There is a lot of hysteria out there in response to the pine beetle  outbreak that has affected at least 5 million acres in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and South Dakota, and even more acres in British Columbia, which has been called ground zero for the beetles. Some people are suggesting that beetle-killed trees will inevitably lead to catastrophic wildfires and that massive logging or insecticide-spraying operations must begin in order to protect our citizens. But the science does not support that school of thought.

Beetle-killed trees can be more flammable during the relatively short period of time when the needles on the pine trees have been killed and have turned red, but after the needles fall to the ground the dead trees are less likely to support a crown fire than a live forest.

Here is an excerpt from an article by George Wuerthner that appeared today at HelenaIR.com. The entire article is here.

================================================

The current pine beetle “outbreak” that has led to tree mortality among Rocky Mountain forests has prompted some people to suggest that beetles are “destroying” our forests and that beetle-killed trees will invariably lead to larger wildfires.

At the heart of this issue are flawed assumptions about wildfires, what constitutes a healthy forest and the options available to humans in face of natural processes that are inconvenient and get in the way of our designs.

While it may seem intuitive that dead trees will lead to more fires, there is little scientific evidence to support the contention that beetle-killed trees substantially increase risk of large blazes. In fact, there is evidence to suggest otherwise.

Bark beetles tend to focus on larger trees, and not all trees are killed. This has important implications for fire risk. Fine fuels — not large snags — are the prime ingredient for sustained fire. After a major beetle outbreak, and once the red needles and small branches have broken off the trees, all that remains are upright big boles that do not burn particularly well.

To sustain a blaze among a snag forest you usually need fine fuels to maintain the heating process. That is why one uses small kindling and other fine fuels to start a campfire, and must continuously feed small wood and/or a sufficient bed of coals under the bigger logs to keep the fire going.

Ultimately, fuels do not control fires. If the climate/weather isn’t conducive for fire spread, it doesn’t much matter how much dead wood you have piled up, you won’t get a large fire. As an extreme example, think of all the dead wood lying around on the ground in old-growth West Coast rainforests — tons of fuel, but few fires — because it’s too wet to burn.

Large blazes are driven by a combination of extreme drought, low humidity, high temperatures and, most importantly, wind. These conditions do not occur in the same place at the same time very frequently — which is why there are often decades to centuries between major blazes and most fires go out without burning more than a few acres.

In the Rockies between 1980 and 2003, there were more than 56,000 fires that charred 9 million acres. But 96 percent of the fires — more than 55,000 of those blazes — charred less than 4 percent of the total acreage burned; the climatic conditions just weren’t conducive to fire spread, even though fuels were abundant. By contrast, less than 0.1 percent of the fires during that period were responsible for more than half of the acreage burned.

Even more surprising is that a forest dominated by bug-killed snags may be less vulnerable to a blaze than a green forest. Just as a recently burned forest often acts as a fire break due to limited fine fuels, bug-killed trees affect fire spread in much the same way. In fact, green trees stressed by drought can have internal moisture levels drop lower than kiln dried lumber, but because they still possess flammable resin-filled needles and small branches that burn almost explosively, green trees are sometimes more flammable than dead trees.

Even more importantly, bark beetles are increasingly recognized by ecologists as “ecosystem engineers,” much as beavers are now recognized as important to the creation of wetlands and riparian areas. Beetles are essential to maintaining biodiversity and healthy forests.

================================================

Read the rest of the article here.

George Wuerthner is an ecologist, writer and photographer with 34 published books, including “Wildfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy.”

Thanks Dick

Our hired help in Washington is implementing elementary school tactics to run our country.

From the Associated Press today:

DENVER (AP) _ U.S. Sen. Mark Udall and a Colorado state senator have gotten caught in the crossfire over health care. A hearing Tuesday on Udall’s bill to protect communities from bark beetles was canceled after Republicans angry over the passage of health insurance reform legislation blocked it by using an obscure Senate rule requiring a unanimous consent to hold hearings scheduled after 2 p.m.

