Changing how we manage our national forests

When I look up the hill at the huge smoke column from the Dixie Fire, I think “There goes a lot of my work and another 25,000 acres of the Plumas and Lassen National Forests.” For a professional forester and 33-year veteran of the US Forest Service stationed on the Plumas National Forest, the Dixie Fire is crushing. We can do better.

With this in mind, I’d like to suggest a better way to manage our national forests than watching them burn. This strategy centers on establishing shaded fuel breaks and locking up the carbon that grows in the forest.

This new strategy would: Establish shaded fuel breaks that would stop fire starts.

Starve fires of fuel by harvesting the fuel.

Clean the air by putting carbon that is stored as wood beyond fire’s reach.

Prevent thousands of premature deaths each year from exposure to smoke and air borne particulates.

Protect and enhance the streams, soils, and wildlife in our forests.

Create jobs in a self-sustaining system, no tax dollars needed.

Stimulate the development of new products derived from wood that will replace oil.

End the billion-dollar expense of fighting wildfires.

With our Mediterranean climate, droughts, and dry lightning, there will always be the potential for large consuming wildfires. Fires as large as Dixie burned in California before the Native Americans entered the picture and will always be a possibility — until we change how we manage our beloved national forests.

Trees do a marvelous thing. They absorb carbon dioxide and using photosynthesis they split the carbon-dioxide molecule into oxygen and carbon. Trees then release the oxygen and store the carbon as wood. This is known as the carbon cycle. The result is clean air to breathe.

The benefit of the carbon cycle is lost if the trees are burned by wildfire; the carbon is converted back to carbon-dioxide, dirtying the air. I call this the “dirty carbon cycle.”

In the new strategy, trees would be harvested and their stored carbon would be lockedup beyond fire’s reach. More importantly, the openings created by the harvest would be replanted and maintained as shaded fuel breaks.

Harvesting trees would starve the fires of fuel. Carbon stored as wood would be locked up by building homes with it. Locking up carbon reduces the amount of carbon available for the next “dirty cycle.” Less carbon to burn during a fire produces less carbon-dioxide. Less carbon-dioxide in the air means climate change has been reversed.

A shaded fuel break is a fuel break with trees as opposed to one without trees. Fuel breaks interrupt the continuity of the forest fuels and stop fires from spreading. The shaded fuel breaks would be grown into and maintained as open “park like” areas, much like those maintained by the Native Americans. When these park-like forests reached the age when they are losing more carbon to decay than they are storing, they too would be harvested and replanted. Each harvested area would be re-harvested every 80100 years or so, locking up more carbon each time.

Only land on the national forests that can grow trees and is on flatter slopes would actually be considered suitable for harvest. Wildlife would re-invade the replanted fuel breaks from the unharvested areas.

Less than two percent of our national forests would be harvested each year to achieve these dramatic improvements. Forest Service “Best Management Practices” would protect the soil, water, and wildlife. The Dixie Fire already has burned 75 times a national forest’s projected annual harvest acres and left unimaginable environmental destruction.

The sale of the harvested carbon, stored as wood, would pay for the whole program, including harvest, replanting, and administration. No taxpayer monies needed.

The biggest obstacles to a new strategy for national forest management are of our own making. First, Congress would have to fund a new mission “harvest carbon” for the USFS. Second, Congress would have to change some federal laws that have been roadblocks to harvest programs in the past. Both very doable.

What is the future if we don’t make changes to national forest land management? National forests are gifts to all generations. Envision the forests we could leave to the future generations; green and clean, in contrast to what we are leaving them now.

The time to come together is now!

A detailed explanation of my ideas is available on my Facebook page “Bill Smith Forestry.”