Roadless Rule Still Under Threat

Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety Ethics and Ecology says the idea that logging equals less fire is misguided. “Commercial logging takes the largest portion of the largest tree and hauls it away, and those are the least flammable parts of a tree,” he says. “What’s left behind are the most flammable and smallest size material, the needles and the small limbs and the logs left behind. That’s the most flammable.” 

He adds that fire is a natural phenomenon and the USDA does not need to send young firefighters to every single fire that crops up in the nation’s forests. “The assumption that the forest would disappear without human intervention by logging or firefighting is ridiculous.”