This summer’s costly Jolly Mountain Fire made Cle Elum the ideal place to unveil Washington’s 20-year-plan to restore forest health and take a more proactive approach to reducing catastrophic wildfires.
State Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz announced the plan Wednesday afternoon at Putnam Centennial Center in front of an audience featuring many of the legislators and representatives of organizations working together to fight one of the state’s largest, most urgent environmental threats. The new Forest Health Strategic Plan comes with a new, 22-person Forest Health Advisory Committee to work toward the goal of treating 1.25 million acres by 2037 by various methods, such as thinning and prescribed fires.
“It is extremely expensive to fight these fires,” Franz said. “It gets harder and harder, given the forest health issues that we have, to be able to protect properties and resources that are building into our forest land areas.”
High-priority areas for treatment include plenty of land in Kittitas County, where the Jolly Mountain Fire burned nearly 37,000 acres and required $25 million of the $130 million the state has spent fighting fires this year. Dense forests and invasive species make it especially susceptible to severe fires, and Franz noted that with different winds, communities such as Roslyn and Cle Elum could have faced much greater danger.
The Nature Conservancy’s government relations director, Tom Bugert, said the conservancy and other organizations have been using the new plan’s proven, science-based approach to restore forest health for about a decade. But he called the additional bipartisan support from elected officials such as Franz, Sen. Brad Hawkins, R-East Wenatchee, and Rep. Joel Kretz, R-Wauconda, a “game-changer” needed to accelerate those critical efforts.
From the Yakima Herald: https://www.yakimaherald.com/news/local/fighting-fires-with-healthier-forests-state-unveils-long-term-plan/article_e6dd9000-ba11-11e7-88c4-5b34cac6191a.html