Forest Health Wildfire Trends and Risks Among Owners Wildland fires are an ever- increasing threat to many tribes, primarily in the West but across North America (Figure B.6). Wildfire risk was a prominent theme in the IFMAT III report; that risk has only grown over the last decade for all landowners but often disproportionately for the tribes. Wildfires threaten tribal communities, their timber base, economic development in general and the long-term sustainability of their lands. The threat of loss from large, high-intensity wildfire transcends the classic Euro-American perspective of wildfire risk and loss, dominated by a focus on risk to the wildland-urban interface, evacuation planning, fire- adapted homes and communities, insurance rates, timber loss/ salvage, and economic impacts to businesses. Most tribes do not have the luxury of sufficient wildfire risk analyses and planning, nor widespread availability of fuels treatments in the wildland-urban interface, creation of home defensible space, and ample insurance coverage for their membership. Forest management, performed or administered by the BIA, is often already marginal in both extent and effectiveness to address wildfire risk, which limits tribal capacity to restore and maintain fire resistant and resilient landscapes. And, finally, effective wildfire suppression responses/ campaigns during large wildfires preferentially focus on protecting human structures that are often non-tribal. Tribes traditionally view their timber and woodland resources
Ϭ ϭϬϬϬϬϬ ϮϬϬϬϬϬ ϯϬϬϬϬϬ ϰϬϬϬϬϬ ϱϬϬϬϬϬ ϲϬϬϬϬϬ ϳϬϬϬϬϬ ϴϬϬϬϬϬ ϵϬϬϬϬϬ
ϮϬϭϬ
ϮϬϭϮ
ϮϬϭϰ
ϮϬϭϲ
ϮϬϭϴ
ϮϬϮϬ
ϮϬϮϮ
Figure B.6. Acres burned on tribal trust lands from 2010 through 2020 (BIA Central Office, Mark Jackson).
much more broadly than Euro- Americans and see the natural role of fire in wildlands more broadly than most current federal, state, and private landowners and managers. Tribes value their forests and waters with all their natural resources (first foods, cultural plants, timber, aquatic and wildlife species, forest products and life force) more than human structures; tribes are therefore less willing to sacrifice the forest and woodlands in order to protect second homes and recreational cabins dispersed in the adjacent National Forests. Beyond this fundamental difference in prioritization of fire management resources, the team heard many examples of ignored tribal input about: 1. potential proactive fuels treatment priorities to protect culturally sensitive resources and first foods; 2. reactive incident management decisions and suppression resource allocations that devalued tribal inputs and resources, altering ongoing risk analyses and resultant suppression and containment decisions; and
3. post-wildfire recovery and restoration analyses biased against tribal resources. In short, the current Euro- American land and fire management system consistently disadvantages the tribes and has disproportionate impacts on their land base. The Wildfire Hazard Potential (WHP) is a rating developed and maintained by the US Forest Service Fire Science Research group. It is a combination of wildfire likelihood and intensity and vegetation data from the 2010 LANDFIRE national database. Table B.4 presents the percentage of land by owner that is considered High/Very- High rating. The change in areas is due to changing field conditions between 2010 and 2021 holding the vegetation layer constant. Field conditions have been worsening in the West and moderating in the East. The changes in percentages and the regional ranking provide a method of evaluating the change in risk. WHP ratings using the 2020 LANDFIRE vegetation
Task Findings and Recommendations 87
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator