by Jeff Lonn, Hamilton
The October 18, 2022, Star article “Forest Service tries different technique in Mill Creek fire suppression efforts” got half of it right. The FS is certainly trying a new technique, but it is not to suppress fires. Instead, this new technique allows commercial logging without following environmental laws.
Much of the article was devoted to Stevensville District Ranger Steve Brown’s explanations and justifications, but these should have been fact checked. Brown is mistaken when he states that the fire scars along the Bitterroot front resulted, “time and time again,” from wilderness fires moving down from the Wilderness. Most were actually human-caused fires started near the forest boundary, including the 2016 Roaring Lion fire, the 2006 Gash Creek fire, the 2000 Blodgett fire, and the 1994 fire that burned much of Ward Mtn. Is Brown ignorant of this history? Even his example of the 2017 Lolo Peak fire was incorrect. That fire did not “come down Bass Creek canyon,” and the FS called the burnout there a “precautionary” one. It is questionable whether it had any effect at all on stopping the wildfire.
The article did not mention that on Sept 9, when Brown “decided to act,” the FS Incident Commander reported on Inciweb that “No structures or infrastructure are threatened.” If this fire was so threatening, why were no pre-evacuation “get ready” notices issued to nearby residents? And why wasn’t the logging suspended when cooler, wet weather began on Sept. 13 and essentially stopped all fire growth for the rest of the season? Brown stated “we called in the Type 1 Management Team [who took over Sept 14] because the forecast showed no relief.” The forecast actually predicted an extended period of relief: cooler, wetter weather that started on Sept. 13 and continued for the next 10 days. That’s why, as Inciweb later reported, there was no fire growth eastward on either fire after Sept. 12.
Why did the FS (on Inciweb) call this a “shaded fuel break” and define it as “mechanically created buffer zones that remove shade tolerant brush, but mature trees that are more fire resistant are left standing”? In doing so, the FS lied to the public about what they were doing. Many, many large trees more than 100 years old were cut. These large, mature trees are not only the most fire-resistant ones, they also store the most carbon and are the same ones Executive Order 14072 orders the Forest Service to protect.
The majority of this “fuel break” was a rectangle 1,900 feet wide by 2,500 feet long, a very strange shape for a fire line. And no fire line of any type was constructed south of it towards Blodgett Canyon. In the Blodgett Canyon area, where there are few large trees on BNF land, a thin handline was considered sufficient, and it did not even connect with the Mill Creek work.
The logging not only accomplished the previously cancelled 2014 logging project, but also an unknown amount of the proposed Bitterroot Front project, which has not yet gone through the environmental analysis process and is not approved. Can we now expect this sort of lawless logging along the Bitterroot front anytime there is a wildfire deep in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, no matter how far away or how non-threatening it may be?
Actions like this make it difficult to trust the USFS “stewards” of our public lands. Remember that we, the public, employ these stewards to manage our lands for the greatest good to all Americans. And we also expect, at a minimum, that our public servants be honest and obey the law.