A significant proportion of lands in the Refuge System occur within fire-adapted ecosystems. The management of wildland fires, both prescribed fires and wildfires, is perhaps the System’s most widely used tool for ecological restoration and management of habitats and wildlife populations.
Climate change and a rapidly expanding wildland-urban interface are increasing the risks of catastrophic fire, resulting in less funding for work outside of the wildland-urban interface. Maintaining wildland fire management capability is critical for the Service to support ecological resilience and facilitate adaptation of fish, wildlife and plants to climate change at landscape scales. With these important ecological values in mind, a top priority of Refuge System fire management is fire personnel safety. The Service must ensure employees have the training, experience and equipment to do their jobs.
The Refuge System has continually led the way in the use of prescribed fire in meeting departmental goals for hazardous fuels reduction. Current interagency fire policy narrowly emphasizes hazardous fuel reduction as a goal and overlooks the protection of broader landscape and ecosystem goals. Fire managers should be equally concerned with protecting watersheds, the spread of invasive species, maintaining fuel conditions where treatment has already occurred, and protecting and recovering endangered and threatened species.
Recommendation: Aggressively pursue changes to interagency fire policy that ensures the use of fire to protect the full range of natural resource values.
The Refuge System excels in providing critical support to national wildland fire preparedness and suppression efforts. In fact, the refuge fire program responds to 41% of fires on federal lands while only receiving 18% of the Department of the Interior fire dollars. The Service conforms to the highest interagency standards of training, operations, and safety, and benefits from sharing expertise and knowledge with partner agencies.
Preparedness for responding to emergencies; however, needs improvement. Recent emergencies, such as the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill event, highlight that wildlife refuge lands and resources are disproportionately affected. While the Service’s overwhelming support in responding to this and other oil spills is a testament to the character of the agency, the Refuge System is reminded of the inadequacy of its preparedness for such disasters. Refuges lack staff certified and trained in the necessary response protocols (Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response Standard HAZWOPER and Incident Command System ICS) and Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) programs. The NRDA is the mechanism by which habitat, wildlife populations, and services are restored. The Refuge System’s national inventory and monitoring program can assist in providing baseline data to inform damage assessments; however, the Refuge System must increase its overall understanding of the NRDA and ensure adequate numbers of staff are trained to conduct damage assessments. The Refuge System must also build on the success of the fire community’s preparedness infrastructure to ensure the ability to participate quickly and effectively when the Service responds to spills.
Recommendation: Develop a program that maintains trained staff (like the fire program) for certified staff to respond to emergency incidents, such as oil and other hazardous material spills, and leads NRDA activities during events.
Comment below and/or move on to next sub-section of Chapter 2 - Farming
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My comments are in regard to the Emergency Response portion of this sub-section.
I agree that preparedness for responding to emergencies does need to improve. And following that comment is the example of the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. However, the last sentence of that paragraph makes it seem that you want to ensure the ability to participate quickly and effectively on “spills” rather than emergencies in general. This also seems to be echoed within the recommendations. More of a reference to “spills”. This, of course, is the most recent example, but let’s not get tunnel vision on this topic. After all, it’s only been a handful of years (and continues to this day), that we were talking about hurricanes. A minor change, but I believe we should thouroughly demonstrate our awareness of the “bigger” picture and not one particular incident. And by “bigger” picture, I mean all types of emergencies.
First off, I want to commend you for allowing us citizens comment on your draft plan. It is not everyday that I, as a young student, can feel as though my voice will be adequately heard and my comments and suggestions valued. Your draft plan seems to be on the right track, it is great to see that so many people care about our environment; plants, animals, humans coming together to create a brilliant ecosystem.
