" would have.

aphextron 9y ago

The problem with this is local politics. "Let wildfires burn" sounds great when it's not your multimillion dollar vacation home going up in smoke. Yes, in the long run it would be better for everyone involved. But we humans are anything but longsighted when it comes to dollars and cents.

knieveltech 9y ago
Remember, you don't hate Mondays, you hate capitalism.
- msla 9y ago
  You don't hate capitalism, you hate badly-regulated capitalism. Besides, homes burn just as much in a socialist society.
  - int_19h 9y ago
    Ah, but in a socialist society you then get a new home, because the entire population is in the mandatory risk insurance pool for that, effectively. (Quality of said homes is a different and orthogonal question.)
    - msla 9y ago
      In a socialist society, you'd live where the state puts you, and any back-talk would be regarded as a mental disease (sluggishly-progressing schizophrenia, for one the USSR like to use) and treated as such. Also, I doubt the socialist state would be able to supply a new home before I was ready for a state-supplied grave.
      - int_19h 9y ago
        I grew up in a socialist society - indeed, the very one that you mention. You're right that you wouldn't get your pick of where to live in most cases. But you're wrong that they wouldn't supply you with some living space right away, if the one you were living on is gone. It would be a shitty living space more likely than not (e.g. a communal apartment), but you'd have a roof over your head for sure.

msla 9y ago

Letting fires burn is standard policy at this point. We learned it the hard way, particularly after the Big Burn, or the Great Fire of 1910. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_1910 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_1910 It is uncontroversial to let isolated fires burn, but fires close to houses must be contained and fires close to towns must be contained.

kibwen 9y ago
I'd say later than 1910, see the 1988 Yellowstone fires: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_fires_of_1988 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_fires_of_1988 "Before the late 1960s, fires were generally believed to be detrimental for parks and forests, and management policies were aimed at suppressing fires as quickly as possible. However, as the beneficial ecological role of fire became better understood in the decades before 1988, a policy was adopted of allowing natural fires to burn under controlled conditions, which proved highly successful in reducing the area lost annually to wildfires." "In contrast, in 1988, Yellowstone was overdue for a large fire, and, in the exceptionally dry summer, the many smaller "controlled" fires combined. The fires burned discontinuously, leaping from one patch to another, leaving intervening areas untouched. Intense fires swept through some regions, burning everything in their paths. Tens of millions of trees and countless plants were killed by the wildfires, and some regions were left looking blackened and dead. However, more than half of the affected areas were burned by ground fires, which did less damage to hardier tree species. Not long after the fires ended, plant and tree species quickly reestablished themselves, and natural plant regeneration has been highly successful." I visited Yellowstone a decade ago, and remember seeing the great wide swathes of equally-sized small trees growing in the aftermath of the burnt-out areas. I met a few older people who had seen the park before the fire and were sad at its present state (some even said it was "ruined", though this has to be hyperbolic, as Yellowstone is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen), but to me it was a beautiful thing to get to witness the cycle of rebirth on such a grand scale.
- falcolas 9y ago
  > some even said it was "ruined", though this has to be hyperbolic, as Yellowstone is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen I visited Yellowstone before, during, and after those fires. The view was ruined from one point of view - a lot of variety in tree size and age was lost in those fires, to be replaced with uniform coverage. A large party of the beauty of Yellowstone can be attributed to its wildness - how untouched by human hands it is. Yellowstone's forests post fire... felt tamed. No matter how much of an illusion it is, that wildness is something we all feel and seek while in Yellowstone. This has gotten better over the decades since, with trees no longer being as uniform in size and coverage, but it's still possible to make out the scars of those fires, if you know where to look.

elihu 9y ago

I asked a firefighter what she thought about controlled burns awhile back. She said that one of the advantages of controlled burns is that you can set them when conditions are favorable so that they won't get out of control and burn areas they didn't want to burn just then. So, the "just let it burn" strategy when fires start might lead to a lot more property damage than a strategy of proactive burning. Also, from a carbon footprint point of view, it seems advantageous to mix burning and logging, so that not all the carbon returns straight into the atmosphere.

