Jim Pitts, a Forest Service specialist, surveyed the devastation wrought by the Wallow Fire in eastern Arizona this year. Nearly a half-million acres burned.
Jim Pitts stood on a Forest Service road near the Arizona town of Nutrioso and surveyed the damage in the valley below. It was July, and only a few weeks earlier the Wallow Fire, the largest in recorded history in Arizona, had swept through this section of steep slopes and tightly packed trees.
“This is pretty devastating, both from the forest standpoint and the human aspect,” said Mr. Pitts, a Forest Service silviculturist. “It’s going to take a long time to get this forest back to the way it was. It won’t happen in my lifetime when it’s got to start over.”
Temperatures in the fire could have been as high as 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, Mr. Pitts figured. Heat like that cooks trees to death from across roads. Nearly a half-million acres of forest burned in the Wallow Fire, which followed another huge and destructive wildfire, the Rodeo-Chediski in 2002.
“Certainly, over the last decade, we’re seeing more large fires more frequently,” said Christopher M. Knopp, the forest supervisor of the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest.
I conveyed the magnitude and import of these huge Southwestern forest fires in a video report posted at the Times Web site this weekend. Focusing on Arizona, it was produced to accompany a major article by my colleague Justin Gillis, who reported from Montana about what seems to be a rising trend of forest die-backs around the world.
The article talked about HUGE fires and beetle kills that, aside from their local effects, raise questions about the ability of the world’s forests to keep taking up the carbon dioxide that humans are emitting. Mr. Gillis found that climate change poses a risk to forests, particularly in the already dry climate of the American Southwest.
In Arizona, the most interesting thing I found was that big, destructive fires have caused many groups to seek common ground in reversing the trend. A coalition of land managers, scientists, environmentalists and loggers have come together to combat the fires, making strange bedfellows of groups that fought each other during the timber wars of the 1990s.
The emerging consensus is that the Ponderosa pine forests of northern Arizona and New Mexico have been mismanaged for more than a century. Small ground fires historically burned through these forests with some regularity, keeping the trees widely spaced. But decades of fire suppression have allowed trees to grow so thick that the forests are now referred to as “dog-hair thickets.”
The small fires of old would generally leave large Ponderosa pines intact; the trees have a spongy bark that resists ground fires. But in an overgrown forest, flames can climb the small trees into the high forest canopy, creating a “crown fire” that can leap with the winds and take out thousands of acres quickly. While crown fires can play an important ecological role in other types of forests, for Ponderosa forests they can be highly destructive and a liability to the forest’s ability to capture and store carbon.
Massive fires like the Wallow and the Rodeo-Chediski not only pour carbon back into the atmosphere; if areas are burned badly enough, the forest can be permanently destroyed. Ongoing climate change makes that more likely, favoring heat-tolerant grasses and shrubs over trees. I visited areas burned in the Rodeo-Chediski fire that are not recovering as forest a decade later, and Mr. Gillis saw the same thing in Montana.
Many now believe the solution, across much of the West, is to cut down the spindly dog-hair trees and restore forests to something akin to historic density levels, at times reducing the tree cover from as many as 800 an acre to fewer than 100.
The White Mountain Stewardship Project, created after the Rodeo-Chediski fire, serves as an example of a way that various stakeholders have been able to nurse some forest areas back to health. In our video, Dwayne Walker, a fourth-generation timber man, speaks of the return of logging and jobs in some of the poorest parts of Arizona.
Mr. Walker and his business partner Rob Davis run a company called Future Forest; they won the White Mountain Stewardship contract to thin 150,000 acres over a 10-year period.
Mr. Davis, who runs a wood pellet manufacturing facility in Show Low, Ariz., has helped to build an economically viable way to put some of the smaller trees clogging the Southwest’s forests to use. Many in nearby communities credit the thinning and the hard work of fire crews with saving their homes and businesses.
Mr. Davis argues that better management preserves forests and their ability to clean the air, filter water and store carbon dioxide. “I don’t think the country gets how much benefit we get from having healthy, sound, sustainable forests,” he said.
