Cuts to wildfire projects have harmed Yosemite fire recovery, critics say

Smoke from the Rim fire, a wildfire outside Yosemite National Park, forms a huge plume over the land as seen from an airplane window. Photograph: Rex/Zuma

A cluster of controlled fire and tree-thinning projects approved by forestry officials but never funded might have slowed the progress of the massive Rim fire in California, a wide range of critics said this weekend.

The massive blaze at the edge of Yosemite national park in the Sierra Nevada mountains has scorched an area larger than many US cities – becoming the fourth-largest conflagration in California history, at 348 square miles. The fire still is growing, although on Sunday fire officials said it was 40% contained – up from 35 percent a day earlier.

Some of the land affected by the Rim fire is in the very location pinpointed by the US forest service for eight projects aimed at clearing and burning brush and small trees that help fuel wildfire.

The projects, which were approved by the US forest service but never funded by Congress, would have thinned the woods in about 25 square miles (65 square km) in the Groveland district of the Stanislaus national forest, much of which was incinerated by the Rim fire. About 9,000 acres were suitable to be deliberately burned as fire prevention buffer zones in 2012, the forest service said in a document provided to Reuters.

But reductions in funding for fire prevention efforts by Congress in recent years coupled with stringent air quality standards that limit the timeframe for such burns have hampered efforts to carry them out on a larger scale.

Last year, the forest service had funding to burn 449 acres in the Groveland district but did not reach that target, said district ranger Maggie Dowd.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/01/yosemite-wildfire-congress-funding