FYI

1
FYI
Payson Ranger District
Tonto National
Forest
USDA Forest Service
1009 E. Hwy.
260
Payson, Arizona 85541
(928)
474-7992
Contact Gary Roberts
June 2007
A Sobering Wildfire Glance at Mogollon Rim
Country and the Nation

• On average since 1960, more than 133,000
  wildfires each year in America blacken and char
  valuable forests and grasslands. Many animals and
  structures are destroyed and an average of 29
  people are killed. Nationally, about 90 percent
  of wildfires are caused by human carelessness.
• According to the National Interagency Fire Center
  (NIFC), more than 48 million acres have been
  blackened by wildfire across the nation from 2000
  through 2006. Thats more acres burned during any
  seven-year period since 1960. The year 2006 saw
  9,873,745 acres darkened by wildfire, making it
  the most acres burned in a single year in the
  47-year period since 1960.
• It was a record-setting year in 2005 for most
  acreage burned in Arizona. Wildfires in the state
  blackened and charred about 730,000 acres,
  surpassing the nearly 630,000 acres that were
  torched in 2002. That was a year in which Arizona
  experienced the Rodeo-Chediski Fire, the largest
  wild land blaze in state history at 469,000
  acres.
• More than 375,000 acres burned in 2005 on the
  Tonto National Forest alone. All of Arizonas
  four largest wildfires in recorded history have
  occurred since 2000, cumulatively burning more
  than 920,000 acres. The Cave Creek Complex
  consumed 248, 310 acres, the Rodeo-Chediski Fire
  burned 469,000 acres, the Willow Fire burned
  119,500 acres, and the Aspen Fire burned 84,750
  acres. By comparison, the Dude Fire of 1990 (the
  largest fire in state history up until that
  point) burned 24,000 acres. The Capitan Gap Fire,
  that Smokey Bear was rescued from in New Mexico
  in 1950, was 17,000 acres. Considered large fires
  in their day, they seem diminutive by todays
  fiery standards.
• Most will remember 1988 as a big fire year in
  America as wildfire raced through historic and
  beloved stands of timber in Yellowstone. The big
  fire year of 1988, however, has been followed by
  more big fire years 1994 and 1996.
• In 2000, a modern record was established for most
  acres burned in the West since accurate
  record-keeping began in 1916. A whopping
  8,422,437 acres were burned and suppression costs
  spiraled to 1.3 billion. The national level of
  wildfire preparedness and response rose to the
  highest level possible five weeks earlier than
  ever before and remained at that extremely high
  level of preparedness for a record-setting 62
  days.
• Arizona, Colorado, and Oregon experienced their
  largest individual fires on record in 2002.
• California reeled and staggered in 2003 as
  770,000 acres were scorched by wild land blazes.
• 
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2