Many experts say treating forests pre-emptively could be more cost-effective than fighting huge forest fires. Yet, in tight budget times, the United States Forest Service does not have nearly enough money to do the work. Still, a new program called the Four Forests Restoration Initiative is taking shape and aims to thin more acres.
“The big limitation on all of this, when we’re talking about treating the forest, is economics,” said Mr. Knopp, the Forest Service supervisor. The Wallow Fire “points out that the quantity of material that we’ve been able to treat, even though it was strategic and was logical, it wasn’t enough.”
A helicopter returned after dropping water on the Wallow Fire’s eastern edge near Alpine, Ariz. The radiating heat alone cooked trees to death in some places.
By Rob Davis - Partner, Future Forest and Patrick Graham - AZ State Dir., The Nature Conservancy, on July 6th, 2011
Alpine, AZ / Wallow fire into treated area
As the smoke clears on Arizona’s largest wildfire in history, the Wallow fire, many are left wondering if this catastrophic wildfire could have been prevented or at least better controlled. Some of the breathtaking scenery has been changed and will never be the same in our lifetime. Valuable resources such as clean water and healthy watersheds may take decades to recover.
The Wallow fire, along with many other wildfires, has burned almost 1 million acres across Arizona in the last month alone. It is a stark reminder that our forests are in dire need of being restored. A fling of a cigarette butt out a window sparks yet another fire in the White Mountains. This one, the Wash fire, raged over the weekend near Heber, closing highways, and doubling in size in one night. How can we keep up? We need to do something and we need to do it now.
A collaborative effort to restore the forests in the White Mountains, the White Mountain Stewardship Contract, was put into affect back in 2004, partially as a result of the Rodeo-Chediski fire which burned just under ½ million acres and was then known as the largest wildfire in Arizona’s history. Under the WMSC, Future Forest was charged with managing the reduction of tree densities to more natural levels within 150,000 acres of Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest over a 10-year term. In its 7th year of the contract, Future Forest has treated only 50,000 acres, due to a change of commitment and resulting reduction in funding. Even so, it has still built an infrastructure to perform restoration, support the use of the wood residue, including renewable energy, and has created more than 300 jobs directly and indirectly. It accomplished the tree thinning around the towns of Alpine, Greer and Eagar that were in the middle of the Wallow fire and became the true testament that treatment works. The Forest Service, The Nature Conservancy, Future Forest, legislators, and other environmentalists and scientists recently toured the areas devastated by the wildfire. What we witnessed was amazing; a ring of green, healthy trees where treatment had taken place. These trees and communities were saved by the work completed by the WMSC. This is our silver lining; this ring of green in the midst of a charred forest. But our time is short.
A decade-long drought and winds, along with overgrown and overcrowded forests, have created unnatural, large-scale fires that torch and rage through tens of thousands of acres in a day. It is time to widen that ring of green; to help our forests become resilient against fires, insects and disease. We have demonstrated the solution in large-scale restoration with the White Mountain Stewardship Contract that is being succeeded by the unprecedented Four Forest Restoration Initiative. An initiative aimed to restore all 2.4 million acres across Arizona’s four forests by thinning 1 million acres over 20 to 30 years. But, time is of the essence, and the initiative is slow going with outdated processes and lack of funding.
We ask congress to focus funding on proactive restoration efforts instead of fighting wildfires and post-fire rehabilitation. Fire officials estimate the cost just to fight the Wallow fire at $80 million.
But the real cost of these fires could be up to 30 times more than what is initially calculated, according to a 2002 report by the Western Forestry Leadership Coalition, comprised of state and federal forestry officials.
In its report, “The True Cost of Wildfire in the Western U.S.,” the coalition figured the total cost of the Rodeo-Chediski Fire, which scorched more than 467,000 acres, was more than $308 million. The costs included the $122.5 million for loss of homes and property, $139 million for rehabilitation to stabilize the vegetation stripped by the flames and $8.1 million in indirect costs in the form of sales tax revenue and job losses. And none of these values our lost trees and resulting degradation of air and watersheds. When you see these staggering figures, restoration not only makes ecological sense, but economic sense.
