Westerners’ Migration to Woods Fuels Fire Debate

Westerners tired of traffic jams and strip malls are fleeing to places like Sisters, Ore., with its quaint 1880s-style downtown, a federal forest on three sides and postcard views of the snowcapped Three Sisters peaks.

Subdivisions outside this central Oregon town of 950 have grown 50% since 1995, to more than 8,000 people. Surrounding Deschutes County has been the fastest-growing county in the state since 1990.

But all of that development nestled so close to the lush vegetation on the eastern flank of the Cascade Mountains has a potential dark side--a catastrophic wildfire.

When Mayor Steve Wilson draws up disaster plans for his small town, he picks wildfire as his worst-case scenario every time. “Of all the concerns we have, that’s probably the foremost,” he said.

The fire that burned in Los Alamos, N.M., last month--and a second large blaze in the northern portion of the state--were sober reminders to people in fast-growing areas across the West that they too could be one lightning strike or careless campfire away from an out-of-control fire.

Wildland fires claimed more than 1 million acres this year as of May 30, making 2000 the worst fire year so far since 1996.

The Forest Service estimates that one of every five acres of national forest land--39 million acres, mostly in the West--is at a high risk for damaging, high-intensity wildfires.

The risk of damage is greatest in fast-growing areas where development has encroached to the edge of forests or grasslands--places like Flagstaff, Ariz., Missoula, Mont., Santa Fe, N.M., Sequim, Wash., and Ashland, Ore.

“The more people you have in the woods, the more chances you have of fire starting,” said Dennis Milburn, a fire planner for the Forest Service’s northern region.

Development close to forest also means that firefighters have to change their strategy in fighting fires, because the chances are greater that a fire could quickly damage property or harm people.

“It concerns me every year here in central Oregon,” said George Chesley, interagency fire management officer. “I can expect 550 fires in the wildlands. . . . That’s an average year. Last year we had 611.”

Spurred on in part by the Los Alamos fire, the Clinton administration and some western senators are crafting a proposal to spend up to $54 million in emergency funds to cut fire risks in the populated areas closest to western federal lands.

The funds would be used to remove small trees and brush--which the Forest Service says pose the greatest fire risk--from about 55,000 acres of what agency officials call the “urban-wildland interface.”

The senators had hoped to add the money to an agriculture spending bill pending on the Senate floor soon after they returned from a Memorial Day recess. They may add other land agencies, such as the Bureau of Land Management, to the proposal, which could increase the price tag of the measure.

“We have what we consider to be an emergency situation,” said Jim Bonham, spokesman for Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) “What we don’t want to have is a summer full of national news coverage of communities all across the West burning just because Congress failed to act.”

But the money threatens to get ensnared in a debate about logging --even though administration and Congress members say that is not what they want.

Environmentalists in the past have accused the Forest Service of using the threat of fires and insect infestation as an excuse to log. Now Forest Service officials are trying to avoid that perception.

Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck said in the letter to the New Mexico delegation late last month that the agency would only use the emergency fire prevention money to remove trees that are 12 inches in diameter or smaller.

Removal of larger trees--if needed--would be done through a timber sale, not through the congressional appropriation, he said.

“What we don’t want to do is turn this into a cut-it-to-save-it debate,” said Chris Wood, a Forest Service spokesman. “We can minimize fire risk and minimize controversy at the very same time.”

But Republicans say they want to make sure the Forest Service doesn’t avoid certain high-risk fire areas just because the agency is afraid to offend people.

The GOP also wants to make sure the Forest Service makes the best use of the money--and they say that could mean having loggers take out some of the more threatening timber in return for doing work to improve the forests.

“The question is how will the money get used,” said Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho). “If this becomes a fight over the environment . . . my guess is we can’t get it done.”

Frank Gladics, president of the Independent Forest Products Assn. in Portland, Ore., said the Clinton administration wants to avoid logging so it won’t offend environmental supporters.

That strategy, however, is increasing fire risk, he said.

“Loggers are a hell of a lot more controllable than wildfires,” Gladics said. “We haven’t had any instances of loggers going through towns and burning houses down indiscriminately.”

But Mike Anderson, an environmentalist with the Wilderness Society in Seattle, said the Forest Service seems to be making the right move. Historically, agency officials have let loggers remove large trees that are not a fire risk along with smaller timber that is the greatest threat to communities.

Now, however, the agency seems to be focusing only on the fire threat, he said.

“There’s a lot to be said for putting a maximum size limit on these thinnings,” Anderson said. “That’s a pretty good approach.”

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On the Net: National Interagency Fire Center: https://www.nifc.gov/