• Sobering Wildfire Glance/Roberts-2
• Before many people lived in the woods, wildfire
  played an integral role in forest health.
  Lightning-induced wildfire burned debris on the
  forest floor and removed dead and dying trees.
  Low-intensity fires kept the forest clean and
  healthy.
• Americas forests, especially in the interior
  West, are at grave risk. Despite the best
  intentions of the past, the U.S. Forest Service
  and many segments of American society have made
  some big mistakes. Aggressive suppression of all
  wildfires during the latter half of the 20th
  century has resulted, in many cases, in thicker,
  denser stands of thinner, smaller trees where
  disease and insect attack are all too common.
• Established in 1905, the U.S. Forest Service
  suppressed wildfire to protect life and natural
  resources. Fire suppression, although necessary,
  interrupted the natural cycle of wildfire in
  North American ecosystems. Additionally, heavy
  pine cone crops early in the 20th century were
  not thinned naturally by fire due to livestock
  grazing that removed grasses necessary for
  carrying low-intensity wildfires. The
  aforementioned factors contributed to American
  forests becoming crowded and unhealthy.
• Overly dense forests invite disease and insect
  attacks and can fuel catastrophic wildfires.
  Forests managed with selective thinning and
  prescribed fire can help restore forests to prior
  historical levels of health, vigor, diversity,
  and sustainable conditions.
• According to the U.S. Forest Service, the
  Government Accounting Office, and forestry
  scientists, an estimated 73 million acres of
  national forests are on the verge of ecological
  collapse. Of all the contributing factors to this
  unhealthy condition, NONE looms larger than the
  fact that far too many trees crowd our forests
  vying for too few resources.
• Forests in the American Southwest 100 to 150
  years ago, depending on location, carried, on
  average, as few as three to as many as 25 trees
  per acre. Today, forests in the Southwest may
  carry up to several thousand trees per acre and
  can be several hundred times more dense than a
  century or more ago. The moisture, nutrient
  reserves, and growing space needed to sustain the
  explosive growth of the past 85 years or so, does
  not exist in Southwestern forests and it never
  has.
• Healthy and dynamic forest ecosystems, as well as
  many plant and animal species, are dependent on
  fire to create precise conditions for them to
  survive and flourish.
• There are three primary factors that prevent us
  from utilizing fire as a management tool more
  frequently.
• 1. Prolonged drought throughout many areas in the
  nation elevates our risk. When fire indexes are
  extreme, the Forest Service usually decides to
  suppress fires that we might otherwise use to
  restore ecosystems when indexes are lower.
• 2. The risks are compounded by the ever-expanding
  wild land/urban interface. Imagine an island of
  combustible fuel (homes and cabins) butting up
  against a sea of combustible vegetation. We use
  fire only with acceptable limits of economic,
  ecological, and social risk. We aggressively
  suppress wildfires when it is likely they will
  threaten lives, homes, and property and/or would
  severely destroy habitat for endangered species
  or damage vital soil and watersheds.
• 3. Ponderosa pine in the West are among those
  forests that need fire the most, but often are in
  no condition to burn. Increased tree density
  equals increased catastrophic wildfire risk.
  Allowing nature to run its course by simply
  letting fires burn without restraint could have
  far-reaching devastating effects on communities
  and ecosystems alike.
• 
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3

• Sobering Wildfire Glance/Roberts-3
• Prescribed or RX fire is an effective management
  tool used to regulate heavy fuel loads and to
  create healthier forests. The growth, rate of
  fire spread, and smoke from a prescribed fire are
  closely monitored. Aggressive suppression actions
  are taken if the fire displays behavior that does
  not meet resource management objectives.
• RX fire gives land managers the important option
  of burning under the right conditions, allowing
  protection of valuable natural and cultural
  resources, and diminishing danger to the public
  and firefighters. RX fire can reduce years of
  dangerous fuel accumulation and decrease the risk
  of catastrophic wildfire.
• Prescribed fire is an old concept applied with
  current research and technology. RX fire has been
  used nationwide by the U.S. Forest Service and
  other federal agencies for over 40 years. Between
  1996 and 2000, over 31,000 prescribed fires were
  used to treat nearly eight million acres of land.
  Of these intentionally ignited fires, only
  one-half of one percent escaped their specified
  burn unit boundaries. Prescribed or RX fire is a
  calculated and managed risk. Heavy fuel loads and
  overly dense and decadent forests, by comparison,
  create unhealthy conditions that are
  exponentially far riskier for the occurrence of
  catastrophic wildfire.
• Fire is a valuable process for recycling dead
  biomass in the arid West where natural
  decomposition rates are extremely slow.
  Historical photos that have been taken in the
  same location over a period of time have shown
  untreated wooden fence posts still intact after
  100 years.
• Warmer temperatures appear to be increasing the
  intensity and duration of wildfire seasons in the
  western United States. Since 1986, longer summers
  with warmer temperatures have resulted in a
  stunning four-fold increase of major wildfires
  and a six-fold increase in the area of forest
  burned, compared to the period from 1970 to 1986.
• The length of active wildfire season (when fires
  are actually burning) in the western United
  States has increased an extra 78 days. Also, the
  average burn duration of large wildfires has
  increased from an average of 7.5 days to 37.1
  days.
• In the western United States, 75 percent of
  annual stream-flow comes from snow pack. Snow
  pack is essential for keeping fire danger low in
  our arid forests until the spring melt period
  ends. Once snowmelt is complete, forests in the
  western U.S. can become combustible within one
  month due to low relative humidity and sparse
  summer rainfall. Hydrology research indicates
  that snow packs are currently melting one to four
  weeks earlier than they did 50 years ago.
  Stream-flows also peak earlier. According to one
  study that covered a 34-year period, early
  snowmelt that resulted in longer, drier summers
  experienced five times as many wildfires compared
  to years with late snowmelt.
• Four decisive factors are combining to produce an
  observed increase in wildfires (1) earlier
  snowmelt (2) higher temperatures in summer (3)
  a longer fire season (4) an expanded area of
  high-elevation forests that are vulnerable.
• About 1993, researchers who study tree rings made
  a connection between climate change and wildfire.
  They were able to show that widespread wildfires
  in the Southwest have ignited consistently over
  the past 300 to 400 years. Those wildfires
  occurred roughly on the same schedule as our
  planets El Nino/La Nina weather cycle.
• 
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4