Healthy forests are vital for Arizona’s economy, wildlife and for everyone’s quality of life. Businesses invest in wood products and other resources, such as clean energy, created from the trees we harvest. Forests serve as home for wildlife and serve as a playground for many of us, where families experience the outdoors together and create memories that last a lifetime. Forests also act as nature’s water reservoirs, soaking in snow and rain and slowly distributing it into our streams and rivers for Arizonans’ clean drinking water, as well as a natural air filter for the fresh air we breathe.
We know restoration works. The collaborative efforts create healthy forests, safer communities and stable economies. To clear a path forward there must be funding, long-term commitments and quicker processes to help ensure industries can confidently invest in these projects.
We can save our forests with the help from Congress.
We need congress to support full funding for the implementation of the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Act and Southwest Forest Health and Wildfire Prevention Act so we can get effective, science-based, large-scale restoration.
Congress must continue to fund the White Mountain Stewardship Contract, supporting the existing industry that is vital to continued work in the White Mountains as well as larger scale, across all public lands across Arizona.
Congress needs to enable these processes to move faster by streamlining the environmental assessment process allowing for on-the-ground monitoring instead of completion of all assessments upfront.
It’s time for a new approach. Fire won’t wait for the current National Environment Policy Act procedures and review process. We need government agencies to work collaboratively through the NEPA procedures and move through the process faster. We’ve seen it first-hand the devastation of a slow process.
Now that we have proven results that restoration works and we’re all together on the same page as what needs to happen, we must act quickly. Our beautiful forests, a precious resource for everyone, are burning up before our eyes. We need to do something before it’s too late.
Newsmaker Sunday on Fox 10 talks with our own Rob Davis from Future Forest, and Patrick Graham, director of the Nature Conservancy on forest restoration and the need to thin our forests to more natural levels to protect our forests and our communities.
Something can be done to help fight wildfires before they even begin.
50,000 acres of forest surrounding Eagar, Alpine and Greer have been “thinned out.” It’s all part of the White Mountain Stewardship contract. Fox 10 News talks to Rob Davis, Partner in Future Forest about what Future Forest and the White Mountain Stewardship have done to help reduce the risk of wildfires and protect communities.
As temperatures heat up again, we are reminded of the upcoming wildfire season in Arizona and the devastation these fires can leave in their wake; and while many collaborative groups are looking to develop forest restoration initiatives to help sustain a healthy forest and prevent unnatural wildfires, one group of middle and high school students in Flagstaff is turning to entertainment to teach children about the importance of forest restoration. A recipient of the Flagstaff Cultural Partner’s grant, The Greater Flagstaff Forests Partnership (GFFP) has teamed up with Flagstaff Arts and Leadership Academy (FALA) to develop an entertaining and educational performance entitled “Yellow Belly Ponderosa” for children (K-5) in the Flagstaff Unified School District (FUSD). The play tells the story of two children on a super secret mission where they meet trees and creatures of the forest. During their adventure, they learn about the history of forest health, how to work to restore the health of the forest, the value of science, wildfire mitigation and safety as well as flash flood safety. These skits, performed by FALA’s Intro to Theater students, will be held as assemblies during school hours at more than 10 elementary schools throughout the Flagstaff area as well as two free evening performances at the Coconino Center for the Arts at 2300 N Fort Valley Road on April 21 and May 5, both at 6:30pm. The shows for the schools, which will tell the story to more than 5,000 students, will be delivered the last week of April through the first week of May. FALA parents, who are prominent local artists, that include Shonto Begay, have designed backdrops for the scenery of the play. “Given the recent intense, stand-replacing crown fires that threatened our community, devastated our treasured landscapes and resulted in flooding that has traumatically affected our fellow citizens, the timeliness of this messaging is at a critical turning point for our community,” Anne Mottek Lucas, lead project director and Greater Flagstaff Forests Partnership Board member, said. This program will encompass an educational component designed specifically for elementary students that is focused on forest health issues. More specifically, messaging will include:
Historic conditions of the forest
How the forest became “sick” (logging, overgrazing, fire suppression)
What a healthy ponderosa pine forest should look like
Why thinning and controlled burns are needed in our forests
Protecting and enhancing native plants, animals, and other forest values
How science is the basis for forest treatments
Creating sustainable, healthy forest that can be enjoyed by future generations
Wildfire prevention and preparedness (campfire awareness, how to protect your own home and neighborhood)
Flash flood dangers and preparedness
This program is designed to enhance the quality of life for Arizona’s residents by relaying the concepts in the program through a “reverse” flow of information – initiated in youth and relayed to the parents and their extended families. “Public knowledge and support of our current forest health crisis is essential to the advancement of treatments that decrease the frequency of wildfires and yield healthy forests that can be enjoyed by citizens and visitors for years to come,” Mottek Lucas said.
