Protecting the Stanislaus National Forest with, of all things, fire | Opinion

I am of the West. The western mountains, rivers, and forests make up the lineage from which I spring and the legacy I hope to bequeath to generations yet unknown.

Born in Wisconsin, I moved throughout the country, including Colorado, where the Front Range was my mountain escape growing up. It was that landscape that inspired my U.S. Forest Service career. What my youthful eyes looked upon as majestic beauty turned into adult understanding as I watched 4 million acres dramatically changed by wildfires and suffer immeasurable impacts due to insect mortality.

I knew even then something was wrong. Those landscapes of my youth had been permanently altered. There had to be a better way. My 16-year Forest Service career then took me to the Stanislaus National Forest as supervisor for this nearly 1 million-acre landscape in the Central Sierra.

Opinion

Since the beginning, the Sierra Nevada has been a fire-dependent ecosystem — a lesson lost as nearly a century of western expansion disavowed indigenous knowledge. We can no longer ignore those lessons. The ravages of climate change are exacerbating the destruction of our nation’s forests and public lands: more forest die-off from insect predation, rapidly accelerating decline of traditional watersheds, and catastrophic wildfires that tear through our communities and landscapes, leaving nothing but blackened ash.

We have moved beyond the time to act cautiously and must now march boldly into a future with a vision and will to restore our ecosystem to a healthy, resilient balance, accepting that is dependent upon fire. Small-scope solutions no longer are acceptable. We must work at a level that will have a significant impact.

By previous standards, 2022 was a mild season, burning 363,939 acres in California, destroying 772 structures, and damaging 104 more. This contrasts with record-setting years of 2020 and 2021, when 2.5 million and 4.3 million acres burned, respectively.

Western forests are at an inflection point. I respectfully submit that our single greatest weapon in fighting fire is fire itself. We must reintroduce fire to a landscape whose natural adaptations have formed a dependency, and we must come to terms with that most basic of elements as a natural part of our existence.

Thinning trees along Highway 108

In the Stanislaus, we have begun the work of rebuilding forest resiliency as part of the Forest Service’s 10-year wildfire crisis strategy along with the Stanislaus Landscape Project. Our goal is to treat, through a variety of methods, more than 305,000 acres concentrated along portions of Highway 108. While reintroducing beneficial, low-intensity fire to the landscape is our final outcome, years of improper management means we cannot start from that point.

Bolstered by a $55 million investment from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we have begun the required work of thinning the forest to a stand density that the best available science tells us is proper for healthy forests. We’ve begun building fuel breaks around communities at serious risk for wildfire — a layer of security for residents, and a location where firefighters can make a stand. And we are moving to protect critical infrastructure.

All of this is being done in a way that brings together our varied stakeholders. Working in concert with Tuolumne County and the 31-member collaborative Yosemite Stanislaus Solutions, we can more deftly engage, from conception to execution. The challenge before us is vast and the only way we will succeed is by partnering to find common ground and bring forth the future we all want to see.

As a father who lives in this community, success to me is extremely personal. I want a future home for my children and the children of everyone in this region, full of the abundance I have known throughout my life. We can chart a path forward to healthy, resilient forests and communities if we take bold steps to give us the best chance for the future. Healthy forests are resilient forests, and resilient forests demand fire as part of their natural cycle.

The Stanislaus National Forest is leading out on a path toward that goal. Indeed, the whole of the Forest Service is committed to bringing resiliency back to forests, with 21 western landscapes in high-risk fire areas committed to the same goal. I encourage everyone to learn how the Forest Service is approaching this effort with our Wildfire Crisis Strategy, and I invite you to visit the Stanislaus to see how this collaborative group is ushering in a new era of forest resiliency.

Jason Kuiken has been Stanislaus National Forest supervisor since 2017.