The Nature Conservancy & Future Forest (Joint Op-ed)

Source – The Nature Conservancy
By Patrick Graham/Arizona State Director,
The Nature Conservancy, and Rob Davis/Partner, Future Forest LLC

As the smoke clears on Arizona’s largest wildfire in history, the Wallow fire, many are left wondering if this catastrophic wildfire could have been prevented or at least better controlled. Some of the breathtaking scenery has been changed and will never be the same in our lifetime. Valuable resources such as clean water and healthy watersheds may take decades to recover.

The Wallow fire, along with many other wildfires, has burned almost 1 million acres across Arizona in the last month alone. It is a stark reminder that our forests are in dire need of being restored. A fling of a cigarette butt out a window sparks yet another fire in the White Mountains. This one, the Wash fire, raged over the weekend near Heber, closing highways, and doubling in size in one night. How can we keep up? We need to do something and we need to do it now.

A collaborative effort to restore the forests in the White Mountains, the White Mountain Stewardship Contract, was put into affect back in 2004, partially as a result of the Rodeo-Chediski fire which burned just under ½ million acres and was then known as the largest wildfire in Arizona’s history. Under the WMSC, Future Forest was charged with managing the reduction of tree densities to more natural levels within 150,000 acres of Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest over a 10-year term. In its 7th year of the contract, Future Forest has treated only 50,000 acres, due to a change of commitment and resulting reduction in funding. Even so, it has still built an infrastructure to perform restoration, support the use of the wood residue, including renewable energy, and has created more than 300 jobs directly and indirectly. It accomplished the tree thinning around the towns of Alpine, Greer and Eagar that were in the middle of the Wallow fire and became the true testament that treatment works. The Forest Service, The Nature Conservancy, Future Forest, legislators, and other environmentalists and scientists recently toured the areas devastated by the wildfire. What we witnessed was amazing; a ring of green, healthy trees where treatment had taken place. These trees and communities were saved by the work completed by the WMSC. This is our silver lining; this ring of green in the midst of a charred forest. But our time is short.

A decade-long drought and winds, along with overgrown and overcrowded forests, have created unnatural, large-scale fires that torch and rage through tens of thousands of acres in a day. It is time to widen that ring of green; to help our forests become resilient against fires, insects and disease. We have demonstrated the solution in large-scale restoration with the White Mountain Stewardship Contract that is being succeeded by the unprecedented Four Forest Restoration Initiative. An initiative aimed to restore all 2.4 million acres across Arizona’s four forests by thinning 1 million acres over 20 to 30 years. But, time is of the essence, and the initiative is slow going with outdated processes and lack of funding.

We ask congress to focus funding on proactive restoration efforts instead of fighting wildfires and post- fire rehabilitation. Fire officials estimate the cost just to fight the Wallow fire at $80 million.

But the real cost of these fires could be up to 30 times more than what is initially calculated, according to a 2002 report by the Western Forestry Leadership Coalition, comprised of state and federal forestry officials.

In its report, “The True Cost of Wildfire in the Western U.S.,” the coalition figured the total cost of the Rodeo-Chediski Fire, which scorched more than 467,000 acres, was more than $308 million. The costs included the $122.5 million for loss of homes and property, $139 million for rehabilitation to stabilize the vegetation stripped by the flames and $8.1 million in indirect costs in the form of sales tax revenue and job losses. And none of these values our lost trees and resulting degradation of air and watersheds. When you see these staggering figures, restoration not only makes ecological sense, but economic sense.

Healthy forests are vital for Arizona’s economy, wildlife and for everyone’s quality of life. Businesses invest in wood products and other resources, such as clean energy, created from the trees we harvest. Forests serve as home for wildlife and serve as a playground for many of us, where families experience the outdoors together and create memories that last a lifetime. Forests also act as nature’s water reservoirs, soaking in snow and rain and slowly distributing it into our streams and rivers for Arizonans’ clean drinking water, as well as a natural air filter for the fresh air we breathe.

We know restoration works. The collaborative efforts create healthy forests, safer communities and stable economies. To clear a path forward there must be funding, long-term commitments and quicker processes to help ensure industries can confidently invest in these projects.

We can save our forests with the help from Congress.

We need congress to support full funding for the implementation of the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Act and Southwest Forest Health and Wildfire Prevention Act so we can get effective, science-based, large-scale restoration.

Congress must continue to fund the White Mountain Stewardship Contract, supporting the existing industry that is vital to continued work in the White Mountains as well as larger scale, across all public lands across Arizona.

Congress needs to enable these processes to move faster by streamlining the environmental assessment process allowing for on-the-ground monitoring instead of completion of all assessments upfront.
It’s time for a new approach. Fire won’t wait for the current National Environment Policy Act procedures and review process. We need government agencies to work collaboratively through the NEPA procedures and move through the process faster. We’ve seen it first-hand the devastation of a slow process.

Now that we have proven results that restoration works and we’re all together on the same page as what needs to happen, we must act quickly. Our beautiful forests, a precious resource for everyone, are burning up before our eyes. We need to do something before it’s too late.