Spot on. I wonder how much education on this might help. Maybe we ought to design an infographic that gets the message across and find various ways of getting it under the noses of politicians and county officials and such.
I know some people who work at the forest service. They love the forest. I think there is a lot of misconception about what is the best course of action.
Another great article. I think one of the problems with modern Democracies (and, just to be clear, I think we have it worse here in Africa than you have it in the U.S.) is that too many politicians believe that, because they won an election they have carte blanche to write any legislation that they can get passed by their majority. True Democracy would require any legislation to be publicly discussed WITH THE STAKEHOLDERS and then there would be a far greater chance that (a) the legislation would actually be relevant to the problem and (b) practical to apply on the ground. I think another problem is that our laws are too detailed: once passed, it is very difficult to get any changes made. If, instead the legislation was less detailed, but relied on what we have here (Statutory Instruments, somewhat similar to your Executive Orders) then, providing the SI or EO did not actually contravene the intention of the law, they can be issued much more quickly to fine tune the law to make it more effective under different circumstances. One advantage you have in the States, is that you could have 52 different State interpretations of the Federal Forest Act and, in this way run 52 experiments as to how best to protect your forests and property from fires.
City people who have never worked in the woods or even spent a night there, have no business trying to dictate forest management decisions to those who know forests and forestry the best.
Sorry to break it to you, but real forests in the Real World don't quite work the way some professor at Purdue says they do.
It's WAY past time to restore some sanity to forest management and return the decision-making from the ivory tower back to those people who are actually on the ground.
Hi Ken: The closest I've been to ivory towers was 40 years ago when I got a bs at a land grant state college, and I don't live in the city. These are my opinions based on lots of research. And as I said, it's complex. There are places where thinning makes sense, but in the backcountry?
Having almost lost a cabin to the Caldor fire, it seems beyond belief that the enormous amounts of dry fuel on the ground, standing snags, and particularly dead trees might have something more to do with the heat of the fire than the humidity. Have you walked through our national forests? Before the fire, the forest service forbid the removal of any wood on the ground—a single acre could have dozens and dozens of down trees. Maybe this bill is no good, but I think your argument is bs.
B.S. is a pretty broad term for such a complex subject. The same with walking through the National Forests. There are many spread all over the place, with different conditions. But almost all of them have been cut at least once, some twice or three times. Worse, they are often replanted with single species, even aged monocrops, which aren't natural, are susceptible to disease and don't function as well hydrologically. Caldor is a logging town. I imagine a lot of logging has gone on in those forests. That's not to blame. Just pointing it out. And as I mentioned, there are places where thinning makes sense, especially near communities. But over the long haul, I think we need to let forests regain their biological integrity and ability to hydrate themselves.
The Caldor was an enormous fire stretching some forty miles along the American River Basin and Highway 50 south of Lake Tahoe. What I get from the way you write is not complexity, but complexity disguising an agenda. Hence, my distrust. This fire spanned multiple ecosystems but common to them all was the enormous amounts of fuel. If you want to dispute that, fine, but this article is an unsuccessful attempt to give yourself an authority by claiming “complexity” which is the traditional “expert’s” dodge.
Fair enough. But I don't claim to be an expert. And I stand by my comment on complexity. Everything is complex, but forest fires seem particularly complex. Fire is natural, yet the forests aren't any more as they've been so dramatically altered. Fires have been repressed, further aggravating natural cycles. We've been drying out ecosystems coast to coast for centuries now. I will try and learn more about the Caldor fire in particular. In any case, I think a bill that removes citizen overview of public lands is wrong at the outset.
This particular fire began near the town of Grizzly Flats. The Forest Service made the decision to let it burn overnight, which caused the incineration of Grizzly Flats, one thousand houses, and then mile after mile of some of the most beautiful parts of California. When you know that you’ve been deceived, even if you’re not sure why, whether by incompetence or plan, you tend to instinctually revert to common sense, and distrust explanations that seem overly esoteric. This dynamic has been reinforced for a long time now, by untruths couched in expertise. I have no idea what motivates the forest service but I can tell they don’t care about my concerns for the forest, which are an ordinary citizen’s concerns. In fact, my gut tells me that they see me as the primary obstacle. This fact is antithetical to the original creation of national forests: that citizens might enjoy the land of their own country.