wahern 9y ago
So, the "just let it burn" strategy when fires start might lead to a lot more property damage than a strategy of proactive burning. The U.S. is _huge_. There's too much land to do controlled burning. And an intentionally set fire is morally perilous, so there are strong incentives to avoid burning except where it's easy and obvious; that is, _away_ from housing or in only very small patches to create fire breaks. Also, from a carbon footprint point of view, it seems advantageous to mix burning and logging, so that not all the carbon returns straight into the atmosphere. But loggers are gonna take the good trees and leave behind the young ones, precisely the opposite of what a fire would do. I know this isn't how it's supposed to work on paper, but the incentives aren't well aligned. A natural fire isn't going to lobby Congress to increase its quota of high-value trees. I think any practical land management plan that has a shot at restoring forest health requires letting many more natural fires burn, and to burn more widely. The dilemma is that things are so bad that these fires are much more dangerous than they'd normally be. But I don't see how you ever get over that hump unless you can send out an armada of autonomous, self-replicating robots to cut down the underbrush. Perhaps we'll just have to wait for that solution.
- discodave 9y ago
  The US is only 25% bigger than Australia and has more than 10x the population.... soo the argument that the US is too big doesn't really hold much water. * 3.797 to 2.97 square miles * 323 / 24 million

strebler 9y ago

Sure, sure, let the fires burn. It's an easy argument to make when it's not your property. What about when the fire does over $3 billion dollars in direct damages, burns 1.5 million acres and forces the evacuation of over 80K people [1]? I'm fine with tax dollars going towards trying to prevent that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Fort_McMurray_Wildfire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Fort_McMurray_Wildfire

eesmith 9y ago
One of the arguments, which the NYT piece mentions, is that decades of fire suppression causes a fuel buildup so that if/when a fire does occur, it is much larger, more dangerous, and harder to manage. For example, https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2016/0504/Did-fire-suppression-actually-help-cause-Alberta-s-huge-wildfires-video https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2016/0504/Did-fi... points out: "In order to prevent fire like this week’s, Alberta has engaged in a robust fire suppression program, says MacDonald. But because the province has suppressed natural fires that burn off underbrush ever 50 or more years, forests are full of fresh tinder. “Alberta has engaged in a robust fire suppression program that changed the age structure of the forest,” MacDonald told the Monitor. “Typically, forests in that part of Alberta would burn every 50 to 200 years. But with strong fire suppression, there has been a tremendous buildup of fuel.”" As a politician, would you rather say "we'll have a forest fire in the area every 10 years" or "we'll make sure there are no fires" .. and conveniently or optimistically omit the "until after I'm long gone, but then we'll have a real doozy of a blaze which will be worse than all of the little fires put together". In addition, as that Wikipedia article points out, fire fighters came in from other provinces, the national government, and even South Africa. Do you think the local people paid for all of that? Effectively this fire fighting acts as an insurance subsidy. It's possible to build houses to withstand wildfires, as people have done in Australia and southern California. These designs work best when fires are more frequent, because those fires are less intense, with less fuel to burn. However, these designs are also more expensive. If people are convinced that the fires will be suppressed, they are not going to spend the money, and the building codes won't change to require better wildfire resistance. Nor is it easy for individuals to switch to safer building designs because when the fires do come they will be much more intense than it should have been without decades of fire suppression.

pvaldes 9y ago

The problem is that mature trees store things that humans need badly to survive. When a forest burn entirely you can say goodbye to a lot of much needed water for years, and there is also a problem with carbon. We want carbon stored in the trees, not to be released in the air. And the soil layer needs decades to be created, but can vanish in a week. You can't just think in terms of 10 years. This creatures can live thousands of years. What is very good for some animals, plants and fungi can be also very bad for other animals, plants and fungi. A net of burn areas isolating islands of intact areas would be a better solution probably providing a patched environment with lots of oportunities. And we should remember that some very old forests reach a mature level that is fire resistent (plenty of humidity in soil). Laurisilva forests for example do not start burning unless a considerable amount of energy is applied.

sizzzzlerz 9y ago

In a book about the smoke jumpers from several years ago, one of the members made a profound statement, jokingly, probably, but maybe not. He said that instead of battling wildfires the way we do now, we just throw money on the fire and wait until the rains come. With the continued droughts throughout the west and up into Alaska and Canada along with the effects of global warming, the forest lands are just dry tinder waiting for a spark. Having the fires grow so large, they can't be put out will become more and more common. Maybe letting them burn until the rains come is the right solution.

falcolas 9y ago
One more thing that's really hurt has been beetle kill. There are stands of trees killed by beetles which have been waiting for the right spark. They've been working for years to clear out these tinderboxes, but it's hard work (especially since those efforts have to fight against the anti-logging camps). http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/pine-beetles/rosner-text http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/pine-beetles/rosne...
- jessaustin 9y ago
  ISTM that nothing would have been as good a firebreak against the beetle onslaught as actual firebreaks left by uncontrolled fires would have been?
  - falcolas 9y ago
    Depends on how recent the burn was. Within a year, maybe two? Perhaps. After that? Plenty of new trees to chomp down on. And unless explicitly directed, forest fires rarely create anything that could be considered to be a "break" between two sections of forest. Usually more like a "blob" in the middle of a forest.

