Amid clamor to increase prescribed burns, obstacles await
Six decades after University of California forestry professor Harold Biswell experimented with prescribed burns and was treated with ridicule, he is seen as someone whose ideas could save the U.S. West’s forests and ease wildfire dangers
June 22, 2021, 11:29 AM
7 min read
Share to FacebookShare to TwitterEmail this articleFILE - This Sept. 27, 2017, file photo, shows charred trunks of Ponderosa pines near Sisters, Ore., months after a prescribed burn removed vegetation, smaller trees and other fuel ladders last spring. Hundreds of millions of acres of forests have become overgrown, prone to wildfires that have devastated towns, triggered massive evacuations and blanketed the West Coast in choking smoke. Today, officials want to sharply increase prescribed burns, with drought and global warming creating a sense of urgency. (AP Photo/Andrew Selsky, File)
SALEM, Ore. -- In the 1950s, when University of California forestry professor Harold Biswell experimented with prescribed burns in the state's pine forests, many people thought he was nuts.
“Harry the Torch,” “Burn-Em-Up Biswell” and “Doctor Burnwell” were some of his nicknames from critics, who included federal and state foresters and timber groups.
Six decades after Biswell preached an unpopular message to those who advocated full-on fire suppression, he is seen not as crazy but someone whose ideas could save the U.S. West’s forests and ease wildfire dangers.
Millions of acres have become overgrown, prone to wildfires that have devastated towns, triggered massive evacuations and blanketed the West Coast in thick smoke.
Today, officials want to sharply increase prescribed fires — those set intentionally and under carefully controlled conditions to clear underbrush, pine needle beds and other surface fuels.
Last month, four Democratic U.S. senators — Ron Wyden of Oregon, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Maria Cantwell of Washington and Dianne Feinstein of California — introduced legislation that requires federal land managers to significantly increase the number and size of prescribed fires on federal lands. Wyden said it would more than double funding for prescribed burns.
“We would have a technically skilled prescribed fire workforce,” Wyden said in a phone interview. "We would streamline the smoke regulations in winter months."
Wyden and the Biden administration are also seeking creation of a 21st century Civilian Conservation Corps, to provide more boots on the ground to work on forest health.
In New Mexico, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed legislation on March 18 that will clear the way for more prescribed fires by establishing liability standards for landowners who conduct them and creating a certification program.
In Oregon, a bill from state Sen. Jeff Golden would enact rules for prescribed fires and a certified burn manager program. He envisions Oregon having as many as hundreds of trained managers to supervise prescribed fires.
“I don’t see that we have any option other than to increase the prescribed burns," said Golden, who is from the Rogue Valley, where wildfires tore into two towns last year. “We’ve got, across the Western U.S., a buildup of decades of fuels, and it’s going to burn.
"So do you want to burn in a planned, strategic way that has an element of control to it, or do you want it to burn in megafires, with all the costs — human, animal, environmental costs — that that entails?”
It took years for forest managers to come around to accept and then finally embrace prescribed burning. In the first half of the 20th century, fire was seen as the enemy, with federal and state forest managers believing prescribed burning damaged the environment, particularly timber, a commercial resource. But in the late 1960s and 1970s, federal forest managers began employing prescribed burns.
Yet scaling up the practice has been slow. From 1995 through 2000, an average of 1.4 million federal acres (566,560 hectares) were treated with prescribed fire each year, far short of the 70 million acres (28 million hectares) that in 2001 were in critical need of fuel reduction to avoid high-severity wildfires, biologist David Carle said in his 2002 book “Burning Questions: America’s Fight with Nature’s Fire.” Another 141 million acres (57 million hectares) also needed treatment.
