The United States Forest Service (USFS) 77-year old campaign using Smokey the Bear effectively prevented many smaller wildfires but some believe may have contributed to enabling catastrophic wildfires like at Yellowstone National Park in 1988. It was the nation’s largest wildfire at the time burning 36% of the park, close to 800,000 acres. Ecologist changed their view that suppressing wildfires caused by lightning or humans actually caused more damage when the larger forest burned uncontrollably. However, another cause of the inferno was the unexpected dry conditions in July which dried out the “fuel” and allowed wildfires to spread rapidly.
Many people are blaming the Smokey Bear campaign as the cause of more recent larger wildfires as reported by NPR in 2012 and the Washington Post in 2018. The first article states, “Many fire experts embrace controlled, or "prescribed," fires — purposely set fires that do the cleanup job that small natural fires once did. It takes the tinder out of the tinder box. But people have built homes and towns close to forests; they don't like the smoke, and prescribed burns sometimes get out of control. The Cerro Grande Fire in New Mexico in 2000 was a controlled fire — until it jumped fire lines and destroyed hundreds of homes.”
Raise your hand (or comment below) if you think maybe there are other factors involved to creating massive wildfires? If the USFS’s Smokey the Bear advertisements had not reminded boy scouts to put out campfires would those small fires have been similar to prescribed burns? So what’s going on?
According the the Congressional Research Service published this month, “Since 2000, an annual average of 70,600 wildfires has burned an annual average of 7.0 million acres. This figure is more than double the average annual acreage burned in the 1990s (3.3 million acres), although a greater number of fires occurred annually in the 1990s (78,600 average).”
Obviously, climate change is making for more severe weather conditions including prolonged droughts enabling wildfires especially in the western U.S. According the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions: “Climate change enhances the drying of organic matter in forests (the material that burns and spreads wildfire), and has doubled the number of large fires between 1984 and 2015 in the western United States.”
For some interesting science asking if prescribed fires can help forests survive droughts, check out this 2017 USGS webinar as part of the Climate Change Science and Management. They correlate death of forests due to droughts and beetle-kill infestations which are both getting worse with climate change. Prescribed burns are not very effective due to a variety of reasons and we must consider if the long term costs to the health of the environment and people exceed the uncertain short-term benefits.
What is needed is a holistic, comprehensive understanding of human activities impacting the Earth such as carbon greenhouse gas emissions affecting climate change. Forest fires only worsens the climate crisis and we need to plant more trees rather than destroy them. Research budgets at USGS and other local-state-federal agencies and research institutions investigating climate change need to be increased and not cut (as was done in the previous administration).
Specific to the Santa Fe, New Mexico USFS, I provided comments in 2019 on the scoping document and again last week on the draft Environmental Assessment. The USFS is increasing their prescribed fires nationwide in reaction to the numerous California wildfires making many people and wildlife ill. Prescribed burns in Santa Fe are ongoing - see NM Fire Info: “Smoke-sensitive individuals and people with respiratory problems or heart disease are encouraged to take precautionary measures.”
Here are my recent comments to the USFS draft EA to expand prescribed burns::
The Santa Fe Mountains Landscape Resiliency Project #55088 is unacceptable as described in the current draft EA. I have lived in that area and enjoyed hiking on USFS managed land. Myself and many friends/residents have asthma and other health concerns that require clean air, minimal not increased burning, and notifications prior to prescribed burns. How will information on burning schedules be communicated and in what languages - including to the local native Americans, Hispanics, and Anglo citizens? The federal government should consider people at risk of health impacts from prescribed burns and offer mitigation such as HEPA air filters.
A full EIS is needed to provide adequate public awareness and evaluate this major federal action. The final PEIS National Forest System Land Management Planning dated 2012 is out of date to support the draft EA for Santa Fe and many other parts of the US where similar measures are being proposed. The USFS has not provided adequate cost-benefit analyses with alternatives that include impacts to climate change, increases in carbon emissions from prescribed burns, use of herbicides, degraded water quality due to the prescribed burns from chemicals, erosion, and more impacts.
It is unreasonable to compare potential future wildfires as the motivation for prescribed burns when there have already been many wildfires in the Santa Fe National Forest. Drought conditions will only worsen with increasing climate change making the forest vulnerable to future fires even after prescribed burns reduce the "fuel." Given the importance of this decision on the region, more updated scientific consideration is needed through the EIS process.
While it appears Smokey the Bear slogan is getting “the axe,” I think the campaign should expand to say “Only You Can Stop Polluting.” We all need to change our habits and see our role impacting the planet! Every day we can drive vehicles less, walk or bike more, reduce power consumption, buy less, find substitutes for plastics, and many more positive actions. By reducing pollution, including carbon, we can all reverse course on climate change and other destructive impacts. We need to courageously change as individuals and as countries, confronting our addictions to petroleum and coal. Perhaps this week at the COP26 Climate talks in Glasgow there will be a “sea change.” For more ideas, see my previous blog posts with many supporting books and website references and can look for specifics with a search on home page.