Climate Change Ramps Up Fire Behavior in ONP
By Tim McNulty
[published in Voice of the Wild Olympics, Fall – Winter 2023]
Global warming has turned up the heat on the frequency and intensity of wildfires in the Olympic Mountains. In four of the past eight years, fires have grown to over 1,000 acres on the peninsula. The 2023 fire season upped the ante considerably.
Following an unusually hot and dry spring and summer, an August 28 lightning storm sparked a rash of fires in Olympic National Park. Most of the seven fires burning in the Olympics remained small but affected park visitation. Fires below Hurricane Ridge and at Eagle Point on the Obstruction Point Road closed access to these popular park destinations, and interior fires closed seven trails in the park. The four-acre Hurricane Ridge area fire required some suppression as it posed a threat to a park road and developments. In contrast, the 123-acre Eagle Point fire spread through subalpine forest stands, enhancing additional habitat for Olympic marmots and other alpine species.
Fire is an integral part of forest ecosystems, enhancing plant and animal habitats, recycling nutrients and lowering the risk of catastrophic fires in the future. The remaining fires burning deep in the Dan Evans Wilderness in ONP were monitored but largely allowed to run their courses.
Then, in mid-September, the Delabarre Fire in the upper Elwha watershed blew up, eventually covering more than 4,000 acres. Due to extreme weather condition fuel moisture had dropped below 15 percent, extremely low for Olympic forests, where late spring and early summer and early fall rains are the rule.
The Delabarre Fire burned through old fires scars from 1960s and 1981 fires, highly unusual fire behavior for the Olympics. Fire managers are continuing to study the implications of the 2023 fire season. As global warming continues to assert its influence on natural processes on the peninsula, fire behavior is one of many effects that will influence future ecosystem processes.
ONP Fire Management Plan: Recognizing Wildfire’s Role in the Ecosystem
Olympic National Park’s draft Fire Management Plan was released in March 2019. Its preferred alternative (B) is a comprehensive and well-reasoned approach to fire management and will restore the ecological role wildfire historically has played in park ecosystems. When finalized, the plan should set a standard for the National Park Service.
Given the onset of global warming, the change in natural fire regimes leading to more frequent and extensive fires over the past decade, changes in NPS wildland fire policy, and the 2005 fire plan’s failure to adequately address these issues, the new plan is necessary and timely. OPA supports the plan’s stated goals of public and firefighter safety; restoring the role of natural fire to forest ecosystems; protecting resources; managing fire “to preserve the tangible and intangible qualities of wilderness character”; and reducing fuel near non-wilderness structures.
We applaud the plan’s designation of wilderness and non-wilderness fire management units. All are major improvements over the earlier plan.
We disagree, however, with a provision in the draft plan that would allow preemptive clearing—including cutting trees up to 16 inches in diameter to a distance of up to 30 feet—around structures in wilderness. Decisions like these, that would degrade wilderness character, must be made in a comprehensive Wilderness Management Plan and be subject to public review. Until that plan is complete, this provision should be dropped from the final plan.
To review the draft fire plan, click here. To read OPA’s comment letter on the plan, click here.
Comments closed April 24.