As a citizen of California, native to Southern California, my first reaction was to comment on the “Fire Management” portion of the draft. Having suffered through countless, disastrous wildfires that have threatened my family’s homes, and having even been evacuated in an emergency situation, I am adamant that we better our fire safety programs around the country, especially in California. While I have nothing bad to say about our fire departments, (as they do an admirable job saving lives and homes on a daily basis, and are wonderfully respondent in emergencies) I would love to see some sort of organization in preparedness and safety in these large-scale wildfires. I can’t say that I am an expert in the subject, because I am certainly not, but I know that there are always ways to improve upon ourselves. One extreme concern I hold in the emergency wildfire situation is for the safety of the animals, not just the animals living in nature but also household pets, zoo animals, etc. I would LOVE to see a sort of program/response disaster team that focuses on saving our wildlife when they are fighting for their lives amongst the encroaching flames. Also, many people who are evacuated from their homes have no where to take their animals (often larger farm animals, such as horses and whatnot). If times permits, it would be nice to have a group/plan that is dispatched to save some of these valuable members of the family. Perhaps a location to which these animals can be taken? At this point, it seems as though animals are forgotten as victims to these catastrophic events.
It would also be nice to have more education/disaster preparedness in the cases of natural fires/wildfires. Focusing in on zones that are in danger (such as the many communities of Southern California buried deep in the foothills), homeowners should be given plans of action that are easily accessible to help them plan for emergencies. I work in a Mayor’s office currently, and I know we hold a high value on emergency preparedness for the city itself. I would love to see this same attentiveness be broadcast on a national level, not just for fire preparedness but also for all natural disasters. It seems as though this draft does create a sense of initiative for this cause. I absolutely agree that we must protect our resources. Ideally, with millions of dollars, we could strengthen our Wildlife protection services, create an unstoppable wildfire protection program, and have safe refuges for victims of these disasters. I know that with limited resources not everything is possible, but it would be great to see a little more attention paid towards things that can greatly save us when we are rendered helpless.
You make a valid point about protection of domesticated animals. Many communities in fire-prone areas have included such provisions in their community wildfire protection plans. Organized evacuations of pets and livestock have already occurred during some large wildfires.
However, protection of wildlife is an entirely different issue. In fire-adapted natural areas, wildlife species have evolved with fire. Most have the natural ability to move away from fire. Some actually are attracted by fire and smoke in order to hunt, forage, mate, and nest. These populations depend upon periodic fire to stimulate plant growth and maintain quality living conditions. It is populations, as opposed to individual animals, that are of greatest concern to wildlife biologists.
Although sometimes individual animals are killed during fires, most remain unharmed. Many animals benefit and their populations often rise. Fire managers on refuges conduct regular planned burns to prevent overgrown vegetation that can fuel large, fast-moving fires which kill more wildlife than slow-moving ground fires. This affords better protection to both wildlife and people, provides plenty of safe areas, and certainly contributes to our enjoyment of the outdoors.
See article at http://www.fws.gov/fire/news/national/FMT_Wildlife.shtml
Fire is a natural part of the ecosystem, if it is too strongly suppressed mega infernos are the result.
Get welfare cattle/sheep off our lands & have them pay for all the damage they have caused & restore our native plant species, water ways, soil can be restored. Protect wild horses/burros and stop hunting so wildlife that is good for our environment can reseed and consume forage with out damaging the environment.
Salazar is a cattle rancher and MILLIONS of WELFARE CATTLE are the main cause of noxious weed explosion on our public lands and graze on public lands and on OUR LANDS managed by the USF&WS also. So their plan is to mobilize an army of volunteers to clean up the massive damage caused by subsidized welfare cattle / sheep grazing ? How about holding all those responsible to clean up their mess ? Those responsible would be BLM & USFWS and WELFARE CATTLE/SHHEEP RANCHERS whose destruction of our land, soil, water, wildlife, native plants and are the cause of noxious weed explosion.
I like the recommendation. However, I think it is too weak of a statement. This is a huge problem for the fire program throughout the refuge system. The Dept. policy needs to be more than just aggresively pursued to change. It needs to change…!!! FWS continues to loose this argument about funding for Fuels reduction vs. Habitat management. When funding is limited the Service is the 1st agency to be cut, because of these policies. The Service can and has been making the argument that reducing fuels also achieves needed habitat management goals in fire sensitive ecosystems. However, when funding becomes limited, only fuels treatment close to develoments (WUI) gets funding and other fuels treatments that benifit wildlife take the back burner.
