Forestry Commission Releases Final Report

By Cynthia Drummond for BRVCA

PROVIDENCE – The commission studying forest management and fire prevention in Rhode Island’s forests has released its final report, recommending that the state allocate considerably more resources to mitigating the risk of wildfires.

The 12-member Special Legislative Commission to Evaluate and Provide Recommendations on Proper Forest Management for Fire Prevention began meeting monthly in Sept. 2023 and released its final 26-page report on April 1.

Chairing the commission was state Rep. Megan Cotter, D-Richmond, Exeter, Hopkinton, who has also introduced the Forestry and Forest Parity Act, House Bill 7618. That legislation recognizes the value of forests, including carbon sequestration, and seeks to give forestry and forest product operations parity, including tax exemptions, with farming and agriculture. The bill is scheduled for a hearing on April 4 by the House Environment and Natural Resources Committee.

Cotter said she began her effort to start a forest management and fire prevention commission after wildfires, one at the Queen’s River Preserve in Exeter and the second, near the Big River Management Area in West Greenwich, burned hundreds of acres in April 2023.

“I went to all the aftermath briefings, and I got a private tour from [North Kingstown] Fire Chief Scott Kettelle of the fire, and you know, while we were on the tour, we talked about what forest management should look like and Rhode Island is doing a poor job of managing our forest,” she said. “And so, I wanted to investigate why, what’s going on, what do we have to do to ensure that we’re doing everything we can to mitigate any fire potential.”

Rhode Island’s forests were devastated by spongy moth (formerly known as gypsy moth) infestations, which were particularly destructive from 2015 to 2017, killing one quarter of the state’s trees. Richmond was one of the hardest-hit communities, losing hundreds of oaks, many of which, while dead, are still standing as dangerous snags.

With forestry staff at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management cut by 75% since 1990, the agency has been able to manage just 1% of the state’s forests. Cotter’s legislation would allocate an additional $3 million of the proposed $16 million Green Bond conservation fund for forest management and the development of forest management strategies.

There are currently just four rangers working in the state’s forests, so there are few deterrents to illegal activities such as trash- dumping in the woods. One of the most dramatic incidents occurred last fall, when someone dumped 45 old mattresses in a state forest.

“We used to have forest rangers throughout Rhode Island state land,” Cotter said. “We no longer do that, and now, people know that they can get away with all sorts of crazy stuff.”

Commission member Scott Millar, who chairs the Exeter Planning Board, agreed that DEM staff and budget cuts had left the agency without the resources necessary to manage Rhode Island’s forests.

“Clearly over the years, DEM has lost critical staff that would be needed in the event of a wildfire, and that goes for helping with the prevention,” he said.

Critics have suggested that Cotter’s legislative initiatives would amount to a giveaway to the state’s logging industry, a charge that Cotter emphatically denies.

“There’s really no real logging industry in the state of Rhode Island,” she said. “It’s not really an industry that’s booming, and nor do we want it to be booming. A lot of the bills that I am supporting, the bills that I am pushing, are already in effect in Maine and Vermont and other heavily-forested areas. We do need to manage the forest properly. We’ve always done that in the past, we just haven’t done it, for probably, the last 50 years, and now, we are seeing the effects of what that looks like.”

The Climate Connection

John Torgan the Director of the Nature Conservancy in Rhode Island, also served on the commission. TNC owns the Queen’s River Preserve where one of the wildfires occurred.

“One of the things we wanted to impress upon the General Assembly and policy makers is that these fires, while unprecedented in recent history, are not isolated events, and that due to factors including climate change and related things like invasive species, we expect to see a lot more of these kinds of events going forward,” he said. “The conditions that created the wildfires last spring, including the Queen’s River fire, were preceded by consecutive days of record high temperatures in the early spring when there are no leaves on the trees, and that allowed the sun to get to the forest litter and dry that out and just create real tinderbox conditions, so any spark could have caused it, and it did.”

The conservancy also recommended the creation of an updated list of landowner contact information.

“One of the things that we had to overcome in these wildfires last spring was, people have old information on who to reach out to with respect to each of the properties, and how to get access to those properties,” Torgan said. “…We want to make changes to ensure that we have a comparable updated set of communication protocols and a list of contacts and that’s going to be managed through the Fire Marshall, I think, as well as DEM.”

There were additional practical recommendations too, from the people charged with putting out the fires. Fire officials, including Richmond Carolina Fire Chief Scott Barber, described the difficulties they encounter in attempting to access properties to fight fires.

Even where access roads already exist, they are often choked with unchecked vegetation, too narrow for fire vehicles, blocked by boulders, or too flimsy to hold the weight of emergency vehicles.

Will Lawmakers Listen?

Now that the commission has issued its recommendations, will a legislature that has focused on encouraging the construction of more housing, including in the few rural areas left in the state, be receptive to allocating funds to forest conservation and management?

“That’s a policy decision that certainly, the legislature and the governor’s office has to make,” Millar said. “If they want to prioritize building houses in rural areas without adequate wildfire protection, they’re just asking for trouble. That’s essentially what’s happening now.”