Bonney receives national Wildfire Mitigation Award

Byron Bonney, Community Forester with Bitter Root Resource Conservation and Development, was recently named as a recipient of the 2019 Wildfire Mitigation Award (WMA). The award was established in 2014 by the National Association of State Foresters, National Fire Protection Association, USDA Forest Service and the International Association of Fire Chiefs, in response to the need to recognize the large number of great wildfire mitigation programs and projects that are making a difference on the ground in the United States today.  

“The WMA is the highest national honor one can receive for outstanding work and significant program impact in wildfire preparedness and mitigation,” said Meghan Rhodes, a wildland fire programs specialist who serves on the award selection committee.

The awards are designed to recognize outstanding service at the federal, state, local and tribal levels of government and at the local community level. 

Rhodes said in her letter of notification to Bonney, “By honoring you, the award sponsors also seek to increase public recognition and awareness of the value of wildfire mitigation efforts and provide high quality examples that others can learn from to help in their own communities. Thank you for all you do to impact mitigation efforts on the ground helping to make your community more fire adapted.”

Bonney is one of seven people in the nation to receive the prestigious award this year and they will all be recognized at the Wildland-Urban Interface Conference in Reno Nevada, on March 27, 2019. More information on the awards can be found at: http://stateforesters.org/mitigation.

Bonney spent 31 years doing fire management work for the U. S. Forest Service before “retiring” to the Bitterroot Valley. His first job was serving as a crew boss on a hotshot smokejumper crew based at Redmond Air Center in Redmond, Oregon. From there he moved on to serve as Assistant Fire Management Officer for Baker City, Oregon. After that he did a nine-year stint in Lincoln, Montana as District Fire Management Officer and Law Enforcement Officer. After that he moved on to work as a fuels management officer on the Clearwater National Forest in Orofino, Idaho. But within a year he took over as Fire Staff Officer for the Forest. A few years later fire management was combined on the Clearwater and Nez Perce National Forests and he served as Fire Staff Officer for both. 

With 31 years total under his belt, he retired to the Bitterroot Valley in 2001. But before he could even settle down into his easy chair, he got a call from John Hughes asking him if he wanted a job as Community Forester for the Bitter Root RC&D. With grant funds made available following adoption of the National Fire Plan, Bitter Root RC&D was implementing a fire mitigation program for private land owners and needed someone with experience to serve as Program Manager and grant administrator. 

“It sounded interesting,” said Bonney. Needless to say, he took the job and has been at it for the last 18 years. The grants, which come through the State Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, are administered by RC&D and awarded on a 50/50 cost share basis to private landowners to help create a “defensible space” around their homes and some fire mitigation work in some of the surrounding area. He said they also do “home assessments” and offer advice, although they don’t offer any money for actual remodeling of homes.

“You can do all the tree thinning you want in the surrounding area and even clear a defensible space of 100 feet around the house, but if you have a shake roof, dry cedar siding, a deck, pine needles on the roof, in the gutters, and open eaves, you are toast, I’m sorry,” he said.

They do work in Ravalli County, Mineral County and Missoula County as far as Bonner. (Grants for work in the Blackfoot drainage are administered by the Blackfoot Challenge.) Bonney said that since 2001, that is over the last 18 years, Bitter Root RC&D has treated around 9500 acres and helped about 1300 individual landowners. Bonney helped spread RC&D activity to other areas around the state, as well. He helped establish them in Bozeman, Joliette, Roundup and Shelby. 

Our main objective,” said Bonney, “is to reduce fire risk. A secondary aim would be to improve the forest health.” He said the work directly contributes to employment of contractors in the area and indirectly to the mills, helping the local economy as well.

Bonney said they receive about 40 to 50 applications a year for projects ranging from clearing a defensible 100-foot space around homes to doing a few hundred acres of fire mitigation work that includes removal of some merchantable trees to create spacing that can reduce crown fires, thinning of unmerchantable timber, removal of ladder fuels, and treatment of slash. He said the average job covers about seven acres, the largest was 105. But several adjacent or nearby projects may be combined.

Bonney handles most of the projects in the Missoula area, although he will sometimes help both Lynee’ Maillet, who handles the Mineral County projects, and Chuck Standish, who handles most of the Ravalli County projects. He said right now they have about 60 ongoing projects at various stages in the works.

Bonney said that there is no obligation placed on applicants in the process. Their property will be assessed, and a project designed, but there is no obligation on the landowners to follow through once they have assessed it. In fact, according to Bonney, even after signing the contract to do the work a landowner can change his or her mind.

“They can pull out of the deal at any time,” said Bonney. “It’s all up to them.”

“The bottom line is,” he said, “we will work with them to meld their desires for their land in with our treatment specifications. That means [for example] a lot of landowners don’t want to look in their next-door neighbor’s window, so maybe we will keep a little stand of trees to shield the neighboring house from view.” 

“If a homeowner says a fawn was born under a certain tree every year for the last few years,” said Bonney, “then I say, OK, well, let’s leave the tree. As long as it doesn’t compromise the whole project and the objective, we’ll work with them.”

Bonney said that he encourages landowners to use a contractor, especially if they are taking out merchantable timber. RC&D has a list of 25 contractors who are licensed, have provided proof of liability insurance, and pay workers’ comp. RC&D will put the project out to bid for a landowner and has a list for both merchantable timber contractors and hand-work contractors. But a landowner may opt to do the work themselves. In that case they keep track of their hours and are credited with the nationally established value for volunteers and it goes towards the landowner’s 50% share in the cost. So does the value of any merchantable timber that is removed.

The objective of the work goes beyond the benefits to any individual landowner, according to Bonney. He said besides increasing the safety of the homeowners, the projects also provide increased safety for the firefighters who may eventually have to respond to a wildfire threatening the property. 

“If there is only a single ingress/egress to the property, if there is a bridge in poor repair or one unable to hold a heavy load, if there is no turn around that will accommodate a large vehicle, then firefighters are not going to enter the property,” said Bonney. 

If the area and the home have been adequately treated and prepared with good access and accessibility, it creates a safer, more effective place to take a stand against a fire. He said by making a property fire-wise, “it not only protects the landowners and their homes, it provides a safe area for firefighters to make a stand.”

They work closely with the Bitterroot and Lolo National Forests. They keep detailed accounts and maps of all the work they do on private land and share it with the local national forests. Those agencies use the information to help coordinate activities on the forest with the work on private lands and form a wider buffer in the area of the wildland-urban interface.

“I think one of the biggest parts of the job for Chuck and Lynee’ and I is that we have all spent our careers in fire and we know fire and fire behavior,” said Bonney. “We know what fire can do. We’ve seen it first-hand throughout our careers. So, it’s up to us to let the landowners know what the consequences of their decisions may be. If you decide to do something, here’s what you might expect in a fire. If you don’t do something, here’s what you can expect.”

Bonney added one caveat, also based on decades of engaging fires. He said, you can do everything right, “but there are no guarantees.”