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SCIENCE AND FOREST WILDFIRE

The West can expect more summers of monumental blazes because of the government's history of suppression. The true damage from this year's wildfires in Idaho was exaggerated and the benefits all but ignored by the media (Leon Neuenschwander, Lewiston Morning Tribune, October 20, 2000).
Healthy fish populations can be quite resilient to the effects of wildfire (Gresswell 1999). Most often, healthy populations are associated with roadless or wilderness areas and cool moist forests that have been relatively little affected by logging and fire suppression (Lee et al. 1997, Rieman et al. 2000).
Roadless watersheds have the highest levels of ecological integrity and the greatest resiliency to wildfires largely due to the absence of logging and road construction (USDA Forest Service and USDI BLM 1997).
Widespread scientific consensus exists that protecting national forest roadless areas from road construction, logging, and other forms of development will result in significant gains for biodiversity and ecosystem conservation (Henjum et al. 1994, Noss and Cooperider 1994, Ercelawn 1999, Strittholt and DellaSala in review).
According to the Interior Columbia Basin Assessment, "fires in unroaded areas are not as severe as in roaded areas because of less surface fuel… Many of the fires in the unroaded areas produce a forest structure that is consistent with the fire regime, while the fires in the roaded areas commonly produce a forest structure that is not in sync with the fire regime. Fires in the roaded areas are more intense, due to drier conditions, wind zones on the foothill/valley interface, high surface-fuel loading, and dense stands" (Hann et al. 1997).
In eastern Oregon and Washington, Lehmkuhl et al. (1995) and Huff et al. (1995) reported a positive correlation between fuel loadings, predicted flame lengths and logging. They attributed the increased fire hazard in managed areas to slash fuels generated as a by-product of tree removal activities (including thinning), and to the creation of dense, early-successional stands via logging that have a high fire potential. (DellaSalla and Frost 2000)
A post-fire study of the effectiveness of fuels treatments - including thinning - on previously non-harvested lands in the Wenatchee National Forest, Washington found that harvest treatments likely exacerbated fire damage (USDA Forest Service 1995). Contrary to statements that have been made by critics of roadless area protection, the forests most in need of fuels treatment are not roadless areas but areas that have already been roaded and logged, "where significant investments have already been made" (USDA Forest Service/USDI Department of Interior 1997).
In high-elevation forests, weather rather than fuels is often the primary variable determining fire severity and extent (Flannigan and Harrington 1988, Johnson and Wowchuck 1993, Turner et al. 1994, Bessie and Johnson 1995, Agee 1997). The efficacy of fire suppression decreases dramatically in forest types characterized by high-intensity fires and under severe fire weather (SNEP 1996, Agee 1998).
Despite substantial investments of both financial and human resources, many large fires are not successfully controlled or extinguished by fire fighting efforts; instead, they are extinguished when the weather changes (Romme and Despain 1989).
Roadless areas have lower potential for high-intensity fires than roaded areas because they are less prone to human-caused ignitions (DellaSala et al. 1995, Weatherspoon and Skinner 1996, USDA Forest Service 2000).
More than 90 percent of all wildfires are human human-caused, which can be attributed to operation of motorized vehicles, logging equipment, smoking, arson, campfires, and debris burning (USDA Forest Service 1996, 1998).
In some instances, forest thinning treatments intended to reduce fire hazard appear to have had the opposite effect (Huff et al. 1995, van Wagtendonk 1996, Weatherspoon 1996). Such treatments may reduce fuel loads, but they also allow more solar radiation and wind to reach the forest floor. The net effect is usually reduced fuel moisture and increased flammability (Countryman 1955, Agee 1997)