McNally memories, prescribed burning and more

We can’t resolve the conundrum in a New York minute

Volume 1, Number 12 - Monday, Oct. 24

A helicopter drops fire retardant on oak woodlands and shrublands in the foothills of Sequoia National Park to reduce vegetation flammability as fire approaches on Sept. 26, 2021. —Mark Garrett, National Park Service

Perspective

AN ARTICLE I WROTE about reforestation 20 years after the McNally Fire was published in The Bakersfield Californian this morning (and online yesterday afternoon). A memory from my time covering the McNally 20 years ago last summer is among the reasons I started Giant Sequoia News. I was dismayed when I encountered a TV news van in the early days of the fire and learned that they were packing up to leave because of news that the fire wasn’t expected to reach the Packsaddle Grove of giant sequoias.

It’s maddening that there was plenty of news to be covered, but nothing quite as exciting as giant sequoias on fire, so “New York” was no longer interested.

But back to the present, Sequoia National Forest announced the reforestation project on its Kern River Ranger District (which is outside Giant Sequoia National Monument) at the same time it is continuing its emergency work within selected sequoia groves with an aim of reducing the potential for high intensity fires and also to prepare the groves for prescribed burning.

Just about everyone agrees that putting the “right kind” of fire into giant sequoia groves is essential for their future. But that’s easier said than done.

Among the issues is achieving — or hoping for — the right conditions to burn and the staffing. There’s a pretty narrow window of opportunity, weather-wise because (if we’re lucky) it snows where giant sequoias grow. But trying to burn too early in the fall, when it’s still warm and winds may take the fire farther than planned is risky. And even spring burns can be a problem, as the Forest Service discovered in New Mexico this year.

No one wants prescribed fire to escape, but it can and sometimes with devastating consequences. That was the situation in New Mexico last spring when two prescribed burns got out of control to become the state’s largest wildfire in recorded history. The Calf Canyon/Hermit’s Peak blaze burned more than 340,000 acres and destroyed hundreds of homes. And, of course, it was followed this fall by flooding.

In May, Forest Service Chief Randy Moore announced a pause in using prescribed fire to allow the agency to conduct a 90-day review of protocols, decision support tools and practices ahead of planned operations this fall. He said 90 percent of the agency’s prescribed burn operations take place between September and May.

In mid-September, the Forest Service lifted the temporary ban and announced new rules it will minimize the risk of fires escaping control. The pause drew criticism and ended with new rules including a plan for more training.

But, as The Los Angeles Times reported, “some experts say the restrictions, which include requirements that agency administrators authorize ignitions for 24-hour periods only and be on-site for certain burns, create more barriers to doing the work precisely when the need for it is most acute.”

Two recent news events are relevant to this discussion: Earlier this month the organization FSEEE (Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics) filed suit against the federal government, alleging that chemicals in fire retardant commonly used in aerial drops are damaging the environment. (I’ll report more about this when information is available, but in the meantime here’s what FSEEE has to say.) And last week an Oregon “burn boss” was arrested in rural eastern Oregon last week after a planned burn in a national forest spread onto private land. Read this post on The Smokey Wire for some background.

We are faced with a conundrum. Most agree that fire is needed to fight fire — whether backfires during a wildfire or prescribed off-season burns. But the risks are high.

And that’s the problem with conundrums — there are no easy answers. Which may be why most people don’t engage with the issues.

I’m reminded again of that TV news van in front of the Cedar Slope Inn back in 2002.

“New York isn’t interested,” the cameraman told me.

And I’m reminded of another phrase — “faster than a New York minute,” which Google lets me easily define as “in a flash.”

We’ve lost some 20 percent of giant sequoias since 2015 and we were only fortunate that this past fire season was less devastating than recent years. From the perspective of the ancient trees, seven years is easily “in a flash.”

Thank you for reading this far — more next week!

