Leon F. Neuenschwander, Professor, College of NaturalResources, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844-1133; Phone:208-885-2101, Fax: 208-885-6226, E-mail: leonn@uidaho.edu

 Thomas W. Swetnam, Professor and Director, Laboratory ofTree-Ring Research, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721;Phone:520-621-2112, E-mail: tswetnam@ltrr.arizona.edu

 Thank you

 Thank you for the opportunity to testify on this important topic. We hope that the discussion today will encourage and support the federal fire managers in addressing the growing fuels and fire risk problem across the country. Following a brief summary of our expertise, we make four major points and then some recommendations.

 Our expertise

We speak from our experience as researchers in fire ecology and teachers of fire management. Dr. Neuenschwander is a professor the College of Natural Resources at the University of Idaho with more than 25 years of experience since earning his Ph.D. at Texas TechUniversity. He has taught prescribed fire, fire ecology and firemanagement. He has been recognized with both national and stateawards for his innovative research on prescribed fire and managingfire risk. Dr. Morgan is also a professor at the College of NaturalResources at the University of Idaho. She is an expert on fireecology and succession in forests of the Interior West. Over the last20 years, she has taught fire ecology, fire management and prescribedburning to students at the University of Idaho and the University ofArizona, as well as to practicing natural resource professionals. Dr.Swetnam is an Associate Professor at the University of Arizona wherehe directs the internationally recognized Laboratory of Tree-RingResearch. He has done extensive fire history work throughout thewestern United States, and was born and raised in the Jemez Mountainsof New Mexico, not far from Bandelier National Monument. All three ofus often advise federal and state agencies, nongovernmental agenciesand environmental organizations about fire risk, prescribed fire,fire effects, and land management issues.

 Four main points

 We extend our sympathy to the people who have lost theirhomes and been threatened by fires. Losses from the Cerro Grande fireare intolerable -clearly there is a problem to be addressed. We oweit to those people and to those of future generations, to learn fromrecent fire events and to work together proactively to address firerisk. Thus, as we look to the future, we wish to make four mainpoints.

 First, wildfires will continue to threaten people and theirproperty throughout the West. More homes WILL be lost. The onlyquestion is WHEN?

Unless we adjust the forest conditions to reduce the accumulatedfuels, the risk to people and their property will continue. Further,intense fires can threaten ecosystem integrity, water quality, andlong-term productivity of our forests. The problem is widespread, butdiffers greatly for the diverse, and complex forest and non-forestecosystems of the United States.

 All conifer forests have a history of fire. Fire frequencyvaried greatly, but fire history data show that throughout the West,fire was a frequent visitor. Wherever the rate of biomass productionexceeds decomposition, the accumulated biomass fuels fires ignited bylightning or people whenever it is dry. Fires consume fuels, thusrecycling nutrients and encouraging new plant growth. Fires alsoalter the structure and composition of forests, thereby reducing therisk of catastrophic wildfire and protecting human life and property,timber, water quality, fish and wildlife habitat, and long-term airquality. Thus, fires are an integral part of many forest ecosystems,and they play important ecological roles.

 Excluding fires forever is not an option. Fires willinevitably occur when we have ignitions in hot, dry, windyconditions. If there is fuel to burn, it will burn intensely. It isone of the great paradoxes of fire suppression that the moreeffective we are at fire suppression, the more fuels accumulate andthe more intense the next fire will be. We MUST learn to live withthis reality. We should seek to maintain and manage for the foreststructures and species compositions that are resilient to futurefires. Compared to crown fires, low-intensity, surface fires kill fewbig trees and pose less risk to people and their property. In fact,many surface fires stimulate grasses, forbs and shrubs to grow inabundance; these plants hold the soil in place when the rains come.Understory plants can be slow to recover from severe fires,particularly if it was a dense forest that burned. Without abundantunderstory plant cover, soils are prone to erosion, particularlywhere they have been subjected to severe soil heating.

Intense fires and the soil losses they triggered are withouthistorical precedent in Southwestern ponderosa pine forests beforethe late 20th century.

 Why ignite prescribed burns? In fire-dependent ecosystems,like the ponderosa pine forests of the American Southwest, periodicprescribed fire:

- reduces accumulated forest debris and small trees, therebyreducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire and protecting human livesand important resources such public and private property, timber,water quality, fish and wildlife habitat, and long-term airquality

-kills small trees, prunes lower branches and favors large trees,thereby creating open forests and a more fire-safe environment forforest visitors and inhabitants

-recycles nutrients and water tied up in forest litter, therebynaturally fertilizing surviving plants

-often enhances structural and species diversity

-enhances the survival of large trees currently threatened bycompetition from dense small trees and by crown fires fueled by smalltree ladder fuels

-restores the natural role of fire as an ecological process andthe historical structure and function of fire-dependent ecosystemswhere fire has been suppressed, thereby maintaining naturalforests.

