Luke Ruediger, Siskiyou Conservation Director & Klamath-Siskiyou Fire Reports Coordinator, Klamath Forest Alliance
In recent years, the impact of fire suppression activities on sensitive federal lands has been expanding in scope, scale and intensity. During the 2021 fire season, unprecedented wilderness dozerlines and other inappropriate fire suppression activities occurred throughout northern California doing great damage to cultural, biological, scenic and recreational resources on public lands.
In response, activists in the area began expressing concern about both damaging and ineffective fire suppression activities being implemented during wildfire events and on sensitive federal lands. After many years of monitoring fire suppression impacts with their Klamath-Siskiyou Fire Report Program (www.klamathsiskiyoufirereports.org), Klamath Forest Alliance began coordinating with activists across the region to document the impact of wilderness fire suppression in the 2021 fire season, and we recently published our findings in the 2021 Region 5 Fire Report.
Over the course of the last ten years activists have seen a dramatic increase in fire suppression related impacts to Wilderness Areas, National Monuments, Botanical Areas, Research Natural Areas, Riparian Reserves, National Recreation Trails and National Scenic Trails, like the world-famous Pacific Crest Trail. Impacts to irreplaceable resources such as intact meadows, wetlands, old-growth forests and significant Native American archeological sites have become routine.
For example, during the 2021 Monument Fire crews bulldozed across numerous ridges in the proposed Pattison Wilderness near Hayfork, California and in the designated Trinity Alps Wilderness Area, damaging recreational trails, scenic values, biological values and Native American archeological sites. Residents in Trinity County who are very familiar with wildfires were shocked by the damaging fire suppression tactics they were seeing implemented during the Monument Fire and reached out to elected officials with their concerns. In response, the Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsak, specifically requested that fire suppression impacts be limited in these wildlands. Unfortunately, these recommendations were ignored by fire managers and wilderness bulldozing both continued and intensified during the remainder of the fire period.
Kent Collard, owner and director at Camp Trinity/Bar 717 Ranch, a wilderness youth camp at the edge of the proposed Pattison Wilderness Area and Monument Fire area stated, “The wilderness character of the Pattison Proposed Wilderness is vital to the operation and success of our summer camp business. Families choose our program because of our proximity to wild lands. For the past 92 summers, our campers have ridden horses, hiked, swam in Hayfork Creek and explored the mountains and forests of the Pattison Proposed Wilderness Area. In 2008, 2015, and again last year in 2021, US Forest Service fire managers sent dozers into those mountains and forests. Miles of historic pioneer trails that we’ve used at Camp Trinity were dozed out for fire lines and every significant ridge in the Pattison Proposed Wilderness Area is now plowed out with dozerlines. Fire managers must fully consider and understand the irreversible consequences of their decisions to send heavy equipment into wild places.”
Over 11 miles of dozerline were also built in the Bucks Lake Wilderness on the Plumas National Forest during the 2021 Dixie Fire, including 5.6 miles built directly on top of or adjacent to the Pacific Crest Trail. “Forest Service leadership ignored their own local fire and fuels experts, who said dozers would be ineffective and unneeded in the Bucks Lake Wilderness and recommended constructing dozerline outside of the small Wilderness Area. Friends of Plumas Wilderness analysis of the efficacy of fire suppression efforts in the only Wilderness Area on the Plumas National Forest found local experts were right, only 14% of dozerline was effective while 71% of handline worked. It is hard to fathom why the Plumas National Forest Supervisor, who is new to the area, did not listen to his staff and requested the construction of over 11 miles of dozerline in the 36 square mile Wilderness.” said Darrel Jury, President of Friends of Plumas Wilderness.
The Region 5 Fire Report documents the impacts to the Bucks Lake Wilderness in the Dixie Fire, the Trinity Alps Wilderness in the River Complex Fire, the Mt. Shasta Wilderness in the Lava Fire, and both the Trinity Alps Wilderness and the proposed Pattison Wilderness Area during the Monument Fire. It also provides policy recommendations to avoid these unfortunate and unnecessary impacts in future wildfire events.
Klamath Forest Alliance, and many of our partners across the West, believe that fire suppression impacts can and should be dramatically reduced in our wildland habitats, while also providing for public safety and effectively suppressing or managing wildland fires. Yet, we believe that change will only come when the current impacts are exposed and Forest Service land managers are made to answer for the increasing destruction of our natural and cultural heritage during wildfire events.
Resources:
- Executive Summary:
siskiyoucrest.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Executive-Summary-2021-Region-5-Fire-Report.pdf - Full report: klamathsiskiyoufirereports.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/2021-region-5-fire-report-3.pdf