If we give them the benefit of the doubt, they canceled the meeting because working past 2 p.m. would have been contrary to their preferred working hours, not because they threw a *hissy fit over the fact that some legislation was passed.

From Senator Udall’s office today:

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Today’s hearing on Senator Udall’s bark beetle legislation has been canceled due to Republican Obstruction

Washington, D.C. — Today’s scheduled hearing on Senator Mark Udall’s bill to protect communities from wildfire and falling trees as a result of bark beetle infestation has been canceled due to Republican obstructionism. Angry over the passage of health insurance reform legislation, Republican leaders are using an arcane rule, which requires the unanimous consent of Senators in both parties to agree to hearings scheduled after 2 p.m., and have objected to the bark beetle hearing and vowed not to cooperate with Democrats for the rest of the year.

“It is critical that this hearing go forward — especially with Senator Gibbs in Washington to explain how important this bipartisan bill is to Coloradans. Delay just prevents urgently needed resources from going to Colorado communities threatened by beetle-killed trees,” Senator Udall said. “I strongly urge my colleagues to re-think their strategy — this is a matter of public safety, and that’s too important for political gamesmanship.”

The bark beetle bill was introduced in November by U.S. Senators Mark Udall, D-CO, and James Risch, R-ID. Senator Risch is a graduate of  the University of Idaho’s School of Forestry.

*Hissy fit, from Urban Dictionary:

noun. A sudden outburst of temper, often used to describe female anger at something trivial. Originally regional from American South. Thought to originate from contraction of “hysterical fit.”

The National Center for Conservation Science and Policy (NCCSP) has issued a report titled Battling forest insects may be counter-productive. Here is the first paragraph:

IN RESPONSE TO RECENT BARK BEETLE EPIDEMICS, decision-makers are calling for landscape-level mechanical treatments to prevent the spread of these native insects and to reduce the perceived threat of increased fire risk that is believed to be associated with insect-killed trees. The best available science indicates that such treatments are not likely to reduce forest susceptibility to outbreaks or reduce the risk of fires, especially the risk of fires to communities. Furthermore, such silvicultural treatments could have substantial short-and significant long-term ecological costs when carried out in national forest roadless areas.

A person has to be careful when digesting reports like this from relatively obscure organizations. You don’t know when they are skewing “science” to promote their own point of view. Here is how the group describes themselves on their web site:

Click to continue »

The U. S. Forest Service is making $40 million available in three states where the mountain pine beetle has infested more than 2.5 million acres. The USFS announced that $30 would go to Colorado, $8 million to Wyoming, and $2 million to South Dakota where about 30 percent of the Black Hills National Forest is affected. The dollars will come from left over stimulus funds and reallocations within the Forest Service. About $5 million will come from funding that the Forest Service has been using to reduce the threat of wildfires.

The $40 million will be used for hazardous fuel reduction, on road and trail maintenance, and on providing assistance to state and local governments.

The USFS said:

The epidemic has had a severe impact on forest health and has resulted in a dramatic increase in the danger of trees falling on roads, trails and recreation areas. In addition, these dead and dying trees greatly increase the risk of fire danger in the communities of the Rocky Mountain Region and elsewhere in forested areas of the United States.

Some campgrounds have been temporarily closed in Colorado and Wyoming because of of the danger from falling trees.

Andy Stahl, the executive director of the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics is concerned that trails or facilities won’t be maintained because of taxpayer dollars being spent on “removing dead trees from remote areas in the Colorado Rockies”. Stahl believes the beetle-killed trees are not the wildfire risk that the Forest Service says they are.

As Wildfire Today reported in November, Steve Gage’s National Incident Management Organization (NIMO) team out of Boise has been tasked to develop plans to deal with some of the effects of the beetle infestation. Some of the objectives of the Team are to manage the removal of hazard trees along roads, power lines and in campgrounds; develop safety protocols for those working in beetle infested area; and develop fire preparedness and management plans to address the increased wildfire threat posed by dead and falling trees.