 The question then is how to create forests that are bothresilient and resistant to fires - ones where the big trees willsurvive and the understory plants (those shrubs, forbs, and grasses)will rapidly recover. In many, but not all cases, this requiresactive management - actively cutting small trees or burningaccumulated fuels to alter forest structure. Active management caninclude prescribed burning, logging, or a combination. This brings usto our next point.

Our second main point is that logging and fires have verydifferent ecological effects, and therefore logging alone cannot beused as a sole alternative to prescribed burning. We can mechanicallythin overly dense forests to approximate the structure andcomposition created and maintained by fires in the past. However,recycling of nutrients and many other ecosystem functions dependsupon fires. Cutting of trees - whether it is termed "logging" or"thinning" - cannot adequately substitute for the many ecologicalbenefits of fire. For example, logging does not rejuvenate grasses,forbs, and shrubs in ways that will favor soil and water retention.Prescribed fire alone, without tree cutting, can be used in manycircumstances, particularly in large roadless areas, parks, andwilderness areas where human lives and properties are not at directrisk from spreading or escaped fires. Indeed, economical, practicaland politically acceptable treatments in such areas are most likelyto be accomplished with judicious and patient treatments withprescribed fire alone over periods of decades. Elsewhere, mechanicaltreatments will have to be done first in order to allow the burns tobe conducted safely and to accomplish desirable ecologicaleffects.

 Let us share with you some graphics representing forestconditions with and without active management. These will illustratethe choices before us. (Please refer to the boxed text and the seriesof figures at the end of our testimony).

 This is our third major point. It is VERY IMPORTANT to leavethe large trees in the forest when we thin or burn. These trees arethe "insurance" for the future - they are critical to ecosystemresilience. Foresters call the needed prescription "thin from below"because it removes the smaller trees and their crowns while leavingthe bigger trees. As you can see from our second to last figure,forest stands often have high bulk density of crowns both near thetreetops and near the ground. Bulk density is the weight per volumeof the needles and twigs in tree crowns. If there are few tree crowns(low bulk density) near the ground and there is little verticalcontinuity between the crowns of the small and big trees, forests canoften withstand surface fires even in dry, windy conditions. Thiswill limit the development and spread of crown fires, particularly ifthe horizontal continuity of the crown bulk density in the principalcanopy layer is also broken. It is the small trees that contributethe most to fire risk, as they provide "ladders" for the fires toclimb from the surface into the crowns.

 The increasing fuel load and fire ladder effect that hasplaced forests at risk to catastrophic fire is in the smaller, notthe larger trees. In the Southwest, U.S. Forest Service data indicatethat trees greater than 16 inches in diameter have been declining innumber at least since the 1960s, while smaller trees have increaseddramatically in density. Trends are similar in other regions. U.S.Forest Service, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and universitybiologists have determined that trees 16 inches and greater areimportant for sensitive wildlife species such as the northerngoshawk.

Targeting thinning toward the smaller trees and leaving both largetrees and snags standing, therefore, addresses the core of the fuelsproblem, without degrading ecosystem integrity. This approach is inline with a 1999 Government Accounting Office report that recommendedthinning to reduce fire hazards, but warned that it must beintegrated with wildlife, soils, watershed, and recreation needs. Itis also in line with the recent request by Mike Dombeck, Chief of theU.S. Forest Service, for an emergency appropriation to thin smalltrees and conduct prescribed burns throughout the West. His proposalwould direct action to areas with the greatest fuel loading, greatestthreat to human life and property, and would preserve all trees over12 inches in diameter.

 Our fourth and last major point is the need to improve theplanning and scheduling of prescribed burning through the use of newscientific understanding of climate and fire occurrence. Regionalfire events related to droughts, for example, have been a recurrentphenomenon across the western United States over many centuries. Inthe 20th century, fire-fighting resources were stretched thin duringthese events (e.g., 1956, 1971, 1973, 1974, 1988, 1989, 1994),allowing some fires to achieve enormous sizes and intensities. Manyof these conflagrations defied all fire fighting efforts and burneduntil fuels or weather limited them. Such events often account for amajority of the total area burned over time, and resource losses, aswell as threats to people and their property (see our lastfigure).

Seasonal climate forecasting tools based on El Niño/LaNiña patterns are now available for anticipating regionalprecipitation and temperature trends -- and associated regional fireyears -- more than three months before the spring and summer wildfireseason. Wet/dry cycles occurring on time scales of months and yearsare involved in fire occurrence patterns in many parts of thesemi-arid West - not just short-term weather changes.