I agree about the forest service lacking responsiveness to citizen concerns, which is my main critique of the Fix Our Forests Act.
It would also be interesting to know if the buildings that burned had been hardened against fire. This to me is the key to keeping people safe, as opposed to logging the backcountry.
And yes, my understanding is the government originally set up the forests service to protect forests for the people, but timber interests gradually took over.
Ecologists point out that post-fire landscapes are particularly rich in wildflowers and bird life. A book called Nature's Phoenix, by Dominick Della Salla and Chad Hanson paints a very different picture of fire than we are used to. I wouldn't stop getting out there. According to these scientists, the land is revivifying.
If I come across as ingenuous, that's a valid observation. Thanks for pointing it out.
Your assertion is that forests that have had dead trees cut down are more vulnerable to fire because the leftover space dries the forest and increases wind speed? Besides the fact that this defies logic, who is going to want to take all the risk for your unproven theory. Will you?
It's not my assertion. See the work of fire ecologist Chad Hanson and others. And most large scale thinning isn't cutting down dead trees but live trees, often big and mature ones, naturally resistant to fire, because that's where the money is. Meanwhile, the fact that thinning forests makes them windier, drier and warming is something rather easily measured, and the idea that it will all work it then for the benefit of the land sounds as theoretical as it gets. Meanwhile, as for risk, you are basically asking that the rest of his risk wrecking our forests and destroying habitat so you can have a cabin in the woods and never have to worry about fire in a fire adapted landscape.
I looked up “fire ecologist” which amounts to an advocacy position, not a scientific one. The position of fire ecologists is to not suppress fires at all, which of course, means that anyone who lives in the mountains is on his own. I took you more seriously than I should have.
No, I don't mean anyone who lives in the mountains should be on their own. It's the opposite, actually. I think the forest service should immediately focus their resources precisely on people who live in the mountains by providing expertise and resources to help people in fire prone areas harden their homes and create a defensible space. This is the quickest and most effective way to protect people and property. As for my comment, I'm sorry. It was crass and said in haste. I felt I had made an effort to send you some information about the situation, and you seemed to dismiss it out of hand. But not an excuse to be thoughtless.
In any case, you have your perspective and I'll try to better understand it by reading more of the pro-fuel reduction standpoint.
My point is, I just happen to think rehydrating landscapes is the logical way to start. I think we're in the fix we're in mostly because of logging; it's dried out our forests in my opinion, and such extensive thinning as is being proposed will dry it out more.
I think most of us test that theory every time we build a camp fire. You don't cut live wood for a fire. You don't use old rotten wood, as it holds too much moisture. Generally leaves don't make good kindling. Everyone has their favorite technique for stacking- but it amounts to leaving enough space between logs to let the air flow and feed the fire. Maybe blow on it a bit to get it going. Our personal experience with fire isn't enough to create policy - but it is enough to consider what is logical and what is not.
If you spend enough time with trees, you notice that dead trees are not dry trees. They tend to rot in place, not shrivel up. This is why they end up hosting insects, which become food for woodpeckers etc.
Right on the spot, good article. It needs to be addressed by the population.
If the people could understand that Santa Ana winds could be humidified not be so hot and so fast by an environment that retains the water rain before it reaches the Pacific, it would be much easier.
There comes your demonstration of flour and bread and the soil sponge/ microbiome, forest, and all the methods to increase humidity, reshaping landscape, beavers, biodiversity.
LA Times maybe has a reporter that can listen the other side of the story and then understand why without trees there is no hydration .
So we harden the homes, but let a million acres of forest burn each year, say goodbye to old-growth trees, let all that carbon into the atmosphere, breathe the smoke, and say, "That's nature?" No, thanks. The independent research you cite has been overhwhelmingly debunked, most recently in a paper published last year in Fire Ecology: https://fireecology.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s42408-023-00241-z
"While reducing stand density can lead to greater surface fuel drying (Kane 2021; Whitehead et al. 2006) and higher surface wind speeds (Bigelow & North 2012; Russell et al. 2018), our data provide clear evidence that the suppressing effect of crown fuel reduction far outweighed any enhancing effect of increased drying or higher windspeeds on fire behavior."
Reducing fuels is paramount. Go Fix Our Forests, GO!