Recently conservationists, scientists, industry representatives and community leaders met with the U.S. Forest Service in Flagstaff to sign the monumental Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI) agreement to restore ponderosa pine forests across northern Arizona. The ambitious initiative, aimed to restore more than one million acres, is modeled after the White Mountain Stewardship Contract (WMSC), which was awarded to Future Forest LLC of Pinetop, AZ back in 2004 by the USDA Forest Service. The 10-year White Mountain Stewardship contract was developed partially as a result of the Rodeo-Chediski fire in 2002, the worst forest fire in Arizona’s recorded history, scorching almost ½ million acres of land and destroying more than 400 homes. Since its inception, the WMSC has treated more than 50,000 acres of Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest and has created/preserved more than 300 jobs. “The message of forest restoration is imperative. The benefits are extensive and include everything from helping sustain a healthy forest and economy, to the protection of wildlife and preservation of clean drinking water. We want people to understand forest restoration has a positive effect on their lives, even if they don’t live in the mountain communities. It is important to all of us, especially for those who enjoy nature, wildlife and all types of outdoor recreational activities and what better way to tell the message than through our children,” Rob Davis, Future Forest Partner, said. “We hope this program is just the beginning of the educational process. This is a great message and program for children across our state, since we all benefit from our forests,” Davis said.
For more information about the “Yellow Belly Ponderosa” program visit, www.flagarts.com. For more information about The Greater Flagstaff Forests Partnership visit www.gffp.org. For more information about the White Mountain Stewardship project visit www.futureforest.info or follow us at www.twitter.com/whitemtnsteward .
Conservationists, scientists, industry representatives and community leaders met with the U.S. Forest Service in Flagstaff recently to sign a monumental agreement to restore ponderosa pine forests across northern Arizona. While the Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI) offers much optimism concerning the future of forest restoration in Arizona, many involved in the White Mountain Stewardship Contract (WMSC) are looking on with concern or skepticism, as similar 2004 agreements regarding White Mountain restoration are being broken. The Forest Service recently slashed the budget for the White Mountain Stewardship Contract, announcing that restoration funding will be cut from the original 15,000 acre level to 5,000 acres per year. Furthermore, agreements between the Forest Service, local industry, and environmentalists to protect large trees outside of community protection areas (which have been critical to the long-term success of the WMSC ) are being threatened due to interference from regional Forest Service leadership in Albuquerque. The net result of this string of broken promises may be the loss of over 200 jobs, loss of 22 existing restoration businesses, and ultimately fewer acres being restored.
“This cutback and decrease in restoration from 15,000 + acres to 5,000 would mean that people and families who could lose their jobs with the WMSC may be out of work for a long time or even lose their jobs permanently. This would be devastating to families, our communities and our local economy” said Dwayne Walker, Future Forest partner.
