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Experts say plan will take fire risk head-on By Vickie Aldous Ashland Daily Tidings Local and regional fire experts say an Ashland Ranger District proposal to treat broad areas of the Ashland Watershed to reduce flammable vegetation, rather than focusing on ridgetop fuel breaks, has the best chance of lowering the risk of destructive, high intensity wildfires. Earlier this week, the district released a final Environmental Impact Statement detailing six alternatives for reducing wildfire risk in the Watershed. A decision about which alternative to implement will come after the close of a public comment period, on Feb. 12. The new preferred alternative calls for hand-thinning young trees and bushes on 958 acres, prescribed burning on 273 acres and logging to thin older tree stands on 318 acres. The goal is to reduce flammable vegetation while improving the health and fire resilience of the forest. The Watershed totals nearly 15,000 acres. The proposal marks a departure from the preferred alternative in the draft EIS released last year, which focused on logging to increase tree spacing in the existing network of shaded fuel breaks on Watershed ridgetops. Aerial fire retardant can be dropped in shaded fuel breaks to halt advancing fires. The breaks also can be used by firefighters to stage firefighting activities. The new preferred alternative was developed in response to comments from a citizens' group, the Ashland Watershed Stewardship Alliance, which advocated for area-wide treatment of the Watershed. Ashland Watershed forestlands are overgrown with choked tree stands and dense vegetation after 90 years of wildfire suppression. The area is at risk of a catastrophic fire that could destroy trees, leading to erosion and harming Ashland's water supply, experts agree. Jim Wolf, a forester in the Oregon Department of Forestry's Central Point office, said from a firefighting standpoint, area-wide treatments are more effective than shaded fuel breaks because they reduce the intensity of wildfires. Intense fires that burn to the edges of fuel breaks can send embers up to a mile away, he said. "It's quite easy for a fire to jump a shaded fuel break if it's very intense. We'd much rather deal with a low-intensity ground fire creeping through the forest, even without a fuel break. We can deal with that. If a fire really takes off, it generates such an intense fire that a shaded fuel break may not be effective," Wolf said. Even if a shaded fuel break succeeds in stopping a wildfire, the fire may have burned so intensely through crowded tree stands before reaching the fuel break that trees are killed. Area-wide treatments reduce mortality in larger trees, he said. Keith Woodley, Ashland Fire & Rescue chief, said the City of Ashland began doing area-wide treatments on city land in the Watershed several years ago. "If you do area-wide treatment, it's probably not necessary to have shaded fuel breaks," he said. The chances of needing to drop aerial retardant are reduced if broad areas are treated, he said. However, shaded fuel breaks may be the right option for steep, unstable areas where area-wide treatments could further destabilize slopes, Woodley said. Area-wide treatments also have been implemented on Bureau of Land Management lands in the Applegate Valley, west of Ashland, according to Greg Chandler, fuels management specialist with the Medford District BLM. Because of his Applegate experience, Chandler was tapped by the Ashland Ranger District to help craft the final EIS after the district's fuels specialist retired. He said area-wide treatments may become more common because of increased funding for wildfire-related projects. In the wake of last summer's fires that burned 6.8 million acres across the West, Congress allocated $1.8 billion for fire suppression, wildfire fuels reduction, rehabilitation of burned areas and related work. "The thought in the fire community is if they had the money and you can do it, area-wide treatment is what most people would do," Chandler said. "The reason it hasn't been done is because of funding. I think we're going to see more and more of that kind of treatment." He said area-wide treatments can be used in conjunction with shaded fuel breaks, as the ranger district could do. Although the preferred alternative does not call for logging existing shaded fuel breaks to create more spacing, the district still would continue to clear brush and small diameter trees. "They're not abandoning the fuel breaks," he said. Rex Holloway, spokesman for the Forest Service Regional Office in Portland, said the agency is shifting toward area-wide treatment. "We're moving more toward landscape level treatment of fuels and reintroduction of fire into the system," Holloway said. The effectiveness of shaded fuel breaks versus area-wide treatments continues to be debated in the U.S. Forest Service, according to Tim Rich, fuels specialist for the Forest Service and BLM in Oregon and Washington, who works out of the regional Forest Service office in Portland. "It's a point of controversy within the Forest Service. Some people within the Forest Service question the long-term effectiveness of shaded fuel breaks. I'm not a huge fan of fuel breaks. I believe they have their place, but if I have the choice, I would choose area-wide treatments," Rich said. He said fuel breaks can be effective points to drop aerial retardant and can cause fires sweeping through canopies to drop to the ground. But opening the forest canopy for a shaded fuel break triggers faster growth of flammable grass and brush, creating maintenance issues. Treating larger areas is more effective overall, he said. "I'm in the camp of questioning the overall effectiveness of shaded fuel breaks. It does provide a place to fight fire, but it's a Band-Aid. It certainly doesn't save your watershed," he said. Visit our back issue library Email your... Technical questions & comments to: WebMaster Daily Tidings editorial comments & questions to: Editor Visit our other Western Oregon Newspapers... | Albany Democrat-Herald | Ashland Daily Tidings | Corvallis Gazette-Times | | Lebanon Express | Newport News-Times | Springfield News | Cottage Grove Sentinel | Ashland Daily Tidings 1661 Siskiyou Blvd. Ashland, OR 97520 Telephone 541-482-3456 © Copyright 2000 Lee Northwest Publishing