By: Jesse Duhnkrack

Jesse Duhnkrack — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 22:00:07 +0000

Thanks Joe, for helping to inform readers of the challenges with wildland fire management and protecting values at risk such as the groves of giant sequoia in California. However, this editorial doesn’t seem to offer any solutions, other than the work “needs to be informed by good science”. Of course, and most certainly the federal and state governments of California have been using good science for the past 50 years, once it was recognized that fires served a critical ecological role in Sierra Nevada forests. (Side note: Twice in the editorial, this area is erroneously referred to as the Sierra Madre.) There are many scientists currently examining the options forward that land managers face in protecting giant sequoia groves. Often, there are difference in those options, but most agree that fuel reduction and restoration efforts are essential. Your editorial is sharply critical of tree removal (by mechanical or manual means), yet you seem to agree with Dr Mark Finney in your op-ed from 2/23 that quotes Mark as saying “The only way to maintain a forest in a low-hazard condition is through repeated burning … but you can’t introduce fire without some mechanical treatment first. … You can’t restore structure without mechanical means.”
Fuel treatment in areas of the Sierra Nevada that have not burned in the past 150 years is a very complex issue, and involves multiple considerations – species composition, structure, slope, aspect, soils, dead forest fuel, historic fire regime (including influence of Native American burning) among others. There is no one-size fits all. And we are talking about a very very large landscape, to be sure. Prescribed burning may be the tool in places, where in others there needs to be a combination of mechanized fuel reduction followed by the periodic use of prescribed fire to restore and maintain ecological processes. The “clear-cuts along roadways in Yosemite National Park” are vastly different than the forest harvest practice of clearcutting. The fuel treatments along limited portions of roadways in Yosemite are intended as strategic fuel breaks (which are essential to managing future fires, and are called out specifically as a key tool for the US Forest Service in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Legislation) and to protect the visiting public from hazardous trees falling onto the roadway. The park has been actively managing these areas for decades. I have a lot of personnel experience with managing wildland fire in the ecosystems, having served as a Burn Boss on several prescribed fires in giant sequoia groves. I concluded my federal career as the Program Lead for Policy, Planning, and Reviews with the Department of the Interior, Office of Wildland Fire. Feel free to contact me for any further consultation. I’d also like to add that the editorial headline (in the Denver Post) was confusing and perhaps off-target as it reads: FIRE PREVENTION; Logging of giant sequoias must pass protection”. I don’t believe that the National Park Service is proposing to log any giant sequoia trees, and I am certain that any manual or mechanized tree removal on US Forest Service lands will be seeking to minimize the removal of any giant sequoia trees. Perhaps the title should have read: PROTECTING VALUES FROM WILDFIRE; Fuel treatments of today will help protect giant sequoia trees from future damaging wildfires.

Comments on: When giants fall, we need to listen

By: Jesse Duhnkrack