Wilderness and Fire Embracing complexity (

Wilderness and Fire

Embracing complexity (

and

uncertainty

)

Applying Wilderness Science in the real world

Wilderness Act

DEFINITION OF WILDERNESS

(c) A wilderness,

in contrast

with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are

untrammeled by man

, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. An area of wilderness is further defined to mean in this Act an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its

primeval character and influence

,

without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its

natural conditions

and which (1) generally appears to have been

affected primarily by the forces of nature

, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable; (2) has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation; (3) has at least five thousand acres of land or is of sufficient size as to make practicable its preservation and use in an unimpaired condition; and (4) may also contain ecological, geological, or other features of scientific, educational, scenic, or historical value.

“untrammeled by man”… “affected

primarily by the forces of

nature”

Beaverjack

2005

Magruder with 2005

Beaverjack fire

August 10 to Sept 8, 2005

Assessing

Risk

Risk Management - Accountability

HIGH

High

Moderate

Low

Personal experience with fire use

Comfort with uncertainty

Professional Liability Insurance limits

Proximity to retirement

High

Moderate

Low

High

Moderate

Low

LOW

LOW

HIGH

Public Acceptance or support for WFRB

Support / understanding of your Supervisor

HIGH

LOW

Relative Risk Rating from guidebook

LOW

High

Go decision 7/17

July 20 2013 Gold Pan

1630 July 21

ISPAM July 26

th

July 27

Gold Pan Fire Complex

Programmatic/Cost Fire ReviewBitterroot National Forest, U.S. Forest Service

Objective of this Review

The primary objective of these Programmatic/Cost Fire Reviews is to

evaluate and document risk management decision processes

and actions taken on incidents and their direct or indirect effect on costs. The review and objective analysis provides recommendations to management for incident-specific and programmatic process improvements based on comprehensive analysis of incident documentation.

This allows for improvement of program performance, operations, evaluation of costs, and facilitates the application of focused improvements. In addition, the reviews provide an opportunity to evaluate the clarity of communication of the Chief’s Leader Intent and the effectiveness of implementation in the field.

The results of the reviews provide information crucial to the well-established learning environment and continued improvement in fire management in the U.S. Forest Service

.

Review outcomes

Although this was a wilderness incident, and may be perceived as expensive, the overall outcome had many successes. The outcome of this fire was at a lower than average cost per acre for past wilderness fire’s on the Forest. There also was a close attention to sound risk management with no major injuries or death, many acres treated, and contingency barriers in place for future incidents which contributed to the overall success

.

Future Challenges

Get better at telling the story – of wilderness as a self regulating system “A fire put out is a fire put off” (Stephen Pyne)

Risk Aversion in agency decision makers – Many decision makers are new – the first rodeo is the hardest

Elevating decision making away from qualified field personnel (choosing political vs. resource risk to manage)

Smaller Wilderness areas – fire doesn’t respect boundaries….

More Challenges

Making Agencies more adept with changing media , Twitter, Facebook , the next big thing

Climate

Change – tell the story of fire adaptation

Finding inspiration – encouragement for taking the right

risks

Aldo Leopold Thinking Like a Mountain

We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time. A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking,

but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run

Fires call of the wild – Stephen Pyne

The 40th Anniversary celebration was a modest affair, three people and a pilot in a 182 aircraft flying a reconnaissance back through time as they viewed countless fire perimeters of earlier free-burning fires. One of the passengers on the July 2 flight was fire historian Steve Pyne who opined in a later essay: “

If Americans had a National Register of Historic Places for fire, the Selway-Bitterroot region would rank among the early entries.”

The

White Cap project was the brainchild of Bud Moore who commented one day: “The Wilderness Act says that natural processes should proceed. While in light of that, to put out a fire was almost illegal.” Recently a journal

article by University of Montana professors Casey

Teske

, Carl A.

Seielstad

, and Lloyd P. Queen concluded in a study of satellite maps of fires in the Bob Marshall, Selway-Bitterroot, and Frank Church-River of No Return wildernesses that past fires were regulating the size of new fires; confirming what many witnesses had observed over the

years.