• Sobering Wildfire Glance/ Roberts-4
• Paleo-ecologists looking back thousands of years
  in time are discovering that widespread wildfires
  have occurred during warmer, drier periods in the
  Northern Rockies and the Northwest of America.
• When a catastrophic wildfire denudes an entire
  slope, it can cause massive erosion that leaves
  revealing deposits of sediment and charcoal
  fragments at the bottom of the incline. The
  debris flow creates a fan-shaped deposit called
  an alluvial fan. Geomorphology scientists have
  used alluvial fans to link climate change to
  catastrophic wildfires. The science of
  geomorphology has shown that lodge pole pine
  forests in Yellowstone National Park have
  experienced catastrophic wildfires in sync with
  long-term shifts in climate. Those forests
  experienced large flare-ups during the Medieval
  Warm Period (roughly 900 to 1200 A.D.). It is
  interesting to note that during that period, tree
  lines rose in elevation, lakes receded, and parts
  of the West were gripped by prolonged drought.
• Overly dense and decadent forests can fuel
  catastrophic wildfires. However, as we can see,
  when climate shifts to warmer and drier,
  catastrophic wildfires increase regardless.
  Research shows that climate naturally swings back
  and forth on a fairly predictable rhythm. Much of
  the West has grappled with drought for about a
  decade. The drought is spreading and now covers
  more than one-third of the continental U.S.
  Currently, much of the West is in another warming
  trend. It is possible this climate shift is
  compounded by industrial emissions of
  greenhouse gases.
• Wildfires roughly add an estimated 40 percent of
  fossil fuel atmospheric carbon emissions each
  year. If climate change is increasing wildfire
  activity as research and observation suggest,
  these current sources of carbon emissions will
  accelerate the escalation of greenhouse gases.
• In 2001, the Payson Ranger District in the Tonto
  National Forest began implementation of a
  long-range, far-reaching, landscape-scale,
  three-pronged fuels reduction strategy. The
  achievable goal is to reduce catastrophic
  wildfire danger in the wild land/urban interface,
  to initiate the restoration of natural ecological
  systems, and to develop and foster sustainable
  forest conditions.
• Since our plans inception, we have successfully
  thinned more than 8,000 acres on difficult,
  critical, high priority acres on lands adjacent
  to communities throughout our district.
  Additionally, we have treated more than 20,000
  acres with prescribed fire. We partnered to open
  five brush disposal pits for area residents and
  property owners. As a strategic start to reduce
  the threat of wildfire to the wild land/urban
  interface in Rim country, we created a 330-feet
  wide fuel break completely around the communities
  of Pine and Strawberry. In fall of 2004, we
  burned about 33,000 vegetative debris piles
  (weighing a half-a-ton to a ton-and-a-half each)
  scattered throughout the Payson Ranger District.
• We have employed natures firefighters in the
  Oxbow area south of Payson to reduce live fuel
  loading in the chaparral vegetation type. What
  began as a pilot program of 185 goats in April of
  2004, ultimately grew to utilize 1,100 live
  vegetation browsers. It is an unorthodox way to
  pre-treat an area without the impact of smoke.
  And it is just one strategy in our district
  toolbox that we employed to reduce catastrophic
  wildfire danger.
• Early in 2005, we were privileged to give a
  presentation in Albuquerque about our Payson Goat
  Grazing Project at the Quivira Coalitions Half
  Public, Half Private, One West conference. The
  Quivira Coalition was assembled in New Mexico to
  provide a positive and non-threatening forum for
  ranchers, environmental groups, and federal and
  state agencies to discuss land management issues
  and work toward collaborative solutions.
• 
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5

