US Forest Service Prevents Its Own Scientists from Talking About Study | Hacker News Reader

US Forest Service Prevents Its Own Scientists from Talking About Study

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Man that's some crap right there. Science should be in the direct interest of politics, esp. in the case of ecology, environmental studies.

What does it mean to be forbidden to speak, that's a load of shit, if there is someone that's studying the field, allow them to present the facts of what occurs, and whats the best way (saving lives of wildlife, cost effectiveness, etc) to officials.

a load of bullshit its whats holding us back.

this has been happening in canada for the past decade or so

the upcoming canadian election is ultra-important for this reason.

> What does it mean to be forbidden to speak

It means you'll lose your job if you speak.

i do understand the implications, what i dont understand is the reasoning.

Francis Fukuyama recently wrote an excellent article about the US Forest Service in Foreign Affairs. Title: America in Decay

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2014-0...

"45 percent of recent new hires to the federal service are veterans, as mandated by Congress"

This is disturbing if true. Certainly not a way to get the best quality work force.

Not sure if I agree... 45% might be a too high percentage but hiring veterans? Absolutely yes. Likely a win/win.

Federal services get provably dependable people and veterans get work.

Simply showing up doesn't make one "provably dependable". One needs to actually carry out tasks, something the armed services are woefully inadequate at. Which is of course why all the contractors.

It's a terrible idea to mandate this. Horrible.

Don't underestimate soldiers.

If doing what you are supposed to do again and again even when your life is at risk isn't proof of being dependable I don't know what does.

Not saying this is the only thing Federal Services need but doubting their dependability seems unjusified.

Many contractors on the other hand seems to have their

Here's the paper they're talking about:

https://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6254/1280.summary

Unfortunately only the abstract seems to be free.

Some non-paywalled resources for more information are cited directly from within the paper:

"Although agencies are slow to reform internally, they may more rapidly respond to local stakeholder pressure... This has begun to change as communities increasingly threatened by large fires are urging land-management agencies to accelerate fuel reduction efforts, including the use of managed fire [1][2]."

[1] http://yosemitestanislaussolutions.com

[2] http://4fri.org

There's a nifty disclaimer in the main text: "The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the USFS."

In any case, here are few of the more interesting citations from the full text.

"Globally, wildfire size, severity, and frequency have been increasing, as have related fatalities and taxpayer-funded firefighting costs" CITATION: http://nature.berkeley.edu/stephenslab/wp-content/uploads/20...

"But the 2% of wildfires that escape containment often burn under extreme weather conditions in fuel-loaded forests and account for 97% of fire-fighting costs and total area burned" CITATION: http://www.wildfire-economics.org/Library/Calkin_et_al_2005....

Bonus: Malcolm North on Climate Change and Wildfires - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9buMJNu6v4

I've read this through a few times and have yet to see anything even remotely controversial.

It's accepted, conventional wisdom - so deeply as to be cliche - everywhere in the fire service that managed burning and moving away from the emphasis on "stopping all burns no matter what" is the way to go.

I've never spoken to anyone that disagreed with this on any level other than specific tactics...

This is a very poor article. It doesn't explain what it was that happened except at the end where it says Science added a disclaimer note. The reporter didn't get a quote from the Forrest Service about the issue. It's sensationalistic more than informative.

This was certainly common enough knowledge that it was taught to me explicitly in Boy Scouts back in 1997. Preventing all forest fires builds up undergrowth so that the severity of eventual fires is much worse and they are less controllable.

At the time, they were doing controlled burns of the Boy Scout camp (Philmont) in Nevada to try to make up for decades of undergrowth buildup before they knew better.

Philmont is in New Mexico.

I learned my geography in Indiana!

...

Can anyone show some example maps of the proposed zoning? I have trouble envisioning the proposed policy.

It doesn't sound like there are example maps, as this is just a paper studying what has happened, and one possible future mitigation. From what it sounds like, if we use Los Padres National Forest as an example, [1] they'll let areas near Alamo Mountain burn, but Pinon Pines Estates and Lake of the Woods would get forces concentrated there, with preventative forestry work to thin trees, etc to make things more manageable.

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Los+Padres+National+Forest...

how does propagation work? wouldn't a fire travel all the way from a inhabited place to the habitations? do they have some kind of maximal propagation distance?

Short answer: it's complicated. It's possible, and near definite if they started this policy without getting a forest close to natural, that letting areas burn could burn from "wild" areas to inhabited areas. Normally, fires would be stopped by natural firebreaks, like rainstorms, rivers and canyons, or unnatural firebreaks, like fire roads. However, because fire policy has been to put all fires out immediately, all of the dead brush, fallen branches, etc, are left to litter the floor of the forest. This means that a fire, which would normally just scorch the base of the living trees and ignite some of the dead but standing trees, would have a very good chance to burn nice and hot due to all the kindling in the form of dead brush and growth. This would in turn end up igniting even trees that reproduce in the fire cycle, like pines and sequoias, leaving the forest absolutely barren for miles and miles.

However, there are ways to get the land fairly close to natural so that fires can stay relatively small. One of which is through prescribed burns, where the forestry department will intentionally, and carefully, set an area on fire to clear up all the brush and dead growth to act as an imitation of the natural process. It would also mean doing things like carefully grooming the areas around inhabited places to give even less fuel for any kind of fire. Unfortunately, implementing such policy would be very difficult because it would involve needing a lot of firefighters in the near term to manage prescribed burns, and the powers that be are hesitant to give much money to the forest service as it is.

In California chaparral, both area and rate of burning far exceed the natural levels. I suspect that the plan for the entire Los Padres ecosystem would be full suppression of wildfire, except perhaps in the most remote areas. Alamo Mountain has off-road vehicle trails, so I suspect it already has increased fire risk.

   "Although chaparral is adapted to periodic wildfire,
   there is substantial evidence that fires are burning at
   unprecedented frequencies, and this repeated burning
   (at intervals closer than 15–20 years apart) exceeds
   many species’ resilience"

ftp://www.geology.sdsu.edu/pub/IEMM/CSS/Other%20papers/SyphardEtAl2007.pdf

On Australian aboriginal peoples' burnoff traditions: http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2010/12/aborigin... and http://www.dpaw.wa.gov.au/management/fire/fire-and-the-envir...

Way to promote the paper and make sure its gets plenty of news coverage. I wish I could think they planned it that way, but I know better.

We own a rural residential property near Chico, CA on top of a mesa in a fire-prone area, and the forest "management" is haphazard, combined with clueless American neighbors whom the city has to force to mow their weeds and remove fuel from their land, and you have a constant battle against stupid and/or lazy people whom don't know how to mange their land and are liabilties to everyone else. I'm often think about "accidentally" chucking a roadflare in their yard to get them with the program.

IIRC forest management changed significantly under either Bush Sr. or Clinton.

Dear scientist, please shut up, you are ruining our budget rise prospects. Bigger the fires bigger the budget and elevated importance of management positions.

I read it more as "we have spent all of the prevention money on fighting."

Along the lines of the "when you are up to your ass in alligators, it may be hard to remember that your original goal was to drain the swamp."

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