Better forest management, including prescribed burns and strategic logging, are essential to preventing western wildfires, says Ryan Zinke, former Interior Department secretary and former Montana congressman. “Radical environmentalists would have you believe forest management means clear cutting forests and national parks. But their rhetoric could not be further from the truth. They make outdated and unscientific arguments, void of facts, because they cannot defend the merits of their policy preferences year after year as our forests and homes burn to the ground.”
Congress needs to act, says Zinke, writing in the Fairfield, Montana, Sun-Times. A few of his suggestions:
- “Prioritize prescribed burns: Fire is a natural part of the ecosystem and some of the earliest Native Americans used prescribed burns to manage the range and forests. Federal law should prioritize late season prescribed burns as a management tool to clear the dense underbrush and dead and dying timber on the forest floors by granting categorical exclusions and omitting prescribed burns from state Clean Air Act compliance.”
- “Lift the export ban: Outdated policy from the 1970s made it illegal to export timber from federal lands. However the world is a different place now. Our forests are unhealthy, milling capacity plummeted, and timber prices are through the roof. Authorizing the export from federal lands would create an incentive for State, Tribal and private entities to partner with federal forests.”
- “Promote biomass [for energy]: Healthy trees are resilient trees, but dead, diseased and defective logs create a tinderbox. There is little use for this material; however it is perfect for biomass. Promoting biomass as the viable, cost-effective and renewable source of energy it is would create a market for what is currently a dangerous hazard.”
And there are more.
Image by Pixelman at Pixabay.
A month ago the representative of a land conservancy explained why they would not continue thinning their nearby hundreds of acres of 2nd growth fir, spruce, and hemlock despite the fact that the forest floor is a brown desert and trees grow on average about 5 ft apart. He sent me an article from Western Watershed Project “Why Thinning Forests Is Poor Wildfire Strategy” https://www.westernwatersheds.org/gw-poor-wildfire-strategy/
The essence comes to this: “In the last analysis, the politics of forest thinning promotes more logging. The timber industry has successfully sold the idea that fuel reductions work and it has great influence with politicians who buy into to its assurance that logging reduces large fires.”
I have a copy of the article with my notes if anyone is interested.
So, is more logging bad?
Bad for whom or for what? Relative to wild fire probability, well done logging should reduce fire damage and spread. Good thinning does several things: widens the spaces fire has to jump and allows greenery to grow, greenery being less prone to fire than dead wood, dry leaves, and needles. Well thinned forests also make fire fighting far easier than dense second growth that characterizes so much western land (mainly USFS and BLM).