DNR firefighting unit at all-time low during summer of drought

by: Eric B.

Tue Aug 14, 2007 at 10:30:49 AM EDT

DNR officials are, naturally, hoping that Mother Nature will help out with some heavy rains.  But, one of the things driving the fire is that the Upper Peninsula is going through the same drought that's affected other parts of the state.  Expected to be hard hit is the state's corn crop.  And, potentially, golf courses that play an important role in recreation and tourism dollars.  It also destroyed an abandoned hunting cabin, but that's not the most notable thing from that article (to find out what is, go below...)

The DNR's firefighting corps consists of just 81 people, an all-time low, agency spokeswoman Mary Detloff said. Some are assigned to other fires.

"We should have a minimum of 100, according to what national certifying agencies tell us," she said.

DNR fire officers are funded with revenues from logging on state land, which are down because of a timber market slump, Detloff said.

Every couple of years, someone pops up and says we need to log more trees from public lands.  If there's a slump in the timber market, it's worth asking why we need to do it and who is going to primarily benefit.

The logging industry has gone through a couple of different transformations in the last 100 years.  The first was the day of the lumber baron, best typified in Michigan history.  They came in, saw what they believed to be an endless expanse of white pines, and sawed down everything in sight.  What was believed to be endless turned out to be really quite limited.  It's a lesson we helped teach the nation, which in turn helped spur the conservation movement (the silver lining of reckless greed ... go us!).  In it's second incarnation, it went through a period of sustainable harvest.  Companies focused not just on the bottom line, but took a look to the long-term.  This was especially true of some places out West.  That again changed when the 80s brought mergers swallowed up family logging businesses and the concerns of stockholders took precedent -- this is behind today's hand-over-fist assault on our redwood forests in northern California (trees that started their lives back when Jesus walked the Earth, turned into toilet paper).

But, this sends a signal that it's time to readdress perhaps how the DNR's wildfire unit is funded.  In the early days, when trees were primarily regarded as a very tall crop (that's why, at the federal level, the Forest Service falls under the auspices of the Department of Agriculture, not Interior), wildfires were primarily seen as threats to agriculture (coincidentally, these days, wildfires sparked by lightning strikes -- as the UP's fire is -- are allowed to burn, because fire is part of the natural forest cycle).

These days, mixed use is the watchword for our public forests.  People camp in them.  Next spring, people will hunt morels where this fire has burned pines.  People hike across our forests, hunt them, fish the lakes and rivers, kayak and canoe the waters, occasionally live very close to them, and earn a living off people who enjoy them.

Our public forests fulfill more than just human utility, too.  They are complex natural communities that are home to a rich abundance of plant and animal species that make places like the U.P. so damned special.

While loggers still make good profits off public timber sales (and traditionally because they've gotten cut-rate deals), everyone benefits from public forests.  And, that includes merchants on the fringes of state forests who sell food, booze, supplies, lodging, and gasoline to campers, hikers, water enthusiasts (a couple of weekends ago, while in the village of Empire, the line waiting for gas...), or people who just want to drive down the road and look at roadside lichen patches.

This isn't a matter of low timber sales, but of poor investment in the state's future.  If timber sales pay for firefighters, then the approach is outdated.

The problem is that there is next to no general fund contribution to the DNR budget.  Mostly, these days, the agency raises its own funds through fees and permits ... the same failed pay-to-play that prompted the closure of 20 campgrounds earlier this summer (no one paid, so they chained the campground, which only prevents the truly unimaginative from using them).  Ahem...

DNR receives little money from general tax dollars (General Fund). In fact, out of the DNR's total budget, only 9% comes from the General Fund - and half of that 9% goes to local governments, with only the remaining 4.5% to conservation.