I've looked at the paper you citied. It is produced by Forest Service personnel and is in no way conclusive, as it only focuses on a single area. It also confirms what everyone knows, that mechanical thinning increases wind speeds, while drying out soil and vegetation, thus heating up the microclimate.
The fact is, it's complicated, which is exactly why there should be robust scientific and citizen overview. .
I retired from the USFS after a 41 year career mostly in the southern Rockies. I agree that the Fix Our Forests Act is asking for a lot faith that our land managers will do the right thing with the liberties provided by this proposed legislation. I, too, am skeptical. But this opinion piece also takes many liberties. To make a blanket statement that thinning doesn't help is just wrong. I noticed in another comment thread discussion about the Calder Fire. A post fire review indicated that many of the areas that had been thinned, and especially thinned followed by prescribed burning, burned at a lower fire severity.
I completely agree that fire mitigation around homes along with "fire-proofing" homes would help reduce the number of homes destroyed in wildfires. There are multiple reasons people don't do it, such as, "it won't happen to me;" expense; "insurance will take care of things;" good old fashioned inertia; and many more.
I spot checked some of your links to papers and found them to be lacking in scientific integrity. Additionally, quoting Hanson in a previous comment thread does not add any credibility to your opinion. There are many fire scientists that have poked holes in his work. If you were to really dig into the research, I think you would find that the results are mixed, but that is also because the quality of thinning is mixed. Additionally, Ma Nature has the final say, and even the best thinning and prescribed burning will not stop a fire burning in extreme weather conditions. But it can reduce fire severity, which then allows the forest to recover quicker.
So, don't "throw out the baby with the bathwater;" thinning, prescribed burning and managed burns (natural start fires that are then managed to burn within a certain area) are all tools to managing the forest and future fire risk.
The USFS and other federal land management agencies are funded by Congress and function under the executive branch. Unfortunately, our "great foresters in DC" have agendas driven by lobbyist and put pressure on federal land managers to meet their targets. The land managers know how to mitigate fire danger and improve forest resilience, but they need to have the funding and be free of political interference to do it - and we know that ain't gonna happen.
Lastly, a key concept to understand: land is managed by values, not science. Science informs, but doesn't make decisions. Do we want the forests to look like they did 500 years ago? Do we want them to look like plantations? Or... a plethora of other possibilities in between.
People are going to live in the forest. Yes, they need to harden their homes to wildfire AND forest lands need to be managed to reduce (eliminate is not possible) the risk of high intensity and high severity wildfires.
In terms of links, not all of them were meant to be scientific. One, regarding evapotranspiration, was picked because it provided a quick and easily understood explanation for the average reader. But I can see how the Western Watersheds Project link probably should have been a scientific citation.
I'll grant that, as you say, thinning can reduce fire severity in some instances. It's a complex matter, because if it opens up room for more growth and if it isn't maintained, it could end up defeating the purpose. There is also the question of whether fire will ever actually reach the thinned area, in which case damage has been done for no apparent reason, unless of course the real reason is to get at big trees, which the legislation does nothing to prevent. This is what I suspect based on my experience in the Pacific Northwest trying to prevent the Washington State Department of Natural Resources from harvesting what we call legacy forests. These are forests that though cut, were done so "sloppily" by hand, prior to industrial harvest, without replanting. Thus they maintain the original biotic legacy. They are on the verge of true old growth. My observation is that the local timber industry and DNR seem cut from the same cloth, and make the same arguments about forest health and fire danger, which run counterfactual to my own experience visiting both legacy forests and plantations. The crowding and ill health seemed much more prevalent in the plantation forest than the more open, complex, highly functioning legacy forests, of which there are but random scraps remaining.
So I come with skepticism about what looks to me like a national scale version of the same dynamic. I do realize, however, that it's a more complex situation, with many different forest types and scenarios. Each situation is unique, which is why the bill's attempt to block citizen involvement is so infuriating. Our power is pretty limited as it is, and if having us involved slows things down, well that's the price of public process, in my opinion.
