Thoughtful Forest Management and Better Building Practices Can Help Mitigate the Impact of Wildfires
More than five million acres have burned across the West Coast in this year’s unusually severe wildfire season. Billowing smoke has traveled across the country, degrading air quality as far east as Washington, DC, and amplifying health risks for a nation still grappling with COVID-19.
Thinning forests no defence against fires
Having logging machines "thin" forest for fire reduction is largely ineffective, a new peer-reviewed, scientific study has found.
The study, led by researchers at The Australian National University and published in the journal Conservation Letters, compared fire severity in unthinned versus thinned forest burned in the 2009 wildfires. It covered two forest types—mixed species forest and ash forest.
Dylan Plummer (op-ed): Industrial forest management and the Holiday Farm Fire
While we all want an easy answer, there is no single cause for the recent mega-fires. We do know that the conditions were ripe to burn: high temperatures, low humidity, severe east winds and a surrounding landscape made up largely of cutover, flammable tree plantations. We also know that runaway climate change is going to exacerbate these types of cataclysmic events into the future.
The Forest Service Not Only Loses Money Logging, It Makes Fires Worse
In the middle of yet another big wildfire seasons, some reporters finally listened to fire scientists when they quoted people like Dr. Higuera, an associate professor of fire ecology at the University of Montana, stating that climate change is resulting in making big wildfire seasons the new normal.
Fanning the Flames
“It’s the legacy of forest mismanagement that is fueling the wildfires, along with climate change, which is the ultimate driver,” says Tim Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology (FUSEE).
Climate change focus obscures complexities of wildfires
Timothy Ingalsbee, a wildland firefighter and executive director of the Eugene, Oregon-based Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology, said “the science is pretty clear there’s no single cause of what’s going on,” though he sees climate change as the primary driver. “It’s why we’ve seen so many big fires on land simultaneously,” he said. “But it’s also an issue of forest management. Not the lack of forest management, but the legacy of forest management.”
Logging will do nothing to help us out of this mess
As I write this, my hometown of Talent, Oregon is a disaster area, and I am in tears over the destruction of my neighborhood. Lives have been forever changed by this tragedy that could have been avoided with better planning.
Wildfires Burning in Heavily Clearcut, Logged and Roaded Parts of the Oregon Cascades
As many of us know, different ecosystems burn differently. High severity fires are natural, normal and expected in some ecosystems, not so much in others. It’s important to remember that many of the largest and most destructive wildfires in recent years—in terms of human lives and structures lost—were not even “forest” fires at all, but rather more urban fires that raced through neighborhoods and communities surrounded by dry grass, brush, shrubs, and chaparral. Many of these fires also had little to do with federal public lands. However, all of these deadly fires have been pushed by heavy winds during a period of prolonged drought and record high temperatures.