The Resilience Dilemma: Incorporating Global Change into Ecosystem Policy and Management

2016, Past Issues, Print, Volume 48 (2016) Issue 1 (Spring)
Donald A. Falk. The progression of changes to Earth’s climate poses unprecedented challenges to the science and practice of ecosystem management. The viability of many populations, species, and even ecosystems is increasingly uncertain in their current form. Effects of climate change per se are compounded by multiple interacting stressors, including landscape modification and fragmentation, alerted disturbance regimes (particularly wildland fire), and the increasing presence of non-native invasive species. In framing a meaningful response to global environmental change, all of these interacting factors must be taken into account. For example, the ability of species to migrate in response to changing climate geography—as nearly all species have done during past eras of rapid climate change, such as the end of the last interglacial period—may be impaired by fragmented landscapes that pose barriers…
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The Cost of Inaction: Flagstaff Watershed Protection Project Cost Avoidance Study

2016, Past Issues, Print, Volume 48 (2016) Issue 1 (Spring)
Wayne R. Fox. This study estimates the potential financial damages mitigated by the implementation of the Flagstaff Watershed Protection Project (FWPP). The goal of FWPP is to reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfire and post-fire flood impacts by conducting fuel-reduction forest treatments in two watersheds critical to the City of Flagstaff—the Dry Lake Hills (Rio de Flag) and Mormon Mountain (Lake Mary). By thinning unnaturally dense vegetation and using prescribed fire in these areas, the risk of intense wildfire and post-fire impacts will be significantly reduced. The primary risks of wildfire are two-fold: damage from fire and damage from resulting floods. Severe, uncharacteristic fire destroys trees, wildlife, and recreation value and threatens homes and infrastructure in its path. Floods occur in the areas downstream of burns and can cause severe…
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How Forest Treatment Saved the Bray Creek Ranch

2016, Past Issues, Print, Volume 48 (2016) Issue 1 (Spring)
Michael A. Johns. Bray Creek Ranch is an old homestead along the Highline National Recreation Trail, which is a part of the Arizona Trail, at the base of the Mogollon Rim about twelve miles north of Payson, Arizona between Boy Scout Camp Geronimo and Girl Scout Camp Shadow Rim. The ranch is surrounded by National Forest in the Ponderosa Pine type at about 6,000 feet elevation. I started my Federal career in 1969 on the Payson Ranger District Helitack Team. In 1972 we formed the District’s first Hotshot crew and I was asked to be its first foreman. In 1973 I clerked for the U.S. Attorney’s Office and was appointed as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in 1974. I have been representing the United States, Federal agencies, and Federal employees in…
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4FRI and the NEPA Process

2016, Past Issues, Print, Volume 48 (2016) Issue 1 (Spring)
Annette Fredette. The Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI) is the largest collaborative, landscape-scale restoration initiative in the country, the largest initiative of its kind ever endeavored. This initiative’s goal is nothing less than the restoration of the ponderosa pine forest stretching across northern Arizona. It seeks to reduce the threat of destructive wildfire to thriving forest communities, restore forest ecosystems with natural fire regimes and functioning populations of native plants and animals, and build and sustain forest industries that strengthen local economies. 4FRI as an initiative stretches across four national forests: the Kaibab, Coconino, Apache-Sitgreaves, and Tonto. This initiative is a large umbrella that not only includes the project area analyzed in the first Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), but also restoration projects already approved in other National Environmental Policy Act…
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The Wildfire Menace: Will the West Learn or Burn?