 For example, most of the largest Southwestern fires in 20thcentury occurred during dry La Niña conditions that followed,within a few years, a wet El Niño event. According to Dr.Thomas Swetnam, a fire history expert from the Laboratory ofTree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona, this pattern isevident in Southwestern tree-ring records for the past 300 years.(Note that El Niño and La Niña events tend to have anopposite effect on precipitation and temperature in the PacificNorthwest relative to the Southwest, as shown in our last figure.Hence, during La Niña years, increased fire activity isexpected in the Southwest and decreased fire activity in the PacificNorthwest. Although these broad-scale patterns are not entirelyconsistent, they are still useful at regional to national scales forstrategic allocation of fire fighting resources and for scheduling ofprescribed burning.)

 The current extraordinary wildfire situation in theSouthwest corresponds precisely to this historical pattern ofextensive wildfires during La Nina conditions (1999-2000) that havefollowed within three years a major El Niño event (1997-1998).The high fire hazard this season in the Southwest and Florida wasforecasted and discussed by climatologists, meteorologists, andregional fire managers from the western U.S. and Florida in a meetingin Tucson, Arizona in February of this year. This forecast apparentlyhad little impact on the planning for prescribed burning because suchlong-term and broad-scale conditions are not regularly incorporatedin prescribed fire planning procedures. There is clearly a need,however, to factor in current and anticipated climate patterns whenplanning for increased or decreased emphases on prescribed burningversus fire suppression capabilities for specific fire seasons andregions.

 
Our recommendations

 We need an aggressive program of fuels management includingBOTH prescribed fire and mechanical treatments. A natural reaction inthe aftermath of the Cerro Grande fire is to sharply limit prescribedburning for fear of other escaped fires threatening people or theirproperty. There are many places where the economic and ecologicalcosts of mechanical treatments are not needed prior to prescribedburning. Whether the fuels are reduced mechanically, by prescribedburning, or by use of both tools, enough of the small trees andaccumulated fuels must be removed to accomplish the objective, BUTTHE LARGE TREES SHOULD REMAIN UNCUT.

 There is an urgent need throughout the West for "fire-safe"forests, especially in urban-interface areas and in municipalwatersheds. In "fire-safe" forests, fires can burn with low fireintensity, trees are fire-resistant by virtue of their diameter andspecies, and there is a low probability that crown fires will spreadthrough the forest.

 Federal land managers must listen to and work with thepublic and the many stakeholders to ensure sound decisions thatbalance ecological, economic, and social risks. The job of thefederal fire managers is challenging. More than 30 million acres areat risk to catastrophic fires across the continental US, according toa recent General Accounting Office report. Decisions must includeconsideration of past changes in land, the choices before us, and theconsequences of inaction.

 No amount of training can overcome poor judgement inprescribed burning. Good judgement comes with experience in planning,conducting and evaluating prescribed burns, especially localexperience, as well as from adequate training. We recommend thatfederal fire managers review and strengthen prescribed burn trainingprograms, work to develop professionals that are both skilled andexperienced with prescribed burning, and ensure that when specificplans for prescribed burns are written that they are reviewed bycompetent senior-level prescribed fire experts before the fires areignited.

 We recommend that Geographic Information Systems be used inplanning for both prescribed burning and fire suppression to addressecological, social, and economic concerns. Very few people within thefederal agencies are trained to do landscape-level fuel treatments.To be effective fuel treatments must be strategically placed on thelandscape where they will do the most good, and they must be largeenough to make a difference.

Further, every treatment must consider long-term and broad-scaleconditions not regularly incorporated in prescribed fire planningprocedures.

 Federal fire managers must think strategically, using whatwe know about drought and climate to identify when prescribed burnscan be conducted safely. For instance, in the Southwest, we can usethe forecasts of winter and spring precipitation to decide whether toconcentrate on fuels management or on fire suppression, as wedescribed above. Strategic thinking requires looking at the biggerpicture - beyond the boundaries of the area to be burned.

 Last, we must be careful not to jump to the conclusion thatthe same kinds of treatments are needed everywhere. There are nosimple answers, so single kind of management is called foreverywhere. The ecological integrity of many forest, shrubland andgrassland ecosystems is threatened by the combined effects of pastfire exclusion, fire suppression, past intensive grazing, pastlogging practices, and ongoing climate change. Restoring ecologicalintegrity will require thoughtful planning to ensure management thatis ecologically appropriate and socially acceptable. Firesuppression, logging, prescribed fire, and other treatments havetheir place in managing forests and fuels, but they are not cure-allsfor all circumstances. Federal land managers need all of these toolsand more available to manage public lands.

 Thank you, this concludes our testimony.