Fix Our Forests Act makes big wildfire response changes. Expert says it also has harmful provisions

The U.S. Senate is considering a proposal called the Fix Our Forests Act; it’s already passed the House on a bipartisan vote.

Among many other provisions, the bill promotes prescribed burns and forest thinning projects. It would also allow logging across some areas without the current environmental review process and without consulting tribes or the public.

Tim Ingalsbee is executive director of the Oregon-based nonprofit Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology and said the bill is one of the most significant pieces of wildfire-related legislation in decades.

But he said it’s a mixed bag — he calls some provisions very exciting while others are alarming. He talked more about it with The Show.

Tim Ingalsbee

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Full conversation

TIM INGALSBEE: Well, it has many provisions promoting large scale prescribed burning, tribal cultural burning, creation of a wildfire intelligence center, bringing the best science. It empowers communities to prepare and plan for wildfires, offers grants to residents to reduce their home ignitability. All those things have been long standing desires by the fire management community for many years.

And this is really the first time we've seen this kind of stuff in a piece of legislation. What we've been enduring the last 30 years is wildfire bills that are really logging bills masquerading as fire management bills.

MARK BRODIE: So what is it about it that maybe gives you pause or that you just outright don't like?

INGALSBEE: Well, it started out as a logging bill. Right at the top, the first items are reducing the need for environmental analysis for projects. It creates these 10,000 acre categorical exclusions where you meet minimal analysis, minimal public input, minimal legal oversight, accountability. That's 15 square miles of public forest lands. And it just is a candidate for abuse projects that are done mostly to get the timber cut out, not really to put the wildfire out.

BRODIE: It's interesting you mentioned the accountability piece of it because one of the things that I've read is that one of the big concerns that folks who have concerns with this have is that it kind of cuts out input, right? Like public input, tribal input, input from other stakeholders that would like to have a seat at the table.

Is that something that concerns you?

INGALSBEE: Absolutely. The complexities of managing wildfires in this era of climate-driven megafires are very complex, very nuanced. And we need more science-based environmental analysis, more informed public engagement, more legal oversight and accountability, not less. And so in the FOFA bill, all that's kind of stripped away. It functions kind of as a poison pill on the rest of the legislation.

So we're at this dilemma. Forest conservationists can't see past those logging provisions, so they kind of miss the fire management provisions. While in the fire community, we're very excited about all the fire management provisions and are kind of naively hopeful that the logging provisions won't be abused. But I don't have that kind of faith, especially in this administration.

BRODIE: Well, so you mentioned prescribed burns just a minute or two ago, and I want to ask you more about that because it seems like that is a fairly significant shift in policy if this were to become law, that instead of, as you just referenced, suppressing fires as early as humanly possible to work with fire to allow it to sort of do its natural thing in the forest. Is that really a big piece of this?

INGALSBEE: That potentially yes. But in FOFA, you know, all that great stuff promoting large scale prescribed burning or tribal cultural burning is merely authorizing language. There's no money put along with it.

BRODIE: So how important is it that the federal government do something at this point? You referenced, you know, megafires, and it seems as though fire season is now just a constant, 12-month-a-year kind of thing now. Like how important is it that the federal government takes some kind of action in this area?

INGALSBEE: Oh, we're, we're at a critical stage. We need, you know, the right kinds of action. We need proactive fire and fuels management, not extractive timber management. And, and enough of this reactive wildfire suppression. We just sit around and wait for an ignition to happen and then we, you know, declare emergency.

The real problem with FOFA, of course, is that it's still focusing on trees, forests, on public lands, when the real majority of the wildfire risk and dangers come from human-caused fires burning on shrublands and grasslands on private lands. That's where the majority of homes, communities are destroyed from wildfires in those areas. FOFA does nothing to address those dangers.

BRODIE: Is there a way to legislate that though? Like can you require people to have defensible space in their yards? Can you make a big enough punishment that people like don't flick their cigarettes out the car window or something like that?

INGALSBEE: Well, we'd rather have incentives than punishments. And that's a good question. Yes, you can legislate those matters, but they're probably most appropriate coming from local municipalities and states.

It's just the same, it's just this old paradigm that Congress is they want to address wildfire hazards by logging public forests. And that's the last thing you should be doing, especially knowing the real critical, vital role that forests play in mitigating climate change.

BRODIE: Yeah, well, as we have seen more and more fires sort of closer to urban areas, not just out in the forest, sort of far away from population centers. Does that make it more difficult to have sort of one piece of legislation dealing with forest management, dealing with wildfires?

INGALSBEE: Another great question. Yes, really, fire ecology is kind of a science of place. Fires behave differently in different regions, different ecosystems, sometimes differently on two sides of the same hill. So it is hard to legislate a one-size-fits-all, uniform policy addressing all areas and all kinds of fire.

Before we could fix our forests, we really need to fix our fires. And some of the aspects in FOFA really addresses that need.

BRODIE: What do you mean that before we fix the forest, we have to fix the fires?

INGALSBEE: Well, we have to stop just putting all our eggs in the basket of emergency wildfire suppression, and particularly places like Arizona or, you know, where fires burn so hot so fast, basically the only thing we do is back off and burn out.

So I know folks are concerned about prescribed burns getting out of control. They have no idea what suppression firing operations do when they are designed to be out of control, kill everything in the path of wildfires and sort it out later.

We have to stop doing that in a reactive mode, you know, oblivious to any social or ecological values or goals. Start doing that proactively, getting the right kinds of fire in the right times, places and conditions, instead of lighting up these backfires in the wrong times, places and conditions. That's fixing our fires.