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Fire killed trees store carbon for decades. Photo George Wuerthner In an Aug. 29 letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, lawmakers — mostly from California — said they’re worried the Forest Service remains short-staffed on wildfire crews. They urged officials not to let up on efforts to rapidly attack fires.…
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Learning to live with mosquitoes sometimes requires working from the body outward. Photo George Wuerthner Our approach to mosquitoes and wildfires has much in common. Both are typically maligned, and most humans wouldn’t care if they were all eliminated or suppressed. Yet both are essential components of the ecosystem. What we need is a…
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A high severity blaze on the Boise National Forest. Almost all large fires occur during extreme drought conditions. Photo George Wuerthner One continuously hears from the timber industry and its allies that the present occurrence of large wildfires is primarily the result of 100 years of “fire suppression” and thus “abnormal” fuel accumulations. We are…
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Senators Steve Daines of Montana and Diane Feinstein of California have once again introduced legislation, the “Emergency Wildfire and Public Safety Act of 2020” that is based upon misguided assumptions that fuel reductions will preclude the large blazes occurring as the West. Never mind that climate change is the driving force in all these fires…
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The April 25th article in the Yakima Herald “Fewer low-intensity fires means more severe fires” quotes Ryan Haugo, director of conservation science at The Nature Conservancy and contained many misstatements that lack context about wildfires. https://www.yakimaherald.com/news/local/study-low-intensity-fires-way-down-in-northwest-s-dry/article_aef38135-95ca-5689-aaab-5fc9906c3818.html It is possible that Haugo stated more ideas and simply wasn’t quoted in the article, but since he more…
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The recent wildfires in California make me feel even more worried about the fate of anyone whose homes are built in the woods. California has experienced the 9 of the largest fires in its history in the past two decades, but large fires have occurred in many other western states during the same period. What…
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In Medieval society, if someone were sick, the common solution was to bleed the patient to rid the body of “bad” blood. If the patient recovered, then obviously bleeding was the cure. If the patient died, it was because not enough of the “bad” blood had been removed. In many ways, our approach to wildfire…
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Montana GOP Senator Daines recently published a simplistic and misleading guest commentary on a wildfire in the Washington Post. In that editorial, Daines, like many other misinformed logging proponents claims more logging would reduce large wildfires and he blames “environmental extremists” for delaying the forest reduction projects. Most of the wildfires burning under low to…
Author
George Wuerthner is an ecologist and writer who has published 38 books on various topics related to environmental and natural history. He has visited over 400 designated wilderness areas and over 200 national park units.