Viewpoint: Improve county and Forest Service wildfire plans
Mike Bader
The Forest Service and the timber industry have effectively lobbied Congress to enact laws based on fire paranoia that cut the public owners of these forests out of the process. They want the government to build roads at taxpayer expense to while compromising the best remaining fish and wildlife habitat and quiet spaces. Upon a molehill of truth they have constructed a mountain of disinformation.
Claiming an emergency, the Forest Service is fast-tracking commercial timber sales in ways that severely limit and exempt them from environmental analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act including impacts on water quality, endangered species and old growth forests.
They are removing the administrative review and public objection process.
The bad stuff for wildlife, fish and people including ugly clearcuts, road construction and reduced water quality are being frontloaded. The good stuff including stream restoration and road reclamation are back ended. If past is prologue, the latter will not be funded or implemented as the Forest Service shifts its priority to the next commercial sale opportunity.
One of the more egregious tactics has been to declare vast areas of remote National Forests as “Wildland-Urban Interface” (WUI). According to the U.S. Census Bureau: "To qualify as an urban area, the territory identified according to criteria must encompass at least 2,000 housing units or have a population of at least 5,000." Yet the Forest Service buffers isolated structures including storage sheds and the like by up to 2.5 miles. These concentric circles overlap so that most of the landscape is labeled an “urban” interface.
We need a more honest and scientific approach to human-caused problems. The better approach is to identify the Home Ignition Zone as defined by retired Forest Service fire scientist Dr. Jack Cohen. This includes hardening homesites with fire-resistant materials and clearing dense vegetation in a 120-foot buffer around these structures. Better yet is not building homes within forestlands that are hard to reach by emergency responders.
Missoula County is updating its County Wildfire Protection Plan and holding public meetings. For more information and to submit comments visit and urge focus on the Home Ignition Zone and reining in the excessive WUI buffer to align with science and economic reality.