The Fix Our Forests Act: It's Not What It Claims to Be

It comes in a box with a picture of a fire extinguisher on the front. Below it the words: Guaranteed to stop wildfires. But when you open it up there’s a chainsaw inside. Tucked beside it is a piece a piece of paper saying “Now without citizen overview!”

That’ the Fix Our Forests Act, a logging bill disguised as a fire fighting bill. The tell is in the numerous and creative ways it would obstruct citizen input, from delaying citizen review until after the trees are cut to reducing the statute of limitations for filing lawsuits from six months to 120 days, seriously straining the ability of small citizen groups to apply legal restraint. It waives NEPA protections on fire-sheds as large as 250,000 square acres and allows loggings to proceed even if courts find the logging plan violates the law. There are no limits on the size and age of trees to be cut and the language is so vague that even clear cuts could qualify as “fuels treatment.” If passed, it would open millions of acres of forests to logging without scientific review or citizen input. A better name for this legislations would be the Fix It So We Can Log Without Citizen Oversight Act.

Image by Elizabeth Robson

Introduced by Bruce Westerman, R Ark,, and having passed in the house, it’s now being rushed through the Senate in an attempt to capitalize on the heightened fire concern surrounding the tragic LA fires. A vote is expected any day now.

The bill claims to “protect communities by expediting environmental analyses, reducing frivolous lawsuits, and increasing the pace and scale of forest restoration projects.” But if protecting communities were the really the goal, this bill would pour resources into the only methods proven to do that: hardening homes and defending immediate space.

Most homes don’t catch fire directly from the flame wall, but from embers blown ahead of the fire. Simple measures like screening vents, covering gutters, and pruning vegetation directly around buildings dramatically improves their fire resilience. Thinning vegetation in the immediate surroundings, within 100 feet or so of the dwelling, can also help. These were among the recommendations of the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission. But rather than heed those recommendations by investing in boots on the ground to harden homes and educate communities, it diverts resources to backcountry logging.

The US Forest Service has spent years making the argument that “mechanical treatment” of forests reduces wildfire. Independent research, however, comes to different conclusions, that thinning harms the forest and actually increases the very conditions that favor fire—heat, dryness and wind. The reasons are fairly obvious. For instance, removing trees makes it harder for forests to slow wind, increasing wind speeds and thus the speed of a fire’s spread. It also allows more sunlight to reach the forest floor, heating up the ground. Even more importantly, it dries forests out. Trees don’t just stand around soaking up sunlight, they also cool and hydrate their surroundings. It’s called transpiration, but can be understood as a kind of sweating, just like we do to keep cool in the sun. A single tree can have the cooling power of up to ten air conditioners.

But that’s really just the beginning. Those trees also help make rain. By sweating water vapor they not only cool the air, they deliver water vapor to the sky, feeding the formation of clouds. Even more remarkable, they seed that vapor with biochemicals such as terpenes (the forest scent) and other bits of biota that provide the seed grains for eventual rain drops to condense around. Forests make clouds. Those clouds then rain back down, watering other forest, hydrating soil and vegetation, increasing resilience to wildfire. Cut the trees you cut hydration.

In other words, what the Fix our Forests Act calls dangerous fuels are also air conditioners and humidifiers, rain makers and rain catchers, as their needles gather and slow the falling of rain, allowing it to seep into the ground and make its way to aquifers, which will prove critical during the dry season. Of course, older, deeply rooted trees are best able to tap this water, but there are no protections for them in the Fix Our Forests Act.

Given that the concern is fire, it’s remarkable how little this legislation ever mentions water, its antidote. Though I did find, in section 119, under “Watershed Condition Framework Technical Corrections,” instructions to strike the word “protection” from watershed provisions in a previous, similar bill, the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003, under George W. Bush. (To see a short, simple demonstration of how plant moisture effects flammability, watch this.)

Perhaps the problems with this bill are explained by the first word of the bill’s title: “Fix.” You can fix a car. You can fix a broken plate. But can you fix a forest? Can you fix a living ecosystem of infinite complexity? Such language represents an outdated way of thinking about the living world around us, and marks the very kind of thinking that’s gotten into this mess in the first place. And one needs to ask: if our forests are broken, might it be the successive rounds of logging roads and trucks, chainsaws and feller bunchers, herbicidal treatments and industrial replanting of greenhouse grown monocrops that did the breaking?

Yes, there are instances where careful thinning of small trees and undergrowth is indicated, such as right around built communities or in industrial plantations planted too densely. But such careful and measured action doesn’t need this bill, and this bill isn’t about such practices. Rather, it proposes a massive increase in logging without citizen restraint, with big, mature trees caught in the economic crosshairs,

The following Senators have been identified as key votes: John Hickenlooper (CO), Michael Bennet (CO), Ruben Gallego (AZ), Mark Kelly (AZ, )Alex Padilla (CA), Adam Schiff (CA), Angus King (ME), Elissa Slotkin (MI), Gary Peters (MI), John Fetterman (PA)

The bill is moving quickly. Last minute citizen outcry is the only thing standing in its way.

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