As for Chad Hanson's work, I've read his book and attended a five week seminar where he and others, such as Dominick Della Salla spoke. I found, and still find, their arguments pretty convincing. Mostly because they concur with my own common sense. You really don't need scientific analysis to see how removing trees from a forest will make it winder, drier and hotter. And people on the ground resisting these restoration projects have the photographic evidence to show just how many big trees are being cut, and how torn up the land is. Lastly, I noticed a study sent to me by one reader claiming to refute Hanson's work was largely authored by Forest Service personnel, which doesn't disqualify it but does put it, in my opinion, in the category of agenda driven science. I also notice their study area looked like dense, even aged, plantation forest, and as I acknowledged in my piece, thinning can make sense to me in those circumstances. It's one of the reasons why we in Washington almost never oppose timber operations in already converted forests. In fact, most of us see such forests as a place where logging and ecological benefits can coincide. Some are working very enthusiastically on the idea.
I'm happy to read a couple more studies and improve my knowledge, if you want to send me them. I wish had the name of the study I already read, but I'm afraid to hunt it down as the last time I tried that, I lost my reply to you and had to start over. It basically concerned crown fires under different degrees of thinning, vs an unthinned control.
So Ken, it seems like your thinking is: just keep cutting the forest before it can regenerate, so they don’t cause any fires? Guess you’re not a hunter or hiker or other fan of wildlife, then.
Another thing you’re missing is the importance of the soil below the forest. Logging and a lack of trees messes with the soils. You’re also ignoring the importance of forests to the air we breathe and the water we drink.
Finally, I want to remind you that your antagonistic attitude is not welcome here on Substack. Critical comments are fine, but writers here prefer them in discussion format rather than as insults. If you’re planning on sticking around, please learn to play nice.
Spot on. I wonder how much education on this might help. Maybe we ought to design an infographic that gets the message across and find various ways of getting it under the noses of politicians and county officials and such.
That's a good idea, Asa. It's remarkable how poorly informed we are about how our landscapes work.
Usually (not always) when I meet the "demons" at work screwing everything up, they just wind up being well-intentioned and oblivious.
I know some people who work at the forest service. They love the forest. I think there is a lot of misconception about what is the best course of action.
Love that idea. I think we've got someone who can do it. Timing is everything right now.
Great! If you do wind up producing it, please pass it along. I could use it too!
Thank you Rob.
Another great article. I think one of the problems with modern Democracies (and, just to be clear, I think we have it worse here in Africa than you have it in the U.S.) is that too many politicians believe that, because they won an election they have carte blanche to write any legislation that they can get passed by their majority. True Democracy would require any legislation to be publicly discussed WITH THE STAKEHOLDERS and then there would be a far greater chance that (a) the legislation would actually be relevant to the problem and (b) practical to apply on the ground. I think another problem is that our laws are too detailed: once passed, it is very difficult to get any changes made. If, instead the legislation was less detailed, but relied on what we have here (Statutory Instruments, somewhat similar to your Executive Orders) then, providing the SI or EO did not actually contravene the intention of the law, they can be issued much more quickly to fine tune the law to make it more effective under different circumstances. One advantage you have in the States, is that you could have 52 different State interpretations of the Federal Forest Act and, in this way run 52 experiments as to how best to protect your forests and property from fires.
City people who have never worked in the woods or even spent a night there, have no business trying to dictate forest management decisions to those who know forests and forestry the best.
Sorry to break it to you, but real forests in the Real World don't quite work the way some professor at Purdue says they do.
It's WAY past time to restore some sanity to forest management and return the decision-making from the ivory tower back to those people who are actually on the ground.
Hi Ken: The closest I've been to ivory towers was 40 years ago when I got a bs at a land grant state college, and I don't live in the city. These are my opinions based on lots of research. And as I said, it's complex. There are places where thinning makes sense, but in the backcountry?
Yes. In the back country. Trees regenerate far faster than what is good for them. Forests need management to stay healthy.
There is no reason to lose good wood to catastrophic wildfires every year.
Having almost lost a cabin to the Caldor fire, it seems beyond belief that the enormous amounts of dry fuel on the ground, standing snags, and particularly dead trees might have something more to do with the heat of the fire than the humidity. Have you walked through our national forests? Before the fire, the forest service forbid the removal of any wood on the ground—a single acre could have dozens and dozens of down trees. Maybe this bill is no good, but I think your argument is bs.