“Since the very beginning of the WMSC we’ve honored a carefully balanced social license that supports restoration-based industries and job creation. We’re concerned that we’re losing support from our federal partners for this approach. Many jobs and businesses were created or grew and many acres of restoration were achieved as a result of that partnership,” said Rob Davis, Future Forest partner. “Unless the USFS budgets can be stretched further or new approaches developed to ensure that promised restoration-based wood is made available, the closing of many businesses and mass layoffs in communities surrounding the White Mountains is inevitable.” added Davis.
Prior to the WMSC, there was virtually no restoration occurring on the Apache Sitgreaves National Forest or anywhere in the Southwestern US. The WMSC is the first large scale Forest Service stewardship contract in the nation. Awarded in 2004, Future Forest, a local restoration company who won the bid on the WMSC, was charged with creating infrastructure and implementing restoration on 150,000 acres of Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest (ASNF) over 10 years. Over the last six and a half years, the WMSC has completed work on more than 49,000 acres and has successfully developed new markets for wood residue – all during one of the most severe economic downturns leading to the most depressed wood products industry seen in many decades. The WMSC has also been a testing ground for collaboration and innovative stewardship contracting mechanisms designed to reduce the costs of restoration.
“The White Mountain Stewardship Contract has been a nationally recognized, precedent-setting example of collaboratively supported, ecologically appropriate restoration,” said Ethan Aumack, Director of Restoration Programs for the Grand Canyon Trust. “Its success is critical to the economies of northeastern Arizona, and lessons learned will be critical as we work to accelerate landscape-scale restoration through the Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI).
“The stewardship contract has tried and tested many of the components of the long-term contract anticipated to restore the forests of northern Arizona. What many people may not realize is that 4FRI never would have happened without the WMSC, its partnerships and its solutions” said Davis.
Under the most optimistic timelines implementation of the 4FRI cannot begin for 2 or more years due to the time necessary to develop and build the additional production facilities to handle the higher volumes of restoration-based wood made available through a future landscape-scale contract. Moreover, to ensure that cost-saving measures are effective in making the scaled up restoration program affordable, newly developed and tested efficiency measures for planning and administration of landscape scale restoration will be necessary.
“While the 4FRI is a much larger initiative in theory, spanning treatment over all four forests in Arizona over the next 20 to 30 years, without ground treatment starting for another 2 to 3 years, it doesn’t help the 200 plus workers with the WMSC who may be out of their job tomorrow.” said Walker.
Some solutions to ensure continued success of the WMSC and provide an effective transition to the long-term landscape scale 4FRI include:
Increased efficiencies for planning, marking trees, and agency administration that could make the existing budget levels fund more than the current 5000 acre restoration limit;
Development of innovative “best value” stewardship contracts designed to ensure that restoration wood is made available to the full array of existing White Mts. Industry;
Development of a clear long-term planning and funding plan that would provide for consistency and predictability for existing industry while ensuring an effective transition into the larger 4FRI.
“The WMSC has had our full support since the beginning” said Todd Schulke, co-founder of the Center for Biological Diversity. “The Forest Service needs to step up and make good on its promises to protect large trees and provide restoration wood to the businesses that were built to implement the good forest restoration that has been agreed upon by local industry, communities, and environmentalists. If they fail to make this work for everyone they’ll be creating a train wreck for these businesses and communities.
For more information about the White Mountain Stewardship Contract visit www.futureforest.info and for more information about the wood products industry in the White Mountains, visit www.nawpa.org.
As temperatures dip to bitter cold in the high country of Arizona, some elderly residents can breathe a sigh of relief know that wood to help heat their home is on its way. From November to April, Future Forest LLC along with the Apache County Probation Department provides firewood from the White Mountain Stewardship Project (WMSP) to the elderly and handicapped to help get them through the cold winter days and nights. “We call it widow wood,” said Dwayne Walker, Future Forest partner. “We donate the wood and the probationers cut it and deliver it as a part of their community service. It’s a wonderful way to extend the benefits of forest restoration.”
