Fire officials rethinking wildland urban interface protection
By Christie Turner, High Country News
Wildfire in the West is getting more severe all the time – burning longer, hotter and more frequently, destroying more homes, stretching federal funds to the limit, endangering more firefighters. Rising temperatures are driving the trend, and there’s no indication things will change course.
Faced with these dire circumstances, 20 of the West’s most influential wildfire experts gathered in Jackson Hole, Wyo., at a closed-door Wildfire Solutions Forum last month in an effort to generate radical ideas on how to lessen future fire danger in Western communities. The theme of the event centered on one question: How can we control the pace, scale and pattern of future development of the wildland urban interface, or WUI? Across the West, 84 percent of this interface – where federal public land abuts private land within a one-third-mile radius – remains undeveloped.
This “84 percent” was a rallying cry for the two-day forum, and symbolized a need to shift wildfire conversation away from the portion of WUI that is already developed. This is breakthrough thinking in the world of wildfire policy, where the priority has been to protect existing communities rather than venturing into the realm of future development.
To answer the questions, we will need to hire consultants… and have some more conferences at posh resorts. It is the only way for us to keep America safe.
Having spent a significant amount of time looking at forest policies with regards to its’ sustainable development aspects (DOA USFS, DOI National Park Service, Western States Governors Association, USFS Research Stations, etc.) they could learn a lot from the contemporary design community, which now more than ever takes into consideration the ecosystem/habitat/human behavior issues – and not rely so much on their own outdated ways of doing things – that creates a circular ‘over & over’ conversation that keeps most policies “in place”. . .
One particular arena is that of converting biomass into energy (through the work of the DoEnergy, which is kind of outside that loop) – but is supposedly to be a part of the National Energy Policy, whenever (and if) we ever have one. . .the forests can then be cleaned up next to Urban areas, without too much disturbance of old-growth trees, necessary to the health of the forests, but usually factored-in as needing to be “logged”. . .contrary to their own ideas of forest restoration. . .
Old ways & habits die very hard !!
My work with the DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (Golden, CO) is where the above was clarified. . .