B.S. is a pretty broad term for such a complex subject. The same with walking through the National Forests. There are many spread all over the place, with different conditions. But almost all of them have been cut at least once, some twice or three times. Worse, they are often replanted with single species, even aged monocrops, which aren't natural, are susceptible to disease and don't function as well hydrologically. Caldor is a logging town. I imagine a lot of logging has gone on in those forests. That's not to blame. Just pointing it out. And as I mentioned, there are places where thinning makes sense, especially near communities. But over the long haul, I think we need to let forests regain their biological integrity and ability to hydrate themselves.
The Caldor was an enormous fire stretching some forty miles along the American River Basin and Highway 50 south of Lake Tahoe. What I get from the way you write is not complexity, but complexity disguising an agenda. Hence, my distrust. This fire spanned multiple ecosystems but common to them all was the enormous amounts of fuel. If you want to dispute that, fine, but this article is an unsuccessful attempt to give yourself an authority by claiming “complexity” which is the traditional “expert’s” dodge.
Fair enough. But I don't claim to be an expert. And I stand by my comment on complexity. Everything is complex, but forest fires seem particularly complex. Fire is natural, yet the forests aren't any more as they've been so dramatically altered. Fires have been repressed, further aggravating natural cycles. We've been drying out ecosystems coast to coast for centuries now. I will try and learn more about the Caldor fire in particular. In any case, I think a bill that removes citizen overview of public lands is wrong at the outset.
This particular fire began near the town of Grizzly Flats. The Forest Service made the decision to let it burn overnight, which caused the incineration of Grizzly Flats, one thousand houses, and then mile after mile of some of the most beautiful parts of California. When you know that you’ve been deceived, even if you’re not sure why, whether by incompetence or plan, you tend to instinctually revert to common sense, and distrust explanations that seem overly esoteric. This dynamic has been reinforced for a long time now, by untruths couched in expertise. I have no idea what motivates the forest service but I can tell they don’t care about my concerns for the forest, which are an ordinary citizen’s concerns. In fact, my gut tells me that they see me as the primary obstacle. This fact is antithetical to the original creation of national forests: that citizens might enjoy the land of their own country.
Here is an article/oped from the San Francisco Examiner that shows that there was extensive logging in the area that burned. https://www.sfexaminer.com/archives/cal-fire-timber-industry-must-face-an-inconvenient-truth/article_04d1faa3-6109-58ee-bbff-6dd39c11ec88.html
I agree about the forest service lacking responsiveness to citizen concerns, which is my main critique of the Fix Our Forests Act.
It would also be interesting to know if the buildings that burned had been hardened against fire. This to me is the key to keeping people safe, as opposed to logging the backcountry.
And yes, my understanding is the government originally set up the forests service to protect forests for the people, but timber interests gradually took over.
Ecologists point out that post-fire landscapes are particularly rich in wildflowers and bird life. A book called Nature's Phoenix, by Dominick Della Salla and Chad Hanson paints a very different picture of fire than we are used to. I wouldn't stop getting out there. According to these scientists, the land is revivifying.
If I come across as ingenuous, that's a valid observation. Thanks for pointing it out.
Your assertion is that forests that have had dead trees cut down are more vulnerable to fire because the leftover space dries the forest and increases wind speed? Besides the fact that this defies logic, who is going to want to take all the risk for your unproven theory. Will you?
It's not my assertion. See the work of fire ecologist Chad Hanson and others. And most large scale thinning isn't cutting down dead trees but live trees, often big and mature ones, naturally resistant to fire, because that's where the money is. Meanwhile, the fact that thinning forests makes them windier, drier and warming is something rather easily measured, and the idea that it will all work it then for the benefit of the land sounds as theoretical as it gets. Meanwhile, as for risk, you are basically asking that the rest of his risk wrecking our forests and destroying habitat so you can have a cabin in the woods and never have to worry about fire in a fire adapted landscape.
I looked up “fire ecologist” which amounts to an advocacy position, not a scientific one. The position of fire ecologists is to not suppress fires at all, which of course, means that anyone who lives in the mountains is on his own. I took you more seriously than I should have.
No, I don't mean anyone who lives in the mountains should be on their own. It's the opposite, actually. I think the forest service should immediately focus their resources precisely on people who live in the mountains by providing expertise and resources to help people in fire prone areas harden their homes and create a defensible space. This is the quickest and most effective way to protect people and property. As for my comment, I'm sorry. It was crass and said in haste. I felt I had made an effort to send you some information about the situation, and you seemed to dismiss it out of hand. But not an excuse to be thoughtless.
