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The onset of summer means many things to different people.
For young people graduating from high school, it means the official beginning of adulthood. For younger children and teachers, it means that summer vacation can finally get underway.
But for people throughout rural Oregon, it means the auspicious start of what have become increasingly disastrous fire seasons.
The past several days have seen a notable increase in statewide fire-related activity, most often started by lightning strikes and careless people. The reality is that many of the catastrophic wildfires that happen every year could be easily prevented through sound, science-based forest management practices.
Pre-evacuation
notices were issued to residents just outside of Bend last week as a 10-acre brush fire burned along Tumalo Creek. Shelvin Park was evacuated and roads were closed as a result of the human-caused blaze. Another 10-acre
fire north of Grants Pass temporarily shut down the southbound lanes of Interstate 5. A fire in Biggs Junction, about 90 miles east of Portland, caused private
property damage before eventually being contained.
The Buckskin
Fire started last week about 10 miles southwest of Cave Junction and had already burned over 2300 acres as of Tuesday, June 16. It is believed that this blaze was started by lightning strikes.
Unfortunately, this is nothing new. The 2002 Biscuit Fire that burned around the same area scorched almost half a million acres, or nearly 800 square miles. Worse yet, over 100,000 acres in the northern portion of the Biscuit Fire had burned in the Silver Fire back in 1987.
Foresters have made extensive efforts to salvage the burned dead and dying timber so that a new, healthy forest could be replanted. But federal government bungling, and frivolous environmental lawsuits, have prohibited most timber salvage from these “landscape sized” fires.
Environmental lawsuits usually achieve their purpose, even when dismissed as frivolous by the courts. Scorched timber has already decayed and blued, causing the loss of its salvage value by the time the courts have come to a decision.
Hundreds of thousands of acres of dead and blackened trees then stand as sentinels, like tombstones, to remind us of our foolish inability to manage our vast forest resources. Those “snags” are the remnants of the timber that should have been salvaged years ago.
Ghastly old wildfire scars can be seen in all parts of the state. Oregon’s wilderness areas have sustained much of the worst damage.
In fact, the Buckskin Fire has been determined to be “too dangerous” for direct attack by firefighters, due to the presence
of falling snags. Those dangerous conditions are prompting fire crew commanders to resort to indirect methods that too often result in the uncontrolled growth of fires.
We can only imagine the potential extent and damage of this fire that started in the middle of June if it is allowed to burn until naturally suppressed by fall weather. By the time it is done burning, the Buckskin Fire could very well become the mother of all monuments to our legacy of forest management failure.
As a state, we are running the long-term risk of losing our fire insurance coverage. We came very close this year, even following huge increases in the insurance premium. If that happens, Oregon taxpayers and landowners will have to the bear the full cost of fighting these fires. That will divert resources from schools, public safety and other essential government functions.
One legislative proposal to address the firefighting costs is House
Bill 2588. It takes the questionable approach of imposing a severance tax on timber harvested from private landowners and using the proceeds to fund fire suppression. While this bill has not received a hearing since being referred to the House Revenue Committee in January, that committee is among those that are still meeting. As such, it is possible that this bill can advance in the last few weeks of the current legislative session.
Other firefighting funding proposals that may be under consideration include a significant increase in forest landowner assessments. Shifting the burden of funding firefighting efforts to private landowners, to solve problems caused by the continued poor management of public lands, is bad policy.
The real solution is much easier—we need to manage our forests in a responsible manner and be good stewards of the environment. Catastrophic wildfires are bad for the environment. They are second only to volcanoes in the global emissions of greenhouse gases. They kill and horribly maim wild animals and poison and kill fish. Contamination with toxic ash and increased erosion of streambeds ensure many years of seriously degraded fish habitat.
It is more important than ever that we put people back to work in our forests to do the kinds of preventative maintenance that is needed to keep them healthy and thriving. Sustainable forest harvest is symbiotic. It provides jobs and building materials while improving forest health. It ensures healthy forests for recreation that brings tourists from all over the world to share the scenic beauty that we have been blessed with.
The alternative is the near certainty of annual losses of hundreds of thousands of acre of our public land resources to wildfires. The more than 25,000 miles of contiguous border between public and private lands in Oregon further ensures even greater future destruction of our privately owned forest resources.
We need to do everything we can to encourage projects that will result in the removal of snags and other ground and ladder fire fuels. Improved forest management will ensure our abundant natural resources do not simply go up in smoke, creating even more catastrophic losses and public health hazards that threaten our air quality.
It is critical that we do a better job of managing what we have. Otherwise, it may be forever lost to future generations.
Please remember--if we do not stand up for rural Oregon, no one will.
Best Regards,
Doug
Senate District 28
Email: Sen.DougWhitsett@state.or.us I Phone: 503-986-1728
Address: 900 Court St NE, S-311, Salem, OR, 97301
Website: http://www.oregonlegislature.gov/whitsett
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