AWARD-WINNING TRAINING SINCE 1995
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Publication:Arkansas Democrat-Gazette; Date:Sunday, 22 January, 2006 ; Section:Business; Page:8 Fire resources shifting State frets as burden of blazes intensifies   BY NANCY COLE ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE Cutbacks by major forestproducts companies, changing land-ownership patterns and tight federal budgets are undermining the ability of states to fight forest fires. The Arkansas Forestry Commission, for example, which has the primary responsibility for fighting wildfires on private and state-owned land in Arkansas, once could count on help from a number of large corporate timberland owners that had firefighting crews and equipment. But many of those resources no longer exist, and the commission is feeling the weight of “an enormous shift” of resources in the private sector, said Steve Anthony, Forestry Commission chairman and president of Bearden-based Anthony Timberlands Inc. Between 1989 and 2004, Arkansas lost the private-sector firefighting capacity of 65 fire plows and one helicopter, according to a recent estimate by the Southern Group of State Foresters. The Forestry Commission currently has 98 fire plows, 15 fire-detection aircraft and a contract fleet of four firefighting air tankers. Traditionally, forest-products companies had equipment in the woods that could be used to fight fires, either on their own land or that of their neighbors, said Mike Clutter of the University of Georgia’s Warnell School of Forest Resources in Athens, Ga. But many of those companies — like Georgia-Pacific Corp. — no longer own timberland, and many who do have downsized to the point where they no longer are able to fight fires, he said. Most companies now hire contractors to do the bulk of their forestry work — logging, road construction and maintenance, site preparation, planting, fertilizing and aerial herbicide spraying — usually citing cost effectiveness and flexibility as their reasons for doing so. Concern about forest fires in Arkansas is elevated because of the droughtlike conditions that have persisted since December 2004. Although the last quarter of 2005 was Arkansas’ driest on record, the state did not see an abnormally large number of fires during the year — 2,216 — nor an excessively large number of acres burned — 34,396. Many people are worried, however, that dry conditions may have set the stage for 2006 to become a banner fire year. As of Jan. 16, more acres had burned — 9,016 — than during all of the previous 10 Januarys. Forest fires in Arkansas have burned more than 100,000 acres in 11 different years since the commission began keeping records in 1935. Seven of those years — including the latest one in 1980 — have coincided with record droughts. International Paper Co., which owns 690,000 acres of Arkansas timberland, no longer operates firefighting equipment. “We rely on the Arkansas Forestry Commission for fire suppression,” said media relations manager Amy Sawyer, noting that International Paper, like all private timberland owners, pays an annual forest-fire-protection tax of 15 cents per acre. But some companies have maintained their own firefighting capacity. For example, El Doradobased Deltic Timber Corp., which owns almost 429,000 acres of Arkansas timberland, is “fully equipped” to fight fire, said Tim Zorsch, general manager of woodlands. Deltic has seven crawler tractors and about 20 foresters and technicians who are prepared to fight fires, he said. “We don’t wait for the state. If we have fire on our land, we’re going to it,” Zorsch said. Weyerhaeuser Co., which owns 727,000 acres of Arkansas timberland, has not only bulldozers but also a De Queenbased helicopter that can be used to fight forest fires, said Rhonda Hunter, the company’s Arkansas and Oklahoma timberlands manager. The helicopter, equipped with a “Bambi Bucket,” can scoop up hundreds of gallons of water and dump it onto a wildfire. “We build ponds on our property, scattered out, to try to make sure that — for any fire — we would have pretty close access to water,” Hunter said. Most timber companies in Arkansas try to prevent fires by using gates to limit access to their land or by leasing much of their property to hunting clubs, which serve as their “eyes and ears.” From Jan. 1, 2000, to Dec. 31, 2004, 70 percent of Arkansas’ wildfires were caused by humans through either arson or debris burning, according to the commission. Normal forestry practices — such as vegetation control, the thinning of timber stands and forest-road construction and maintenance — also diminish the risk of woodland fires, reducing the amount of flammable materials and providing natural firebreaks. OWNERSHIP PATTERNS Changing land-ownership patterns are making wildfires more difficult and expensive to fight. The sale of timberland by forest-products companies to timber investment management organizations already has begun to have a dramatic impact in the Southeast, according to a recent study led by University of Georgia professor Michael Clutter. “In three years’ time, it’s possible there will be only one forest products company with timberland holdings exceeding one million acres in the U.S. South,” he wrote. Thus far, the trend has been less evident in Arkansas, but that could change, Clutter said, citing International Paper’s July announcement that it might sell or spin off some or all of its Arkansas timberland. When forest-products companies sell timberland, it often goes to several owners, many of whom begin developing the land, said Don Artley, national fire director for the National Association of State Foresters. “Where you used to have just timberland, you throw in a subdivision or cabins or other kinds of human development and, all of a sudden, your firefighting strategies have to change,” he said. “You have to go in and fight the fire where it is because you’re trying to protect all these improvements,” Artley said. The intrusion of people living in the forest fringe used to be a problem that “was largely confined to southern California,” said Philip Omi, a forestfire scientist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo. But there has been “a proliferation of these desirable getaway places” in the past 50 years, he said. Arkansas has not been exempt from the trend. Suburban sprawl has consumed thousands of formerly forested acres near Little Rock and Hot Springs and throughout Northwest Arkansas. More “fire-friendly” patterns of economic development would be preferable, said Tom Foti, chief of research for the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission. “We really