In any case, you have your perspective and I'll try to better understand it by reading more of the pro-fuel reduction standpoint.
My point is, I just happen to think rehydrating landscapes is the logical way to start. I think we're in the fix we're in mostly because of logging; it's dried out our forests in my opinion, and such extensive thinning as is being proposed will dry it out more.
I think most of us test that theory every time we build a camp fire. You don't cut live wood for a fire. You don't use old rotten wood, as it holds too much moisture. Generally leaves don't make good kindling. Everyone has their favorite technique for stacking- but it amounts to leaving enough space between logs to let the air flow and feed the fire. Maybe blow on it a bit to get it going. Our personal experience with fire isn't enough to create policy - but it is enough to consider what is logical and what is not.
If you spend enough time with trees, you notice that dead trees are not dry trees. They tend to rot in place, not shrivel up. This is why they end up hosting insects, which become food for woodpeckers etc.
Well put, Beck. Thanks.
Right on the spot, good article. It needs to be addressed by the population.
If the people could understand that Santa Ana winds could be humidified not be so hot and so fast by an environment that retains the water rain before it reaches the Pacific, it would be much easier.
There comes your demonstration of flour and bread and the soil sponge/ microbiome, forest, and all the methods to increase humidity, reshaping landscape, beavers, biodiversity.
LA Times maybe has a reporter that can listen the other side of the story and then understand why without trees there is no hydration .
So we harden the homes, but let a million acres of forest burn each year, say goodbye to old-growth trees, let all that carbon into the atmosphere, breathe the smoke, and say, "That's nature?" No, thanks. The independent research you cite has been overhwhelmingly debunked, most recently in a paper published last year in Fire Ecology: https://fireecology.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s42408-023-00241-z
"While reducing stand density can lead to greater surface fuel drying (Kane 2021; Whitehead et al. 2006) and higher surface wind speeds (Bigelow & North 2012; Russell et al. 2018), our data provide clear evidence that the suppressing effect of crown fuel reduction far outweighed any enhancing effect of increased drying or higher windspeeds on fire behavior."
Reducing fuels is paramount. Go Fix Our Forests, GO!
Old growth trees are naturally fire resilient. Plus, this legislation offers no protections for old growth trees, which the logging industry sorely wants. It is already well observed that old growth is being cut in the name of "fuels reduction." A recent analysis found "the Forest Service and the BLM routinely misapply or ignore the best available science to approve logging of mature and old-growth trees in the name of hazardous fuels reduction, resiliency and other purported ecological goals." https://www.researchgate.net/publication/386873385_Forestry_Gone_Awry_An_Evaluation_of_Projects_Using_Ecological_Rationales_to_Log_Mature_and_Old-Growth_Trees_on_US_Federal_lands
I've looked at the paper you citied. It is produced by Forest Service personnel and is in no way conclusive, as it only focuses on a single area. It also confirms what everyone knows, that mechanical thinning increases wind speeds, while drying out soil and vegetation, thus heating up the microclimate.
The fact is, it's complicated, which is exactly why there should be robust scientific and citizen overview. .
I retired from the USFS after a 41 year career mostly in the southern Rockies. I agree that the Fix Our Forests Act is asking for a lot faith that our land managers will do the right thing with the liberties provided by this proposed legislation. I, too, am skeptical. But this opinion piece also takes many liberties. To make a blanket statement that thinning doesn't help is just wrong. I noticed in another comment thread discussion about the Calder Fire. A post fire review indicated that many of the areas that had been thinned, and especially thinned followed by prescribed burning, burned at a lower fire severity.
I completely agree that fire mitigation around homes along with "fire-proofing" homes would help reduce the number of homes destroyed in wildfires. There are multiple reasons people don't do it, such as, "it won't happen to me;" expense; "insurance will take care of things;" good old fashioned inertia; and many more.
I spot checked some of your links to papers and found them to be lacking in scientific integrity. Additionally, quoting Hanson in a previous comment thread does not add any credibility to your opinion. There are many fire scientists that have poked holes in his work. If you were to really dig into the research, I think you would find that the results are mixed, but that is also because the quality of thinning is mixed. Additionally, Ma Nature has the final say, and even the best thinning and prescribed burning will not stop a fire burning in extreme weather conditions. But it can reduce fire severity, which then allows the forest to recover quicker.