The “widow wood” program provides 60 to 70 cords of wood each winter season to those in need. Seniors, over the age of 60, and the handicapped can apply for the wood through the Apache County Probation Services. “We choose applicants who have a higher need, such as an elderly woman who may not have family or help,” said Mike Orona, Community Restitution Coordinator for the Apache County Probation Department. “The program has been very positive for our community and our department. Many juvenile probationers choose to deliver the wood as a part of their community service. They have really done a great job, and it has truly provided a great way for these misguided and troubled kids to give back.” The wood comes to the Apache County Probation Department from the Apache-Sitgreaves forest as 32 foot logs. The adult probationers spend one or two Saturdays a month cutting and splitting the wood while adult and juvenile probationers deliver the wood. Each household in the program will receive one cord of wood for the winter. “Without the donation of wood from Future Forest and the WMSP, we wouldn’t be able to afford to do this project,” said Orona.
To date, the WMSP has restored more than 48,000 acres of ponderosa pine forests in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest (ASNF). In 2004, partially as a result of the devastation left behind from the Rodeo-Chediski wildfire, the USDA Forest Service awarded Future Forest LLC with the WMSP. Under the WMSP, Future Forest is charged with managing the reduction of tree density within 150,000 acres of ASNF over the 10-year term of the contract as directed by the United States Forest Service.
The White Mountain Stewardship Contract is the first 10-year contract of its kind in the nation. Its emphasis on large-scale forest restoration has resulted in healthier forests, protection for local communities, enhanced rural development, and the use of previously unmarketable small diameter trees. WMSP dramatically reduces the threat of fires and improves wildlife habitat and watersheds. In addition, it aims to use all residual tree fiber, reducing the need for wood burning in the forest and its accompanying costs, and increasing local community jobs.
Forest restoration in the White Mountains of Arizona has created or saved more than 300 jobs. In a time where 10% of the country is unemployed, many folks in northeastern Arizona are grateful for forest treatment that not only helps sustain a healthy forest and protect communities from wildfires, but also provides income, work and some economic stability to one of the poorest counties in Arizona. “The White Mountain Stewardship Contract (WMSC) is the only ball game in town. If it wasn’t for the contract, I would have been bankrupt and would have lost my home.” said Rick Holliday, who owns Holliday Timber with his wife Judy. Holliday Timber was hired by Future Forest, the company that manages the WMSC, in 2009 after they lost their logging contract with the Fort Apache Timber Company owned by the Apache Tribe back in 2008 due to budget constraints. “Without the White Mountain Stewardship Contract many people here on the mountain would be without a job.” said Future Forest partner, Dwayne Walker. “The positive impact on lives from the forest restoration on the Apache-Sitgrieves national forest is far and wide; from the loggers, to the saw mills and even renewable energy companies providing thermal energy and power.”
The WMSC, one of the largest forest service stewardship contracts in the nation, was awarded to Future Forest, LLC in 2004. Since the inception of the stewardship project, more than 46,000 acres of the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest has been treated and the industry that is now in place enables the restoration of 20,000 acres annually. Over the last 5 years, through the treatment project, the WMSC has reduced the threat of potential passive and active crown fires near communities for the lifespan of the treatment. The project is attributed to an average of 319 jobs directly and indirectly (226 direct and 93 indirect), contributing an estimated $40 million dollars to the local communities with investments, expenditures and tax revenue. This far outweighs the cost to the federal government which is approximately $30 million. Along with these investments and jobs, sustainable businesses are utilizing the residues from the restoration. “What was once a suffering industry, is now thriving while protecting communities from the threat of wildfires and restoring the forest to help it become more resilient to fires and climate change,” said Future Forest partner, Rob Davis.
A multi-party monitoring board made up of local business members, environmentalists and government officials, announced its findings recently from the first five years of WMSC, concluding that what began as an attempt to change the potential fire behaviour around communities evolved into the largest and longest national example of how various interests, businesses, communities and federal government can work together to improve local economies, enhance wildlife habitat and restore forest.
To access the WMSC’s Five Year Report which analyzes and evaluates the administrative, economic, ecological, and social monitoring data collected over the first five years of this ten-year project, visit Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest website at http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/asnf/stewardship/multi-party-monitoring.shtml.