falcolas 9y ago

Speaking as a Montanan here. The policy of "let some fires burn" has been in practice for a few decades now in our corner of the woods. Ever since the Yellowstone fire in the 80's, we've focused our efforts on containment instead of extinguishment (i.e. make a best effort to keep it away from human settlements); letting land lost to the fires just burn out naturally while stopping them from claiming too much land. Should we let them burn more? Perhaps. But it's never so easy. The cost of just letting some go when they're a couple dozen or even hundred acres can spiral out of control when you're suddenly attempting to stop a 300,000 acre fire that has already burned out 16 homes and is threatening towns. Yes, firefighters die fighting fires. Civilians also die when an uncontained fire goes from a theoretical threat on the horizon to consuming their house in a matter of minutes. Fire doesn't respect property boundaries, and can travel a tremendous speeds (upwards of 10mph). And they aren't really like floods - it's not just the forests that burn, it's the flat lands with all the nice dead grasses. Grass fires can move even faster than forest fires, given a wind to push it along. Humans aren't the only ones affected, either. The livestock which used that land for feed still has to be fed, or face starvation. Argue all you want about the inhumanity of our treatment of livestock generally; letting them starve due to a lack of hay (tied to a lack of money) is worse. There are some who feel that they should not have to support those affected by natural disasters. I'm sure others will be happy to return the favor. (300,000 acres ~= 142,000 ha) https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5399/ https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5399/

mschuster91 9y ago
> Grass fires can move even faster than forest fires, given a wind to push it along. In earlier times, farm fields actually were separated by bushes, patches of rocks, tiny rivers, whatever. Humans have flattened all of this, in order to make really huge strips of farmland that can be worked on really, really efficiently by machines. Not only has this practice destroyed the living space of small animals like rabbits or birds, but it also contributes massively to this problem as there's nothing left to stop or slow down winds :(
- falcolas 9y ago
  Yeah - though at least we've learned a little from the dust bowl lesson.

ktRolster 9y ago

This quote from the article is important: Still, considerable disagreement remains among scientists about exactly how forests should be managed.

eesmith 9y ago
Really? I thought that was a wishy-washy statement. As you crank up the tightness of "exact", you'll always get more and more disagreement. Is there any large science-based policy decision where there is 100% agreement among scientists, or where there hasn't been considerable disagreement between some of them?
- ktRolster 9y ago
  If scientists who have studied the field for years disagree, then we (who barely know anything about it) should be careful in choosing sides.
  - eesmith 9y ago
    Exactly. There's is no field where that statement isn't true. Take CFCs in the atmosphere, affecting the ozone layer. DuPont scientists were against the Montreal Protocol, saying things like "We believe there is no imminent crisis that demands unilateral regulation" (quoted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol ). So saying simply that there is disagreement is wishy-washy and unimportant.

davidbanham 9y ago

In Australia we do a lot of controlled burning through the winter. They're called "hazard reduction burns" and are carefully planned operations involving lots of firefighters and appliances. The aim is to burn the leaf litter and other fuels, but not let the fire get hot enough to kill established trees. You start to see signs of regrowth very quickly. HRs are usually done in the late winter. By mid spring the landscape is an incredible sight of bright green new growth out of black tree trunks. There are a lot of species of trees and plants native to the Australian bush that need fire as part of their breeding and growth cycles. It's integral to land management here.

dmoy 9y ago
The US does a lot of controlled burning as well.
- King-Aaron 9y ago
  We specifically call them 'hazard reductions' or 'prescribed burns' here now, because of the numerous times 'controlled' burns became rapidly uncontrolled... :P
bamboozled 9y ago
Not sure if you've ever been to parts of Australia where "fire-stick farming" [1] is still practised? It's really amazing to witness being performed. These places don't seem to ever have wild damaging fires like other parts of Australia, due to a lack of fuel build up, and the environment in these places always look "immaculate", almost like a freshly cleaned apartment. The smell of these slow burning fires through winter is really nice. I've spent a lot of time on the East Coast of Australia too, where the "bush" is managed the European way, and there is a lot of problems with wild fires, invasive species (introduced) and a less healthy looking landscape. The hazard reduction burning in Australia seems to be more about establishing parameters to protect property more than anything else? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire-stick_farming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire-stick_farming
- davidbanham 9y ago

smileysteve 9y ago

I am under the impression that fire departments regularly practice "controlled burns" to destroy brush and have fires occur "naturally", during damp times and away from properties. At least I am under this impression from controlled burns happening in Talladega National Forest and Cohutta wilderness.

vkou 9y ago
They used to do a lot more of them. Unfortunately, with cuts to that part of their budget, controlled burns in the Pacific North-West are a thing of the past. Instead of spending money and time on controlled burns, we now spend money and time on fighting uncontrollable firestorms.

