Downieville, California– Using chainsaws, heavy machinery and controlled burns, the Biden administration is trying to contain the worsening wildfires in the US West through a billion-dollar cleanup of forests filled with dead trees and shrubbery.
Yet one year into what has been envisioned as a decades-long effort, federal land managers are struggling to catch up after falling behind on thinning many of their priority forests, even though They may have gone beyond goals elsewhere. And according to data obtained from The Associated Press, public records and congressional testimony, they have left some highly at-risk communities to work in less threatening areas.
With climate change becoming increasingly dire, the mixed early results of the administration’s initiative underscore the challenge of reversing decades of lax forest management and aggressive fire suppression, which have allowed many woodlands to become tinderboxes. The ambitious effort has come amid opposition from lawmakers dissatisfied with progress so far and criticism from some environmentalists for cutting down too many trees.
Administration officials said in interviews and during testimony that the thinning work was making a difference. The work announced so far will help reduce wildfire threats facing more than 500 communities in 10 states, he said. But he also acknowledged that completing the task would require far more resources than had previously been dedicated.
“The amount of money we’re getting isn’t enough to take care of the problems we’re seeing, especially across the West,” said Forest Service Chief Randy Moore. “This is an emergency situation in many places, and we are acting with a sense of urgency.”
big money for big problem
Over the past two years Congress has approved more than $4 billion in additional funding to prevent a recurrence of the devastating fires that have scorched communities including California, Colorado and Montana.
By cutting down and burning trees and low-lying vegetation, officials hope to reduce wildfire fuels and prevent fires originating on federal lands from spreading to nearby cities and towns.
The enormity of the work is evident from an aerial view of California’s Tahoe National Forest, where the hills are painted gray and brown due to the large numbers of trees killed by insects and drought. After work on Tahoe was delayed last year, Forest Service crews and contractors recently began cutting down thousands of acres of trees.
“Forests in California and throughout the West as we know them are ending. They are being destroyed through fire. They are dying of drought, disease and insects,” said forest supervisor Eli Ilano. “They are dying so fast that we are having trouble keeping up with them.”
The scale of the spending is unprecedented, said Courtney Schultz of Colorado State University. The forest policy expert said that lakhs of acres of land have passed environmental review and are ready for work.
“If we really want to make big strides across the landscape – to reduce fuels enough to affect fire behavior and have some impact on communities – then we need to plan bigger projects,” she said. Said.
Key to that strategy is addressing forested areas where computer simulations show wildfires could easily spread to inhabited areas.
Last year only about a third of the land treated by the US Forest Service was designated with the potential for high wildfire danger, agency documents show. Documents show that about half of the wildfires were in the southeastern US, where wildfires are less severe but weather conditions make it easier to burn intentionally.
The infrastructure bill passed with bipartisan support two years ago included a requirement for the administration to treat 10 million acres — 15,625 square miles or 40,500 square kilometers — of forests by 2027. Less than 10% were addressed in the first year.
“The Forest Service is paying out hundreds of millions of dollars, but not in areas required by law,” said West Virginia Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Forest Service spokesman Wade Muhlhof said the agency was confident in the administration’s strategy, but declined to say whether it would fulfill the acreage mandate.
mixed first year results
AP analysis of federal data reveals the scale of the challenge: Hundreds of communities are at risk from fires burning in federal forests and the potential to spread to populated areas.
The analysis shows that in California, only one in five of the thinning areas announced so far have addressed the risk of homes and other buildings exposed to fire on federal land. In Nevada and Oregon, it accounts for about half of the exposed structures, and in Montana it is one in 25.
According to government planning documents, most areas identified as hot spots, where wildfires have a high potential to burn into populated areas, will go unnoticed for at least the next several years. And computer models project that 20% of the areas that need thinning will be vulnerable to fire before that work even begins.