2016, Past Issues, Print, Volume 48 (2016) Issue 1 (Spring)
Senator Jon Kyl & Kris Kiefer. When I was asked to make this presentation, the first thing I did was to check with Kris Kiefer on Senator Flake’s staff. Senator Flake and Senator McCain have been very active on pushing legislative reforms, and I wanted to know why, with so many announcements of forward progress on forest management, it still seemed that nothing on the scale required was getting done. I will today summarize much of the positive news, but also lay out an agenda of un-finished business, much of which is the object of our delegation’s efforts. While some of us have been working on forest management and ecological restoration since the 1980s, much of the interest and energy in forest health began to take shape after one of…
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On the Inevitability of “Constitutional Design”

2016, Past Issues, Print, Volume 48 (2016) Issue 1 (Spring)
Sanford Levinson. I am delighted to have been given the opportunity to offer some brief comments on the fascinating essay Against Design. It is a long and rich piece raising many questions, and I emphasize that this comment is both brief and therefore necessarily insufficient as anything approaching a complete response. But I obviously hope that even these truncated remarks will help further an important conversation prompted by the four authors. Full Article
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Wildfire Liability and the Federal Government: A Double-Edged Sword

2016, Past Issues, Print, Volume 48 (2016) Issue 1 (Spring)
Charles H. Oldham. Wildland-Urban Interface (“WUI”) represents a growing phenomenon where urban population areas are encroaching upon America’s wildlands, which are defined as natural environments on Earth that have not been significantly modified by civilized human activity. In 2008, there were approximately 115 million single-family homes in the U.S., and roughly 40% of those homes were located in a WUI area. Americans built approximately 17 million new homes between 1990 and 2008, and 10 million of those homes were built in or around a WUI area. As a natural consequence of the growing WUI, the number of structures destroyed by wildfire per year has almost tripled since the 1990s. Moreover, “[b]etween 1990 and 2013, wildfires claimed an average of 18 lives per year, but in 2013 the death toll spiked…
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Resistence, Restoration, Resilience: A Survey of Fire’s American Century

2016, Past Issues, Print, Volume 48 (2016) Issue 1 (Spring)
Stephen J. Pyne. America’s modern fire era began with two parallel processes. One was industrialization, which sought to replace open fire with internal combustion but also rewired humanity’s power and redefined Americans’ relationship to their natural surroundings. This transitional phase is typically one of unsettled fire regimes and widespread, even abusive, burning. The other process was the surge of settlement that swept over post-Civil War America. A map of forest fires for the 1880 census shows the outcome. America in the 1880s was much like Brazil in the 1980s—an agricultural society, rapidly industrializing and remaking its national estate. Fires—both good and bad— were everywhere. America’s first professional forester, the Prussian-trained Bernhard Fernow, dismissed the scene as one “of bad habits and loose morals.” The wreckage was widespread and visible. Occasionally,…
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Technology and Trees: Increasing Trust and Efficiencies in Forest Restoration

2016, Past Issues, Print, Volume 48 (2016) Issue 1 (Spring)
Suzanne Sitko, Travis Woolley & Neil Chapman. The Nature Conservancy (“Conservancy”) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit conservation organization dedicated to the conservation of biodiversity across the world.1 Recognizing the multiple values of our forested ecosystems is an organizational priority. In Arizona, the Conservancy collaborates with multiple partners and the U.S. Forest Service (“USFS”) to support meaningful efforts to restore forests in a manner that is ecologically appropriate2 and economically viable. Full Article
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Will AZ Learn or Burn? Can AZ Learn to Burn?: The Flagstaff Experience

2016, Past Issues, Print, Volume 48 (2016) Issue 1 (Spring)
Paul Summerfelt. Wildfires engender fear and respect, and often burn at great social cost. They can consume much more than acres burned. But the right kind of wildfire is also a necessary component of a healthy forest ecosystem, the very ponderosa pine forests which blanket much of the northern part of our state. How do we reconcile this dichotomy—the good and the bad of wildfire? Fire is no respecter of jurisdictional boundaries or fence-lines. It readily crosses one-to-the-other: it is relentless, persistent, and powerful. Fire is our problem, and our opportunity. The City of Flagstaff provides a model for how local government can engage in and be successful in this challenging environment. Full Article
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