need to be thinking about how urban, suburban and exurban areas grow and how those can be encouraged to grow in ways that make our ability to protect them as easy as possible,” he said. To address the problem, the Forestry Commission actively participates in FireWise, a cooperative effort among government agencies and homeowners to promote fire safety in the “wildland-urban interface” by educating homeowners about safe construction and landscaping. Arkansas leads the nation in the number of certified “Fire-Wise Communities.” These suggestions, however, often are difficult to sell to residents, because many of the recommendations conflict with the reasons that people have for living near a forest, said Jonathan Taylor, an emeritus fire social scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Fort Collins. SHIFTS IN POLICY The U.S. Forest Service, Arkansas’ largest landowner with 2.6 million acres, has been a pioneer in fighting wildfires. The agency currently maintains 18 dozers, 18 “brush trucks” and four heavy air tankers in Arkansas and can press anywhere from 200 to 500 firefighters into service. Traditionally, the Forest Service has tried to reach fires quickly and control them while they are still small. The agency made that policy official in 1935 by adopting a “10 a.m. rule,” which called for all forest fires to be brought under control by 10 a.m. the day after they were discovered. Subsequently, the rule was modified by adding a goal of limiting fires to 10 acres or less. But a major policy shift occurred in 1978, when the Forest Service dropped both of those guidelines in favor of an “appropriate management response.” The change reflected a renewed emphasis on firefighter safety as well as the widespread recognition by then that not all fire is bad, Artley said. After decades of suppressing fires, the Forest Service now views prescribed, or controlled, burns as a way to reduce the risk of future catastrophic fires and the cost of trying to contain them. Such burns promote the growth of desirable trees and discourage wildfires by eliminating unnecessary vegetation. Arkansas is now a leader in prescribed burns, said Scott Simon, state director of The Nature Conservancy. “State agencies and the national forests prescribe burn in excess of 200,000 acres a year with the support of the conservation community,” he said, coordinating their efforts through the Arkansas Prescribed Burn Council. Tight budgets have driven people to be more creative about firefighting, Simon said. Prescribed burning is a case of “listening” to the forests “because our forests historically burned naturally,” he said. Tree density in the Ozark and Ouachita national forests, for example, now averages more than 150 large trees per acre, compared with only 50 trees per acre 200 years ago, Simon said. Prescribed burning also benefits animals that live in the forests and other plants, said Martin Blaney, habitat coordinator for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. “Everybody tries to use prescribed burning because it’s ecologically needed in our forests,” he said. TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGES Advances in communication equipment, weather forecasting and satellite technology have offset some of the adverse trends in firefighting. One visible change in Arkansas has been the elimination of manned towers. The number of state-operated fire towers peaked in the 1960s at about 100 and the last one was closed in 1981, when the commission began relying exclusively on airplanes, said Robert McFarland, who retired as deputy state forester in 2000. The beginning of the end came in the early 1940s, when the Forestry Commission began supplementing its detection effort with aircraft, McFarland said. Fifteen of the structures now serve as repeater towers for the commission’s two-way radio system. In 2003, the Forestry Commission began using a computeraided dispatch system in its 24-hour emergency dispatch center at the Malvern Municipal Airport. The software pinpoints the location of a wildfire, enabling dispatchers to promptly deploy crews. The Geographic Information System includes maps of highways, vegetation type and land ownership, as well as aerial photographs and information about airports and fire departments, said Bob Weih, director of the Spatial Analysis Laboratory at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, where the software package was developed. TAXES AND GRANTS The Forestry Commission spends, on average, more than $6 million a year, or about 30 percent of its budget, to comply with that mandate, State Forester John Shannon said. To help pay for firefighting, the Forest Fire Protection Act of 1969 established an annual tax of 15 cents per acre on private timberland. That tax generates about $2.1 million a year, Shannon said. A second major source of Forestry Commission funding is the timber severance tax, which is collected from the primary processors of timber harvested in Arkansas. Approximately $3.7 million in severance taxes go to the commission annually, Shannon said. Federal grants have been a third important funding source in recent years. About $6 million is expected during the state fiscal year, which ends June 30, Shannon said. Federal grants have made it possible for the commission to purchase fire plows and to contract with a single-engine air-tanker contractor. Western Pilot Service of Phoenix currently provides the state with year-round, standby firefighting protection. During the historically peak forest-fire months of February through April, the company guarantees Arkansas the exclusive use of four, 500-gallon tanker planes. During the second most active fire period, August and September, Western Pilot provides two full-time tankers. Federal excess property programs also have provided the commission with nine of its detection aircraft on permanent loan. And those programs have helped to equip the more than 1,000 rural fire departments across the state. During wildfires, those departments help fight blazes and often ferry water to nearby airports to refill the air tankers. Because federal support for firefighting — in the form of both grants and excess equipment — tends to ebb and flow with the severity of forest fires in the western United States, Shannon said he plans to recommend a more secure source of funding for the state’s airtankers. In what will be the commission’s first budget as part of a larger Arkansas Agriculture Department, he will propose that $400,000, the cost of the air tankers during a normal fire year, come from the state’s general revenues, Shannon said. |
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