The week in wildfires

If our good fortune continues, this will be the last week I include “The week in wildfires” as part of this newsletter until next fire season. There have been no new fires threatening giant sequoias. It’s cold in the mountains and there is even a chance of precipitation towards the end of the 10-day forecast.

I read with interest last week this article in the San Francisco Chronicle about the history of destructive October wildfires in California — and why this year “has been quiet so far.” Here’s a bit of what Chronicle staff writer Jack Lee wrote:

One big reason is the absence of Diablo winds. These strong, dry winds — named because they rush into the Bay Area from the direction of Mt. Diablo — can catapult embers and fan flames, causing wildfires to furiously spread.
Diablo winds typically pick up during the fall months, especially October, which coincides with when vegetation is dried out and primed to ignite. The combination makes for particularly dangerous conditions: All the ingredients are in place for wind-driven wildfires. 

But not this year.

For a Bay Area audience, Lee writes about Diablo winds. But in other areas the fierce dry winds have other names. In Southern California they’re known as Santa Ana winds. In the Sierra Nevada they’re known as Mono Winds. Where I lived in on the southern coast of Oregon, just above the California border, the katabatic wind that turned the 2017 Chetco Bar Fire into a monster was known as the Chetco Effect.

“Diablo winds are driven by large-scale weather patterns and we just haven't had the right patterns set up this season,” fire weather researcher Craig Clements of San Jose State University told Lee.

However, only three days after Lee’s article was published in The Chronicle, the San Bernardino Sun on Saturday, Oct. 22, published a warning that Southern California Edison had alerted thousands of customers of possible public safety power shutoffs later in the weekend to prevent wildfires because of — you guessed it — Santa Ana winds.

I’d say this is a reminder that we should be happy when we have a respite from the conditions that typically result in catastrophic wildfires — and be reminded that in California, fire season may indeed now be year-round.

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Giant sequoias in the news

• Even if you made it to giant sequoia country to see the big trees last summer, you probably didn’t see the amount of wildlife photographed by Nicole Dart, a research associate for the Great Basin Institute who spent the season in the field. You can enjoy here great photos here.

• Here’s a review for a newly-published middle grades novel from Scholastic that addresses climate change and includes a giant sequoia forest. Here’s an excerpt:

“Akira lives in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. She and her dad love to visit a grove of giant sequoia trees located nearby. But on a hot, dry and windy day in October, they suddenly find themselves caught in a raging wildfire.” 

Which reminds me that when I was researching wind for the fire section, I came upon this brochure from the National Park Service and the National Weather Service. Especially in these times of drought, wind and tall trees can pose a danger even if there isn’t a wildfire nearby.

• Here’s a story published recently in The Runner, the student news site at Cal State Bakersfield, by student journalist Kaitlyn Milam about the decline of the giant sequoia population due to wildfire.

•And here’s a review for historian Jared Farmer’s new book, “Elderflora: A Modern History of Ancient Trees.” My own copy arrived last week and I must admit that I checked the index and began reading about giant sequoia first, but there’s much more in this beautifully-written book to enjoy.

Giant sequoias around the world

You may know that there are three somewhat related redwood trees that share the name sequoia. Sequoiadendrom giganteum (or Sequoia gigantea) trees are related to two other trees, the coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) and dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides). The first two are native to California and the third (which is deciduous) to China. But all are grown around the world as landscape trees and the evergreens are grown in some places for timber.

I’ve been saddened recently when I’ve visited areas in the San Joaquin Valley where coast redwood have often been planted as landscape trees. They’re beautiful, but they’re native to the temperate rainforest California’s north coast. They need water! And with the drought and landscape water restrictions, they’re dying by droves.

And giant sequoia planted outside their range are dying, too. Here’s a story about a nice tall tree in Klamath, Oregon, that grew for years in a park but had to be taken down last spring because it died from lack of water. Yes, even Oregon has drought, especially the southern and interior parts of the state.

Want more?

GIANTSEQUOIANEWS.COM is also a website where you can find more information about giant sequoia trees, wildfire, the public land management conundrum and more.

Thanks for reading!