SOS Forests

Megafire Brewing on the Umpqua

Another Biscuit Fire is brewing on the Umpqua National Forest. The Rattle Fire has blown up and is likely destined to burn 100,000 acres or more, by deliberate action on the part of the US Forest Service.

As of last night the Rattle Fire [here] had expanded to 2,700 acres officially, and well over 3,000 acres unofficially. The fire has exited the Boulder Creek mini-Wilderness and is spreading to the south and east into the Oregon Cascades.

The Rattle Fire was ignited Aug 17 and was under control. But the Northwest Oregon Type 1 IMT (IC Carl West) was ordered off the fire Sept 5 so that it might blow up and incinerate vast acreages.

Today a Type 2 IMT, the the Southern Oregon/Northern California IMT (IC Ken Paul) is watching it burn. Over 700 firefighters are detailed, [update: 900 as of Sept 11] to do backburning, not to suppress. Note that normally Type 2 IMT’s are medium-sized, with 100 to 500 firefighters. Type 1 IMT’s are the large firefighting teams, with over 500 personnel. But the Type 1 IMT is not coming back. They were too successful at stopping the fire. The desire of the Umpqua NF leadership (Forest Supervisor Cliff Dils) is to burn, baby, burn.

The Umpqua NF is not some ratty scrubland forest such as is found in eastern Nevada or southern Utah. It is Oregon Cascade old-growth true forest, with the largest species of trees in the world, including old-growth Douglas-fir, sugar pine, and ponderosa pine.

The Northwest Forest Plan (1994) set aside much of the Umpqua NF as critical spotted owl habitat and “late successional reserves.” Logging was all but halted. Massive economic disruption followed as mills shut down and thousands of woods workers lost their jobs. But all that was fine with the political establishment, because spotted owls were going to be “saved.”

Now, though, the intention is to incinerate spotted owls stands with megafire, just as occurred in 2002 with the 500,000 acre Biscuit Fire.

In fact, that was the intention all along. Every forester and forest scientist with any sense knew that. For 14 years the alarms have been sounded, but to no avail.

This year hundreds of spotted owl nesting stands have been incinerated already in Northern California where over 1,000 square miles of forest have been burned, on purpose, by IMT’s such as and including the Southern Oregon/Northern California IMT (IC Ken Paul). It has not been cheap, either. Over $400 million has been spent or will have been spent before the NorCal fires are out, roughly $625 per acre to eliminate forests from the landscape.

To date over $6 million [update: $13 million as of Sept 11] has been spent already on the Rattle Fire to burn 3,000 acres, a cost of $2,000 per acre to incinerate priceless Oregon old-growth forest.

The official estimated containment date for the Rattle Fire is now stated to be October 1st. That means the fire will not be contained by firefighters but will be allowed to burn until the snow flies. If snows are late, 100,000 acres or more will be destroyed by the Rattle Fire.

So-called watershed conservation groups, such as Umpqua Watersheds, applaud the destruction. Many of those groups are affiliated with eco-terrorist arsonists incarcerated in federal penitentiaries today. Their intentions and desires were never for conservation but for forest holocaust and more to their actual purposes, radical overthrow of the government.

There is no lipstick on this pig of a fire.

A second megafire is burgeoning on the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. The Middlefork Fire [here] doubled in size yesterday to 1,800 acres [update: 3,500 acres as of Sept. 11]. A handful of firefighters are watching in burn, a local Type 3 team (IC Bob Appling). [Update: Blue Mtn. Type 2 IMT is assigned together with 350 firefighter as of Sept 11]. Much of the expansion yesterday was due to backburning. There is no direct attack or suppression planned, nor will there be any before the snow flies. The official estimated containment date for the Middlefork Fire is also stated to be October 1st.

The Rattle and Middlefork fires are not official WFUs. They are non-suppression “suppression” fires. Neither the Umpqua nor Rogue River-Siskiyou NFs have officially adopted WFU because of public protests. But official designations notwithstanding, unofficially these fires are de facto whoofoos, or worse, deliberate megafires created by extensive backburning.

In this case, the backburning is of old-growth spotted owl preserves. No NEPA process or ESA consultations with the US Fish and Wildlife Service have been implemented. Treasured forest habitats and watersheds are being incinerated on purpose by a rogue federal agency hellbent on catastrophic destruction of our public forests by any means, legal or illegal.

The USFS firefighting budget has been drained completely. The $1.2 billion earmarked for fire suppression is gone, and an addition $400 million has been transferred to fire from other programs. That amount will not cover the costs, however.

It is important to note that 2008 has not been an excessive fire year in terms of acreage. To date 4.6 million acres have burned this year, a good portion of that in Texas grass fires. In comparison, at this date in 2007 over 7.3 million acres had burned and in 2006 over 8.6 million acres had burned (2005 - 7.9 million acs, 2004 - 7.6 million acs). Somehow in 2008, despite the fact that fire acreage has been only 60 percent of prior years to date, the money spent has been excessive and budget-busting.

And this despite the hands-off, Let It Burn policy that is ostensibly supposed to result in cost savings!

It turns out that the deliberate incineration of our national forests is not cheap at all. And the excessive suppression costs are not conflated with the value of the resource damage and destruction, which is in the tens of $billions.

Resource damage and destruction is the name of the game these days with the USFS. They have promulgated a “blackened, dead forests are beautiful” campaign with their “partners,” the Wilderness Society and the Nature Conservancy. The declared policy of those groups is to convert old-growth forests to “northern chaparral,” aka tickbrush, and to incinerate as many private residences in the West as possible.

All this destruction is being done in the name of “wilderness” yet the Umpqua NF and the Rogue River-Siskiyou NF have been home to human beings for 10,000 years or more. They are historical cultural landscapes criss-crossed with ancient trails, camas meadows, berry fields, village sites, and other human use sites of incredible vintage.

Instead of protecting, maintaining, and perpetuating ancient forests, heritage, watersheds, endangered species habitat, and other forest values, wholesale and deliberate incineration is occurring, with not the slightest attempt to obey the laws that govern the USFS nor a care at all about the depleted budget.

These travesties have been predicted and decried for years to no avail. The USFS is out of control and destroying our forests, including the most magnificent and precious forests in the world.

Forest holocausts are brewing today in Oregon. It is past time for citizens to stand up and take back control of their government, not for political reasons but for our own health, safety, and survival.