EDITORIAL COMMENTARY for JULY 2008
In the famous words of Yogi Berra, it is déjà vu all over again! California is on fire and the smoke is heading our way. There are literally hundreds of lightening caused fires burning out of control with thousands of homes and lives threatened. This is a terrible repeat of 2007 when an estimated 322
million tons of carbon dioxide from wildfires was pumped into the nation’s airsheds.
Studies conducted since the fall of 2007 on the wildfire impact to humans, critters and landscape are providing interesting results. One study conducted by the California Forest Foundation is based on a ground-breaking analytical tool that allows scientists to estimate greenhouse gases emitted by wildfires and subsequent forest decay. The Forest Carbon and Emissions Model analyzes the impact of wildfires on climate change by considering a number of factors, including vegetation density, tree species, mortality caused by a fire, and the removal of dead trees and replanting new ones.
The results of the California study indicate that no matter what steps people take to reduce green-house gas emissions those efforts are marginalized by the annual catastrophic wildfires pouring millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. It is a situation that must be reversed.
Montana lost nearly a million acres to wildfire last year with millions more acres being lost to beetle infestations causing huge fuel loads. By some indications we might dodge the fire bullet this year because of a very wet spring and large, still-existing snowpacks in many of our mountain ranges. However, if not this year, most likely next year will be our turn again unless land managers move in the direction of active forestry. Why should the idea of healthy forests appeal to the majority of Montanans? Let me supply just a couple of reasons.
U. S. forests sequester over 200 million metric tons of CO2 per year which represents about 10 percent of U. S. industrial emissions. The forests can only sequester this carbon if the trees are living and healthy or if harvested and manufactured into a product. The forests cannot do the job if millions of acres each year are burned and never harvested and replanted. In fact, the burning becomes part of the problem with emissions instead of the solution healthy, green forests traditionally have provided.
All of the clamor surrounding climate change should be directed at solutions other than claims that wind and solar power will make America energy independent and cure the planet. Various reports are that worldwide energy needs will continue to grow not lessen over the next 30 years. While it is important to talk about reusing, recycling and conserving, the reality is we need to be much more creative than that. We need to use the natural resources that are abundant and close to home thus saving energy both in production and transportation.
This brings up another topic of why managed forests are so important to all of us. Many of us have become more conscious of where our food is produced. While I was growing up that was not a problem because our food was home grown in a large garden or came from a nearby Montana community. Certainly now it takes a real detective to ferret out where food is produced and processed. It only takes reading the newspaper to learn of the latest scare with something in the food chain. More people are going to local farmers’ markets and buying locally grown food for themselves and their families. The same should apply to wood products locally harvested.
Some green building standards only give points for certification if a product is recycled or reused. Steel, concrete and glass rate higher for points than wood even though those materials are more costly to produce especially in energy use and transportation. Obviously, Montana does not manufacture steel beams but we do locally manufacture value-added wood products such as wood flooring, decking, paper, and paneling as well as other construction materials. These products come from sustainable forests and are by far more environmentally friendly than products transported from other countries. Using wood products manufactured in Montana for building is not unlike shopping for food at the local farmers’ market.
One more and very obvious reason for Montanans to care about and promote actively managed forests close to home is the avoidance of a repeat here of the situation California finds itself in – raging wildfires with tons of CO2 pumping into the air.
For the Montana Wood Products Association based in Helena, I am Ellen Engstedt-Simpson. Thanks for listening.
EDITORIAL COMMENTARY for JUNE 2008
Montana is under siege. And, no, I don’t mean by a bunch of politicians and their surrogates swarming all over the State pleading for votes. I mean Montana’s forests, both public and private, are being hit extremely hard by beetle infestations. There are different types of beetles such as mountain pine and Douglas fir as well as bark beetles and we have been hit by all of them.
The epidemic is larger than us, however, and encompasses over 20 million acres in Canada and millions more in the Western United States. A recent report stated that in Colorado and southern Wyoming almost all of the lodge pole pine will be dead in three or four years. Campgrounds are being closed by the Forest Service because of the danger to campers from dead trees. Who would want to camp in an area loaded with burned or bug-killed trees anyway?
It only takes a drive anywhere in Montana to see the devastation that is being wreaked upon our forests with dead and dying red trees. The beetles along with ever-increasing catastrophic wildfires are destroying one of the most treasured assets of this State – our forests. It is truly a shame this is happening for any number of reasons not the least of which is damage to wildlife habitat, watersheds, and the very air we breathe.
Beetles are a natural part of the forest ecology and can provide a positive role in eliminating dying trees. The problem is by lack of active management in many of our forests beetles are attacking trees that could be healthy if the stands were not so crowded and thus stressed and susceptible to bugs. There cannot be hundreds of stems per acre competing for sunlight and moisture without harm to the individual tree. A healthy forest is not unlike a healthy garden. No one I know who gardens allows the vegetables to grow in a tangled mess – they weed and thin so the remaining plants have room to grow and thrive. Trees are no different.
Unfortunately for the public forests, the damage from years of neglect has occurred and continues to grow at an alarming rate. The estimates are that Montana has lost 2.4 million trees to beetle-kill, but that figure is from 2006, two years ago. Hundreds of thousands more trees have succumbed in the past two years both from bugs and wildfire. Montana lost over 800,000 acres to fire in 2007 and while not all of the trees on those acres died, many now are under attack by bugs because of weakened conditions.
