Moratorium Hampers Efforts To Improve Big Game Habitat

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s moratorium on prescribed burns for federal lands has set back sportsmen’s efforts to boost struggling elk and mule deer herds in the West.

“There’s already a big backlog of prescribed burns that are necessary and this only makes it worse,” said Rance Block, regional representative for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation in Newman Lake.

Nearly a century ago, before fire suppression became the modus operandi on federal lands, some sort of fire would lick Inland Northwest natural areas every 7 to 15 years, Block said.

Some of these fires would be hot enough to open the forest canopy, others would simply burn the brush and leave the old trees standing alive.

“But we have many areas where there hasn’t been any kind of fire to speak of for 60 years,” he said.

RMEF has been helping the U.S. Forest Service and other federal agencies fund carefully planned prescribed burns to mimic this natural method of restoring habitats for various wildlife species.

“We fund burns in virtually every state throughout the West,” said Ryan Lutey, spokesman at RMEF headquarters in Missoula.

Babbitt’s moratorium has postponed prescribed burns on 119,804 acres for which the foundation had committed $800,885, Lutey said.

“Adding the matching funds secured to carry out the burns, the total committed was $1.68 million,” he said.

“There’s evidence that changes in vegetation succession are a major reason for the decline of the Clearwater elk herd, and a contributor to the decline of the Blue Mountains elk herd, and a limiting factor for the expansion of elk in northeastern Washington, and one of the reasons for the decline in mule deer,” Block said.

By the time the moratorium was lifted on June 10, the window of opportunity for most spring burns had passed, Lutey said.

Plans for burning 12,000 acres in Idaho’s Clearwater region have been postponed, possibly until fall. But forecasts for a dry fall could prohibit burning for another year.

“There are thousands and thousands of acres that ought to be burned, but there’s very little time, money and manpower to do it,” Block said. “Without the backing of sportsmen, much of it simply wouldn’t get done.”