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Drought conditions in Arizona are
worse than they have been in over a hundred years. For the
first time in 50 years Salt River Project has had to shut down
power generation at Roosevelt Dam because of low water levels
in Roosevelt Lake. Lakes around Flagstaff and feeder streams
on Arizonas creeks and rivers are dry or drying up. In
Arizonas high country normally green mountain meadows are
brown. Across the state, forests are starved for moisture with
trees getting dryer and more brittle with each passing week.
It is no wonder that Arizona is
experiencing a very active fire season. Since early spring
drought caused fires have been breaking out statewide, from
the north rim of the Grand Canyon to Nogales. Fires have been
occurring with much more frequency and intensity across a wide
spectrum of forest types; from mixed conifer, ponderosa pine
and pinyon juniper in the north to mesquite and oak woodland
along the Mexican border. In places, grassland fires have been
burning.
It is these same severe drought
conditions that are the principle cause of and driving force
behind the big Rodeo-Chedisky fire which have now burned over
400,000 acres in northeastern Arizona. Big fires like the
Rodeo-Chedisky fire are fairly rare events usually occurring
under conditions of severe drought coupled with high
temperatures, low humidity, high winds and fire favoring
topography. Once these fires start they are generally
impossible to control much less extinguish and they usually
burn until there is a change in the environmental conditions
that caused them in the first place. Fortunately, no one has
been killed and firefighters have been able to concentrate
their efforts to try to save communities like Show Low and
Heber.
There has been much discussion
about how excess forest fuel has contributed to the size and
intensity of the Rodeo-Chedisky fire.
Arizona forests, particularly ponderosa pine forests,
are burdened in places with excess fuel in the form of young
trees or dog hair thickets. These are a result of
decades of fire suppression and over-grazing. While these
conditions exist in some places they do not exist over the
entire forest landscape and certainly not in all forest types.
While no one can say for sure, lower fuel loads would probably
have made little or no difference in the size and intensity of
this fire given the extreme environmental conditions under
which it has been burning.
Unfortunately, finger pointing has
already started with environmentalists and lawsuits being
singled out for blame for this large destructive burn.
The same thing happened after the |
Dude fire in 1990 and the Lone
fire in 1996. For
an angry man
whose house has just burned down this might
be understandable, but for elected officials it is
inexcusable.
Lawsuits brought to stop logging
and to protect old-growth habitat have nothing to do with this
fire. Logging the
forest, particularly big fire-resistant trees, does not reduce
the fire hazard especially with big uncontrolled fires.
In 1990 the Dude fire erupted in mid-June under
environmental and atmospheric conditions almost identical
to those in the Rodeo-Chedisky fire. The Dude fire
swept through logged and un-logged forest with equal ferocity.
The same thing happened with other smaller Arizona fires
including the Pot fire south of Flagtaff and the Horseshoe
fire north of Flagstaff.
Virtually everyone agrees that
fuel loads in parts of our forest need to be reduced to lessen
fire intensity and restore forests to a more natural
condition. The problem is one of economics. There is no
commercial market for the young trees that need to be thinned
and there simply is not enough money in the federal budget
to mechanically
thin and remove fuel loads over large areas of the west.
Which brings us back to fire. In
spite of the hardship caused by this fire we need to remember
that fire is an integral, vital part of our forests. We cannot
have healthy, functioning forests without it. The last thing
we need to do is try to fireproof our forests with large scale
environmentally destructive logging programs.
On the other hand, we need to
continue controlled burning, one of the cheapest and most
effective ways to reduce excess fuels. We must resist the
temptation to jump on and put out
wildland fires that do not pose a threat to
communities. Fires burning now mean less intense fires burning
20 years from now.
We must also accept the fact that
from time to time we will continue to have big uncontrolled
fires like the Dude and Rodeo-Chedisky. There is not a great
deal we can do about them other than working harder to try to
protect communities at the urban-wildland interface.
Finally, this fire event should
not be used to stampede people into making ill-advised,
short-sighted forest management decisions. Forest problems
that have been decades in the making will take decades to fix.
There will be no quick or easy solutions.
Charles J.Babbitt is a
Phoenix attorney , board member and past president of the
Maricopa Audubon Society. |