What, if anything, can be done now that the destruction of our forests is this advanced? It is not enough to simply say nothing can be done and sit back and wait. The Helena National Forest has had some public sessions inviting folks to pick up bark beetle repellant packets and to learn more about proactive approaches to be taken on private lands. The repellants, known as pheromones, are simply a short-term fix and are only about 85 percent effective, but it is a start. Frankly, many private lands are as needy as public lands and those landowners must become better stewards of the land and provide a healthier environment. The trees need nutrients and water, both of which are in short supply on lands where the trees are too thick to be healthy.
It would be a good idea for both the Forest Service and the BLM to take more steps on its lands and use repellants combined with fuel reduction, but the agencies need positive support from the general public, not appeals and litigation stopping projects that would provide healthy trees all of us could enjoy. A longer-term solution of active forest management is where all of us should be focused if we want to live in Montana for the reasons many of us do – well-paying jobs, healthy forests, and recreational opportunities such as hiking, camping, hunting, and fishing in places that inspire peace and solitude.
There are some efforts underway with members of progressive groups, agency personnel, and the timber community providing encouragement for projects on the ground that will prove beneficial for the resource. Many of us are involved in those efforts including much needed public education of what must take place on all forest land ownerships. We do hold out some hope for the future of the lands we love, but the time for action is now.
On behalf of the Montana Wood Products Association, I am Ellen Engstedt-Simpson. Thanks for listening.
EDITORIAL COMMENTARY – MAY 5, 2008
Last Monday the Montana Legislature’s Fire Suppression Interim Committee conducted a public meeting in Hamilton. The committee will travel to Lewistown, Miles City, Seeley Lake, Thompson Falls, and Libby in the coming weeks for similar public meetings to gather input from Montanans regarding wildfires and their impact on us.
The Legislature during a September 2007 Special Session established this committee and mandated the study to include an investigation of firefighting operations on all Montana lands and the success of those operations; efficient use of fire suppression resources; impacts of operations on private land and the effective use of private resources to fight fires; and, policies of state and federal forest management and how those policies may contribute to an increased number of wildfires, greater safety risk to firefighters, or compromised effectiveness of fire suppression efforts.
As exhibited at its Hamilton meeting committee members clearly are interested in not only the specific charges of the study, but in finding solutions to the growing problem of catastrophic wildfires and the risk placed on the lives of our citizens. Further, the legislators understand the importance of Montana’s wood products infrastructure as a component to solving the huge problem of overstocked and sick forests contributing to the massive fires. However, they understand too that the problem lies largely on federal forest lands and the inability of those land managers to act in a timely manner in order to treat the ground either before or after a wildfire sweeps through.
One of the presentations to the committee was the fact that the most effective way to treat the land is with large landscape projects usually containing a watershed that provides drinking water to communities. Those who preach that thinning should only take place around structures fail to understand that there is a need to move farther away from the wildland urban interface because there are resources outside those areas that must be healthy in order to provide clean water and safe wildlife habitat. The homes of the critters should be protected along with the homes of the humans living in the forest land.
There are other ramifications to Montana and our citizens because of the catastrophic wildfires that grow larger and hotter with each passing season. The State of Montana is currently attempting to justify to the Environmental Protection Agency why the state’s ambient air quality monitoring data collected from June through September 2007 exceeded the EPA standards. There are no events other than the extreme wildfires experienced over that four-month period that could have caused the unhealthy condition of the air we all breathed last summer. This was made abundantly clear when health alerts were issued repeatedly cautioning those with respiratory problems, the elderly, and small children to stay indoors. What a terrible way to spend summer in Montana!
A study conducted by Dr. Thomas Bonnicksen, a professor emeritus of forest science and a former department head at Texas A&M University, estimates approximately 59 tons of carbon per acre is created in a fire of the magnitude we currently experience. Using the 800,000 acres of forest land lost in Montana during 2007, but not counting another 150,000 acres of grassland lost, the estimate for CO2 pumped into the air in Montana pencils out to 47 million tons. Unfortunately, the carbon dioxide from the trees burning is not the only source of pollution. If the trees are not removed and new seedlings planted, the dead and down material will continue to rot and put even more CO2 into the air for as much as 50 years.
Those who say fire is natural and we simply have to live with smoke gagging us each year are grossly wrong-headed. With active forest management we can reduce the fuel loads and make the forests safe again. Catastrophic wildfire was not a frequent occurrence in Montana’s historic forests and it should not be frequent now. The type of fire historically was a cleansing of the forest floor with low on the ground burning at a slow pace, not crown fires with 300-foot flames covering hundreds of thousands of acres and burning hot enough to sterilize the soil for many generations to come.
It is way past time for citizens to rise up and say we have had enough of the destruction to our forests and risk to our very lives. Hopefully, the Montana Legislature and its interim committee will hear what the citizens are saying and will develop solutions to put our state back on track with active management of not only state and private land but also the sick federal forests.
On behalf of the Montana Wood Products Association based in Helena, I am Ellen Engstedt-Simpson. Thanks for listening. | 