• Sobering Wildfire Glance/ Roberts-5
• Our vision for the immediate short-term is to
  reduce heavy fuel loads in the wild land/urban
  interface. We would like to thin 5,000 acres per
  year on critical, high priority acreage in the
  immediate years ahead. If this critical acreage
  is thinned, it will substantially move these
  areas out of harms way.
• With the Verde, Payson, Lion, Pine/Strawberry,
  and Manaco environmental analyses (EAs)
  completed, the Payson Ranger District (as of
  March 2007) has 34,200 acres ready and available
  for thinning, 117,597 acres ready and available
  for first-entry prescribed burning, and 9,552
  acres ready and available for prescribed
  maintenance burning. We have jumped through all
  the legal hoops and all of the required paperwork
  is in order and ready, but a constant concern is
  sustained funding for these projects. The
  Christopher/Hunter analysis area is 24,288 acres.
  
• We are doing all we can on our district to make
  our vision for substantially reducing wildfire
  danger in the wild land/urban interface a
  reality. Its a problem we can fix. It needs to
  be tackled. It must be done! Our success could
  become a much-needed model program for other
  districts and forests across the nation to adopt
  and emulate.
• Now that we know that wildfire played a vital
  role in North American ecosystem health for
  centuries, is Americas beloved legend Smokey
  Bear still relevant? Consider the facts and
  decide for yourself. Smokey never said we
  shouldnt conduct prescribed burns or thin our
  forests, nor did he say that we should suppress
  all wildfires. Smokeys message has always been
  to discourage human carelessness with fire, not
  to exclude all fire.
• Smokey Bear has one of the best records ever
  achieved by an advertising symbol for
  communication effectiveness. Did we listen? The
  record speaks for itself. In 1992, the U.S.
  Forest Service estimated that wildfires caused by
  human carelessness decreased by 50 percent since
  Smokeys campaign began in 1944, even though
  people visiting our public lands increased
  ten-fold since the 1940s. And even though the
  Forest Service can use prescribed fire as an
  effective management tool for restoring vigor,
  health, and diversity to our forests, Smokeys
  message about human carelessness with fire is
  just as timely today as it was in 1944. The need
  for land managers to utilize prescribed fire can
  live comfortably beside Smokeys message about
  fire prevention. Human carelessness will never be
  an acceptable cause of fire. We will always need
  to heed Smokey Bear.
• The leading cause of human-caused fires on public
  lands is abandoned campfires. Never leave a
  campfire unattended for even a moment until
  youre sure its cool to the touch. Its as easy
  as one, two, three. You see, it really doesnt
  take much to make sure your campfire is cool to
  the touch!
• 1. Pour water on your campfire.
  
  
  2. Stir your campfire with a shovel.
  
  3.
  Repeat steps one and two until your campfire is
  cool to the touch.
• Fire Wise Tip DO NOT bury your fire with dirt,
  sand, or gravel. The buried fuel can smolder
  undetected for a long time and break free later
  to cause a fire. Feeding full-length logs into
  your campfire is not fire wise and is never
  allowed. Your firewood should always fit
  carefully within the safety of your fire ring.
• If you have a home or property in the wild
  land/urban interface (a place where combustible
  vegetation meets combustible homes and cabins),
  each fire season you are at risk. The best way to
  fight fire is before smoke is on the horizon.
  Each of us must take personal responsibility for
  safely co-existing in an environment and
  landscape that historically has been shaped by
  wildfire for thousands of years.
• 
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6

• Sobering Wildfire Glance/Roberts-6
• With the seclusion and ambience of a home in the
  forest comes the risk of living in a home that is
  surrounded by combustible vegetation. The
  proactive steps taken by you before a wildfire
  occurs (such as creating defensible space or
  using fire-resistive landscaping) is of paramount
  importance.
• Record-setting wildfires across the nation over
  the past few years serve as a sobering reminder
  to each of us that we must be extra careful with
  fire. Many national forests are at risk for
  wildfire due to prolonged drought, warmer
  temperatures, drier summers, longer fire seasons,
  and vegetative overcrowding.
• Useful websites for wildfire
  information
• Fire Wise www.firewise.org
• Arizona Fire Information www.azstatefire.com
• Arizona Governors Forest Health Council
  www.governor.state.az.us/FHC
• National Incident Information Center
  www.fs.fed.us/news/fire
• National Fire Plan www.fireplan.gov
• Southwest Coordination Center www.fs.fed.us/r3/fi
  re
•