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I’ve indicated in previous posts that the Forest Service managers’ major challenge isn’t managing resources, it’s managing people. A field trip I took with Pike-San Isabel NF staff and Rocky Smith of the environmental group Colorado Wild was a case in point.
Rocky is clearly very good at his job, which is essentially to hound the Forest Service into making what his organization considers the most ecologically desirable decisions (“hound” — v : pursue or chase relentlessly). He’s a workaholic, he’s passionate, dedicated, somewhat paranoid, and has an encyclopedic knowledge of the myriad laws, regulations and policies that govern the Forest Service.
Our day began at the Leadville Ranger Station, with Rocky delivering a rapid-fire critique of the North Leadville fuel reduction project to Leadville District Ranger Jon Morrissey, a lean, spare mustached guy who spent a good part of Rocky’s diatribe staring at a spot at the table approximately four feet in front of him. I take very fast notes but still missed a good part of Rocky’s speech, which went something like this:
“What we’ve got here is an extreme violation of the roadless rule… Eighty to one hundred is a good standard to making it more resistant to beetles… that’s not the real issue, the real issue is 400 foot, is one, we have a very troubling violation of the roadless rule… the word ‘desirable’ is inserted, but that is not found in the regulations… if you listen to that exception… as we all know… the fire regulation is in the CP standards… It will be very hard to say that this decision, however useful you think it is, or I think it is… you are going to need to rescind this decision or I am going to appeal it… It goes back to two other rangers, I won’t name names… I don’t want to use the word, but sleazy, you know and…”
Rocky’s problem with the North Leadville Project centers on Unit C and part of Unit B. Both units are completely typical wildland-urban interface (WUI) treatments—non-commercial hand thinning and pile burning in dense lodgepole pine stands within 400 feet of a cluster of homes that some genius built right next to forest type that really likes to burn. The problem from Rocky’s perspective is that this particular WUI also happens to be a part of the RARE II inventoried Holy Cross East Roadless Area, contiguous to the Congressionally designated Holy Cross Wilderness. The Clinton-era Roadless Area Conservation Rule prohibits logging, including thinning, in these areas.
The Leadville District is about 70% lodgepole pine cover. In Oregon, where I’m from, lodgepole is a weed that lives fast and dies hard. It’s a prolific seeder that regenerates rapidly after fire and grows rapidly in dense thickets until it gets to be 80-100 years old when it usually burns up in spectacular fashion. Lodgepole fires create excellent habitat for a variety of critters, especially bird species that feed on insects that eat dead wood.
Rocky Mountain lodgepole seems to be a somewhat more complicated species. On many high elevation sites with short growing seasons (and wet cool conditions that keep fire out), it can get to be 300 years old. I was surprised to find a multi-aged lodgepole stand with relatively complex canopy structure and highly variable ground cover in the North Leadville Project. Many of the older trees had fire scars from low-intensity ground fire, which is something I’ve never seen in a lodgepole stand. I suspect it would be difficult to piece together the stand’s “natural” fire history—the oldest trees dated to the late 1800s when Leadville (current population 2,688) was a booming mining town of 44,000 people. Miners logged the hills surrounding town when they were sober, and burned off the rest when they were drunk.
I have several master’s level fire ecology classes under my belt but I have no idea how wide of (or if) a thinning corridor in this lodgepole stand will keep the inevitable fire from burning up the houses downhill. I’ve got a good notion that putting a metal roof on these houses will make a lot bigger difference than the difference between 200 feet of thinning and 400 feet of thinning uphill.
Other than the interesting interpersonal dynamics, I’m pretty unmoved one way or another about the prospect of non-commercial hand thinning in mining era lodgepole leftovers. To me, it’s another purely symbolic conflict with little or no ecological relevance whatsoever.
I ask Morrissey is he doesn’t think we’re all just kind of whistling in the wind. I was surprised by the earnestness of his response. “No,” he said. “I worked in recreation, you know, and I have my own strong roadless values. And Rocky has his. I appreciate this dialog and I’m hoping we can find some common ground.”
The cynic in me thinks Morrissey is BSing me, but after observing him carefully over the course of the afternoon I decided he was perfectly serious. You don’t get to be a District Ranger in the Forest Service these days without having a pretty good attitude about dealing with the public. I’ve got a good idea he is going to spend the next week rifling through the project file, burning up the phone lines with the Supervisors office, and generally doing whatever he can to get this project out the door and keep Rocky happy… and keep the local home owners happy, too. I am guessing they think a 400-foot deep thinning zone isn’t nearly enough.
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