Forest Service falls behind on replacing burned trees
By Patrick O’Driscoll
USA Today
Copyright 2006 Gannett Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
DENVER, Colo. — As severe wildfires scorch more of the USA each year, the Forest Service is falling further behind in replacing trees lost to fire, insects and disease because of shrinking budgets and mounting costs of fighting the blazes.
The Forest Service had a backlog of 1.1million acres that needed replanting in 2005 — a combined area slightly larger than Rhode Island — according to the agency’s latest reforestation report. Last year, it could replant only 153,000 acres.
John Rosenow, president of the National Arbor Day Foundation, calls it “a double whammy — the high need (to replant) because of fires, and then the funds having to be diverted.”
The Forest Service had to borrow $200million from other programs to cover firefighting costs this year. Most of that, $159million, came from reforestation accounts, the agency says.
Wildfires last year scorched almost 8.7million acres, the highest total in more than a half-century — until this year’s record 9.6million acres burned.
“I’ll give you one word: crisis,” says forest ecologist Tom Bonnicksen, an adviser to the Forest Foundation, a California-based group. “In California areas burned by wildfires in 2001, only 3.8 percent were reforested. That, to me, is a crisis.”
Not all land burned in these record years are in the 193 million acres of national forests. Nor do all burned forests need intensive replanting. Wildfires can char some areas but only singe others, so some tracts can reseed naturally.
But millions of acres of forestland, especially in the West, are dangerously overgrown because federal policy for decades was to put out every fire. When those forests catch fire now, they can burn so severely that replanting is the only option. If the forests aren’t restored, erosion can mar the land, damage wildlife habitat and ruin the water quality of streams that contribute to the nation’s water supply.
The Forest Service report says the increased acreage in need of replanting is mostly attributable to major fires in the West since 2000. It also acknowledges a steady decline in replanting since 1990.
“I’m concerned about our ability to do the appropriate level of reforestation,” Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth says. “That is a core value of the Forest Service.”
A 2005 study by the Government Accountability Office warned that neglected reforestation could make wildfires worse. The report said that without new trees, burned areas will fill in with brush and weeds, which can dry out quickly and become volatile fuel for more fires.
In an attempt to close the gap, groups and businesses are donating money and seedlings. In October, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, working with the National Arbor Day Foundation, pledged 1million trees a year for the next 50 years. Earlier this year, Ikea, the home store chain, paired with American Forests, another conservation group, to plant 300,000 trees.
Bosworth says such donations accounted for 12 percent of reforestation spending in 2004: “I’d like to double that over time.”