nitwit005 9y ago

The missing step is often that we continue to let communities pop up in these areas that we fully expect to periodically burn down. Of course, we often still let people build their houses in flood planes, but we seem to be slowly getting better at that.

falcolas 9y ago
Or in zones where there are catastrophic earthquakes on a regular basis. Or hurricanes. Or tornadoes. Or blizzards. > we often still let people build their houses in flood planes The best farmland is on flood plains; good luck with holding them back. Let's be honest for a moment: there's no place in America which is safe from every regularly occurring natural disaster. Yet we still live here.
- sizzzzlerz 9y ago
  Absolutely true. But we need to expose the dangers of building and living in these hazardous areas and make the owners share significant portions of the costs of protecting them. Here, in California, you can buy earthquake insurance but at a high premium and high deductabl but everyone is quite aware of the fact that the earth can shift any time. The same should be the case for building in areas subject to wildfires, or avalanches, or tidal surge, or tornadoes, or hurricanes.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    > make the owners share significant portions of the costs of protecting them Well, practically speaking, we do. In the form of taxes, which are redistributed according to need by FEMA and associated agencies. This is definitely one place I would not trust a for-profit insurance company given the typical cautions around fire insurance for a home - use it only as a last resort or find yourself unable to get coverage.
    - sizzzzlerz 9y ago
      In the event of a major catastrophe, it really won't make any difference who is carrying the insurance. They're all going to run out of money and will only pay off the early birds or a fraction of the policy's coverage to all. And by major, here, I'm think an 8 earthquake rupturing the San Andreas fault from San Diego to the Tehachapis or a multi-state cat 5 tornado swarm in OK, NE, KS, IA, and MO. Are they likely? Sure but improbable. The joker, however, will be the effect of global warming and what its going to do to the weather.

SandersAK 9y ago

Some forests are self-regulating when it comes to fire. Some forests are not. What defines forest is actually pretty complicated, even for Federal and state agencies. Controlled burns work in conjunction with thinning practices and bone-piling (stacking big burns away from other areas). The root of the problem has been and continue to be that structurally we separate "fuels" and "prevention" teams in the forest service. Where Fuels deals with assessing when and how to burn, and Prevention operationalizes it and also does fire fighting. Lastly, fire management suffers from a lack of talent and shared learning as fire career paths involve people moving to different regions which are geographically incredibly diverse. You don't fight fire in the east side of Oregon like you do in Florida. The lack of cohesion, mixed with a serious lack of funding, and a lot of common misconceptions publicly leads to a mishmash of fire management across the country. source - was a firefighter. left because of all these issues.

namlem 9y ago
Do you think it would help to hold some sort of conference every year or two about firefighting techniques and science?
- SandersAK 9y ago
  They do have conferences. I think the bigger issue is that there isn't really a good budget for this stuff. Most of the budget goes to handling fires that are really out of control, and there's more and more of those every year. If you doubled the budget, hired fuels teams with scientists at the head of the teams (instead of fire fighters) and applied that budget to thinning and controlled burns, you'd probably have much safer more defensible forests areas. Also, there's a huge gray area around what fires to prioritize and when to fight them. A good example of "letting it rip" and "let them log" was the Egley complex fire in 2007 (one of my last fires!): https://www.forestsandrangelands.gov/success/stories/2009/nfp_2009_or_fs_manf_fuels.shtml https://www.forestsandrangelands.gov/success/stories/2009/nf...
jonnycoder 9y ago
Speaking of eastern Oregon, the environmental lobby has a huge influence on this as they sue the USFS quite often. They never did salvage log from the Canyon Creek fire right?

agumonkey 9y ago

Anybody know websites to discuss ideas and tech about forest fire fighting ? (be it thermodynamics, organization, monitoring, chemistry etc)

jessaustin 9y ago

It seems that USA's War On Fire has had the same results as its other Wars, On Drugs and Terrorism: more fires with more harmful results. We will be the laughingstocks of history, if humanity somehow survives us.

framebit 9y ago

Jared Diamond discusses western US wildfires in his fascinating book Collapse. Interesting perspective for anybody interested in this topic.

deleted 9y ago

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zamalek 9y ago

I very much agree with this theory. The problem is that fire does not respect the anthropocene. We have changed the wilderness in nontrivial ways (e.g. forestry). Fuel is far more abundant and dense. Every species (including plants) on the planet evolved to deal with a certain amount of fire - including the appropriate degree of propagation. We've unavoidably upset that balance and so a radically different solution is required. Although I don't know what that solution is, it looks nothing like what we are doing today.

cortexio 9y ago

So euhm last time i told HN "You should stop reading retarded nytimes articles", i got downvoted. Can u guys downvote me again? because my opinion hasn't changed.