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Show Forest Service Plans For More Prescribed Burns The six National Forests in . Utah believe fire is needed to restore the health of forests and rangelands where it is part of the natural cycle. They have announced plans to work together on a proposal to amend the six forest plans which provide goals and set standards for resource management man-agement activities on a National Forest to allow a greatly increased prescribed fire program, and they're asking the public for their concerns about it. The National Forests are proposing pro-posing to amend their plans to allow al-low the prescribed burning of up to 725,000 acres of National Forest land over the next five years. Prescribed Pre-scribed burning involves setting fires to achieve specific resource objectives when weather and vegetative vegeta-tive conditions are right. Lightning - caused fires may also be allowed to continue burning, under management, man-agement, if conditions are right. The current forest plans were produced in the early to late 1980's, when less was understood about the role of fire in maintaining healthy ecosystems. They don't permit the scale of prescribed burning that new scientific information show is .. needed. They address using fire on only thousands of acres, not hundreds hun-dreds of thousands. "That may sound like a lot of acres to folks, but we've got a big problem to deal with," says Karen Ogle, fire ecologist and a team leader for the project. "Much of the National Forest land in Utah depends de-pends on occasional low and moderate-intensity fires to stay healthy. We've put out fires so effectively for so many decades that we've created cre-ated severe problems by removing fire from the landscape." "Let me give you a couple of examples. We've learned that aspen forests are regenerated by fire. It stimulates aspen clones (networks of roots) to sprout new growth. Many of Utah's aspen forests have grown old and decadent in the absence ab-sence of fire. They aren't producing new sprouts, and conifer trees are invading. Eventually conifers could replace aspen altogether in these forests." Another example, Ogle says, is sagebrush-grasslands. They need to burn occasionally to keep pinyon and juniper trees from invading. "Early settlers describe the wide grasslands they encountered. Without With-out fire, many have been lost to pinyon-juniper woodland." The proposed goals of the prescribed pre-scribed fire program also include reducing risks to human life and property, Ogle says. "Fuels have built up in the absence of fire. We've got dense forests, lots of dead trees on the ground. If a wildfire wild-fire starts these days, it can become an inferno that threatens people as well as resources. We've got to reduce fuels to reduce risk." She acknowledges that smoke is a concern for many people. "Maintaining desired air quality conditions is another goal we intend to incorporate in the forest plans, conducting burning under appropriate appropri-ate conditions will help us limit smoke. If we don't burn, Mother Nature will eventually do it for us, and we'll get a lot more smoke." The Forest Service is beginning the "scoping process", in which they ask the public to provide their concerns about the proposal. Ogle says people can learn more about the proposal by requesting a copy of the scoping letter. Comments are requested by November 16, although al-though they are accepted at any time. A copy of the letter can be obtained ob-tained by calling Ellen Daniels, Fishlake National Forest, at (435) 896-9233, or it can be requested (See BURNS on page 3-A) Burns From front page from the Supervisor's Office of the Ashley, Dixie, Fishlake, Manti-LaSal, Manti-LaSal, Uinta, or Wasatch-Cache National Forest. Direct your request re-quest to the public affairs office. |