The future of more than 10 million acres of public land in southern California desert areas is laid out in a plan released Tuesday by the Bureau of Land Management.

Phase one of the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan sets aside 388,000 acres for renewable-energy projects and designates 3.8 million acres as national conservation lands.

Ken Rait, director of U.S. Public Lands for Pew Charitable Trusts, said the deal strikes the right balance between conservation and development.

"It creates certainty for the renewable-energy industry, the off-road vehicle community and miners," he said, "so that they know where developments may be able to occur in order to avoid the most ecologically sensitive lands."

The BLM started this process six years ago and released the initial draft last year to an avalanche of public comment.

Ryan Henson, senior policy director for the California Wilderness Coalition, said he is pleased that this revised proposal protects the Mojave Trails area north of Twentynine Palms and Joshua Tree National Park, home to many iconic species such as the desert bighorn sheep, the desert tortoise and the Mohave ground squirrel.

"We've been struggling over the past year to get the BLM to protect particular landscapes like the Silurian Valley and the Cadiz Valley," he said, "and we're very excited to see those places being proposed for protection."

Gov. Jerry Brown now has 60 days to review the plan. The BLM is expected to release the final decision early next year.

Phase two of the plan will address development on nonfederal lands. The whole project is part of the Obama administration's Climate Action Plan to reduce dependence on fossil fuels that contribute to global warming.

More information is online at blm.gov.

Support for this reporting is provided by Pew Charitable Trusts.


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State and federal agencies are collaborating to increase the use of prescribed fires in the Northwest.

Prescribed fire is the controlled use of burns to minimize the larger risks of wildfires and smoke. It is seen as an increasingly important strategy as wildfire seasons pose greater threats to the Northwest.

Casey Sixkiller, Northwest regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said authorities want to work together to maintain forest habitats.

"Prescribed burn is one of the best tools we have for making our forests more resilient against catastrophic wildfires and they help to manage and target hazardous fuels and make for healthier forests," Sixkiller explained.

Sixkiller pointed out the EPA is involved because wildfire smoke poses risks to people's health. The collaboration is between federal agencies, departments in Oregon and Washington, and tribal governments.

Sixkiller noted the collaboration needed a formal agreement to move forward.

"That is what we've been able to do here with this agreement," Sixkiller emphasized. "To get federal land managers and states and us all in the same room, making sure that we're all on the same page about what success looks like."

Sixkiller added the collaboration has another advantage: It helps drive engagement with communities potentially in the path of prescribed burns.

"They have the confidence that the effort that's gone into planning that activity has been thought out from soup to nuts," Sixkiller acknowledged. "And that they have a seat at the table and are being engaged and their concerns are being addressed as we go forward with that activity."


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A new study in the journal Nature Communications by Montana researchers said suppressing small wildfires is leading to larger, more intense and damaging blazes.

According to the U.S. Forest Service, about 98% of wildfires are fully suppressed before they grow to 100 acres; most of them within 72 hours. In Montana, the latest data show crews kept 95% of wildfires in Montana to no more than 10 acres in 2022.

Mark Kreider, a doctoral candidate in forest and conservation science at the University of Montana and co-author of the report, said the strategy leads to what is known as fire "suppression bias."

"Removing more of one type of fire than the other, what we're left with is bias towards the higher intensity fires, these more extreme fires," Kreider explained.

Montana state policy calls for crews to extinguish fires as quickly as possible, even small ones. Kreider pointed out researchers recommend letting low-intensity fires burn where possible to reduce the risk and damage potential for larger, hotter-burning and more catastrophic blazes.

Kreider acknowledged as the population grows along the urban-wildland interface, letting fires burn is not always possible, but argued it might be the best strategy for heading off catastrophic fires later.

"Especially in the western U.S. where people live close to forests, fire suppression is very important and we still must do it," Kreider noted. "But this research helps to show when possible in places where it's safe to do so, we really may benefit from allowing more low and moderate intensity fire to burn."

The National Interagency Fire Center said the number of acres scorched by wildfire has doubled since the 1980s, and the cost to battle the fires has risen to nearly $3 billion a year.


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The Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation has awarded $3.1 million for 13 projects to reduce wildfire risk to communities and improve forest health.

The funding money is part of the $15 million Montana Forest Action Plan, which takes a big-picture approach to reducing the risk of wildfires.

Wyatt Frampton, deputy division administrator of forestry and trust lands for the Montana Department of Natural Resources, said the money will be used to foster fire-management cooperation between state and private landowners across 3,200 acres of forest.

"Through a variety of activities, such as prescribed fire, logging, mechanical thinning, hand activities as well as tree planting," Frampton outlined.

The 13 most recent restoration projects are spread across the state, including in Lewis and Clark County, the Bitterroot and the South Swan Valley.

Frampton said the DNR is aiming to create a cohesive fire-reduction plan across Montana's landscape, which has until now been inconsistent because of different sets of land-management practices.

"Right now when we see a patchwork of treatments across some of the landscapes in the state, from a fire-management perspective, it doesn't create a clean or effective barrier for trying to stop the fire in that area," Frampton explained. "Where, if we had a cohesive landscape-level treatment, that would help."

Frampton added having a statewide cohesive fire-management plan would also allow the DNR and other agencies to slow the spread of potentially destructive insects in Montana's forests.


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