The architects of the Forest Service’s strategy based it on millions of computer wildfire simulations that are being used to predict the areas that pose the greatest risk. Those scenarios showed that only 10% to 20% of the land would be exposed to 80% of the risk on communities.
“This is a mapped out plan over time, where we can focus on a hugely important issue: the destruction of communities by wildfires on public lands,” said Forest Service fire scientist Alan Egger. “
fall into the red zone
In 2022, the Forest Service missed its remediation targets in four of the 10 areas targeted as a priority. One was the northern Yuba area of the Tahoe National Forest, where the agency had addressed only 6% of the planned acreage.
Small towns in forested valleys escaped that disaster two years ago when the Dixie fire raged just to the north, destroying several communities and burning about 1,500 square miles (3,900 square kilometers) in the Sierra Nevada range. Those communities also survived another fire to the south that burned more than 1,000 homes and structures. The previous year, another fire killed 15 people and torched more than 2,000 homes and structures in the area.
The same conditions exist in the Tahoe Wilderness that turned that fire into an inferno—dense trees and shrubs that were ready to burn after years of drought. And government computer modeling shows it is one of the American communities most affected by wildfires on federal lands.
Last year alone, five million trees died in Tahoe, said forest supervisor Ilano.
“What we’re realizing is that we’re not moving fast enough, the fire is getting bigger and more intense, burning faster than we expected,” Ilano said.
Earlier this month, tracked vehicles, including one known as a “harvester,” worked their way through dense stands on northern Yuba, snapping large trees at their base and incinerating them in a matter of seconds. separated from the branches, then piled up the trunk for later burning. Elsewhere, work crews were walking slowly behind a wood chipper as it was being pulled along a forest road, stuffing small trees and branches into the machine so that the lower The floor can be cleaned.
The increased logging needed to reach the government’s lofty targets has been approved as rising numbers from wildfires eased long-standing opposition from some environmental groups and ecologists.
“Gone are the days when things were black and white and either good or bad,” said Melinda Booth, former director of the South Yuba River Citizens League. “We need targeted treatment, targeted thinning, which includes logging.”
Others think the authorities are going too far. Sue Britting with Sierra Forest Legacy says the northern Yuba plan has about nine square miles (23 square kilometers) of old trees and stands along waterways that should be protected. Yet for most of the work, Britting said it was time to “move on” on a project that had been languishing for years in construction.
Constraints on the Thinning Strategy
Government officials and forestry experts say the Forest Service is being hampered across the country due to a lack of workers to cut and remove trees in line with demand. Litigation ties up many projects, with environmental reviews taking an average of three years before work can begin, according to the Center for Property and Environmental Research, a Bozeman, Montana think tank.
Another problem: Thinning operations are not permitted in federally designated wild areas. This ends up bordering nearly a third of the national forest areas, which puts communities at high wildfire risk and means some thinning must be done in a patchwork fashion.
Tracking progress has its own challenges. The acreage worked is often counted two or more times—first when the trees are cut, then when the remaining wood pile is removed from the same spot, and yet again when the landscape is laid out later. is subjected to fire, said Schultz of Colorado State University.
Even where thinning is permitted, officials face other potential constraints, such as protecting old trees important to wildlife habitat. A Biden inventory of public lands in April identified more than 175,000 square miles (453,000 square kilometers) of old growth and mature forests on US government lands.
The inventory will be used to design new regulations to better protect those woodlands from fire, insects and other ill effects of climate change. But there is overlap between the old forests and the many areas that are being thinned. This includes more than half of the treatment area in northern Yuba, according to an AP analysis of mature forest data compiled by the conservation group Wild Heritage.
“What’s driving it all is insect infestation, drought stress and it’s all related to climate,” said Dominic Dellasala, Wild Heritage’s chief scientist. “I don’t think you can get away with being skinny.”
,
Follow Matthew Brown @MatthewBrownAP and Camille Fassett @camfassett on Twitter.
,
Associated Press climate and environment coverage is supported by a number of private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. AP is solely responsible for all content.