This discrepancy begs the question: are our Fire resources (staff) in the right locations??? I.e. If a refuge has a fire staff, but has no WUI, does the department want us to shift those positions to other stations that have WUI? Or should those staff postions be paid out of refuge base dollars instead of Fire dollars? This is the only logical conclusion to what the policy is wanting the Service to conform to. This would be disasterous to our habitat management goals and objects as well as create a larger problem for resource management budgets.
I would also recommend that employess paid out of fire dollars become a line item on a stations allocation sheet. Just like it is with other staff in our resource management budget. When congress sees a large pot of money for fire with no staff attached to it, it becomes a big target for cuts. We should overhual of our fire budget allocations to simplify it.
If we are not going to get money for resource burns in the fire budgets, then stations with fire staff that use fire to maintain large landscapes, will need to have a larger operating margin in their base budget. Fire is and will continue to be the cheapest option for maintain many of these priority landscapes. So we need to continue to make our position known and that without regular fuels reduction in nonWUI areas, these habitats will still burn and be catastrophic for the habitat and its species. Just because it may not distroy homes and developments, etc..doesn’t mean It is any less costly to american tax payer. Its about being proactive, maintaining habitats in fire dependant ecosystems and proactively mitigating effects of what would be more harmful wildfires. Continuing with the same argument that we have been, continues to lead us down this path of less money for fire etc… Perhaps we need a new approach, that shifts refuge fire staff over to base budgets, and use fire budgets to conduct burns on WUI stations. It might hurt in the short term, but ultimately we would have more control over our budgets from year to year, rather than at the wims of the National Interagency Fire Center and the Dept.
Fire management policy should encourage the use of prescribed fire as a method to reduce fuels AND for habitat management. I encourage USFWS to work more closely with state agencies and other interested organizations in developing prescribed fire partnerships like the Mississippi Prescribed Fire Council. These partnerships should focus on sharing fire management resources and personnel and addressing impediments to utilizing fire as a legitimate management tool.
My first comment deals with fire adapted ecosystems. Ecosystems do not adapt and thus cannot be fire adapted. Depending on how an ecosystem is defined spatially, fire may have played a role as one of the disturbances that affects species within the ecosystem; but the ecosystem does not adapt. Adaptation occurs at the species level which is Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.
My second comment deals with the first recommendation. The 1995 Federal Wildland Fire Policy has been found to be basically sound with a review in 2001 and follow up changes in 2009. The policy has 9 Guiding Principles of which one is that wildland fire as an ecological process and natural change agent gets incorporated into the planning process. Firefighter and public safety is the first priority in federal fire policy. The second is both protecting property and protecting natural and cultural resources. Thus the statement that current interagency fire policy emphasizes hazardous fuel reduction over protection of landscape and ecosystems is inaccurate as they are treated equally in fire policy.
Furthermore, Congress appropriates funding for hazardous fuels reduction. The two biggest Congressional considerations are to reduce large fire costs and reduce number of homes burned. Therefore, Congress added language to the appropriation that hazardous fuels funds are to be used for treatments that best benefit the Nation. The Government Accounting Office (GAO), through numerous reports, has determined that hazardous fuels funds are to go through a prioritization process to determine which treatments provide the most benefit to Nation. Thus, Federal Wildland Fire Policy did not put the emphasis of hazardous fuels treatment in the wildland urban interface – but rather Congress and GAO.
Alternative forms of funding sources need to be developed for habitat management prescribed fire as the criteria for the use of hazardous fuel funding will continue to narrow. Some of these alternatives could be through grants and agreements with partners, use of refuge funds, or other types of funding sources.
I certainly agree that the FWS needs to be more prepared for emergency events and utilizing a structure based on interagency fire preparedess is a good model to follow and incorporate. While the example deals with the Oil Spill, the last sentence seems to indicate that spills are the only events that require a FWS response. Not long ago, FWS personnel in SE were dealing with hurricanes; and for the last few years, FWS personnel have been responding to floods. I feel the recommendation needs to be broader and incorporate natual as well as man-made events.