So, don't "throw out the baby with the bathwater;" thinning, prescribed burning and managed burns (natural start fires that are then managed to burn within a certain area) are all tools to managing the forest and future fire risk.
The USFS and other federal land management agencies are funded by Congress and function under the executive branch. Unfortunately, our "great foresters in DC" have agendas driven by lobbyist and put pressure on federal land managers to meet their targets. The land managers know how to mitigate fire danger and improve forest resilience, but they need to have the funding and be free of political interference to do it - and we know that ain't gonna happen.
Lastly, a key concept to understand: land is managed by values, not science. Science informs, but doesn't make decisions. Do we want the forests to look like they did 500 years ago? Do we want them to look like plantations? Or... a plethora of other possibilities in between.
People are going to live in the forest. Yes, they need to harden their homes to wildfire AND forest lands need to be managed to reduce (eliminate is not possible) the risk of high intensity and high severity wildfires.
Thanks for your comment, Mike.
In terms of links, not all of them were meant to be scientific. One, regarding evapotranspiration, was picked because it provided a quick and easily understood explanation for the average reader. But I can see how the Western Watersheds Project link probably should have been a scientific citation.
I'll grant that, as you say, thinning can reduce fire severity in some instances. It's a complex matter, because if it opens up room for more growth and if it isn't maintained, it could end up defeating the purpose. There is also the question of whether fire will ever actually reach the thinned area, in which case damage has been done for no apparent reason, unless of course the real reason is to get at big trees, which the legislation does nothing to prevent. This is what I suspect based on my experience in the Pacific Northwest trying to prevent the Washington State Department of Natural Resources from harvesting what we call legacy forests. These are forests that though cut, were done so "sloppily" by hand, prior to industrial harvest, without replanting. Thus they maintain the original biotic legacy. They are on the verge of true old growth. My observation is that the local timber industry and DNR seem cut from the same cloth, and make the same arguments about forest health and fire danger, which run counterfactual to my own experience visiting both legacy forests and plantations. The crowding and ill health seemed much more prevalent in the plantation forest than the more open, complex, highly functioning legacy forests, of which there are but random scraps remaining.
So I come with skepticism about what looks to me like a national scale version of the same dynamic. I do realize, however, that it's a more complex situation, with many different forest types and scenarios. Each situation is unique, which is why the bill's attempt to block citizen involvement is so infuriating. Our power is pretty limited as it is, and if having us involved slows things down, well that's the price of public process, in my opinion.
As for Chad Hanson's work, I've read his book and attended a five week seminar where he and others, such as Dominick Della Salla spoke. I found, and still find, their arguments pretty convincing. Mostly because they concur with my own common sense. You really don't need scientific analysis to see how removing trees from a forest will make it winder, drier and hotter. And people on the ground resisting these restoration projects have the photographic evidence to show just how many big trees are being cut, and how torn up the land is. Lastly, I noticed a study sent to me by one reader claiming to refute Hanson's work was largely authored by Forest Service personnel, which doesn't disqualify it but does put it, in my opinion, in the category of agenda driven science. I also notice their study area looked like dense, even aged, plantation forest, and as I acknowledged in my piece, thinning can make sense to me in those circumstances. It's one of the reasons why we in Washington almost never oppose timber operations in already converted forests. In fact, most of us see such forests as a place where logging and ecological benefits can coincide. Some are working very enthusiastically on the idea.
I'm happy to read a couple more studies and improve my knowledge, if you want to send me them. I wish had the name of the study I already read, but I'm afraid to hunt it down as the last time I tried that, I lost my reply to you and had to start over. It basically concerned crown fires under different degrees of thinning, vs an unthinned control.
All best,
Rob
So Ken, it seems like your thinking is: just keep cutting the forest before it can regenerate, so they don’t cause any fires? Guess you’re not a hunter or hiker or other fan of wildlife, then.
Another thing you’re missing is the importance of the soil below the forest. Logging and a lack of trees messes with the soils. You’re also ignoring the importance of forests to the air we breathe and the water we drink.
Finally, I want to remind you that your antagonistic attitude is not welcome here on Substack. Critical comments are fine, but writers here prefer them in discussion format rather than as insults. If you’re planning on sticking around, please learn to play nice.