Logging
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One result of the Bundy Gang take-over has been the abundant media attention to their assertions of government “overreach” and “aggressive enforcement“ of environmental regulations that, according to Bundy and Gang, has driven ranchers, miners, and loggers from the land. Unfortunately the media have been slow to counter such assertions. The reality on the ground…
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Please read the news article I have pasted below. Then come back and read my commentary. There are some great quotes from Chad Hanson and a few others that counter the industrial forestry perspective that we can and need to log our way out of large fires. However, the idea that most historic fires were small…
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During the last Pleistocene Ice Age advance ice covered much of the North American Continent, as well as the mountainous areas of the West. Depending on who you consult the ice retreated sometime between 15,000 years to 12,000 years before present. A minor expansion of ice occurred during the Little Ice Age sometime between…
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The standoff in Harney County Oregon highlights one of the great ironies of the rural West. More than any other people, western rural residents are more heavily dependent on government (read taxpayer) largesse than any other part of America. Yet the average rural resident sees himself/herself as a “rugged and independent” individual and by…
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Conservationists, if they wish to succeed in legislating more wilderness and parks in the West, must actively counter the misinformation and flawed logic surrounding forest health, thinning and wildfires. It may seem counter-intuitive, but fighting the fear of fire is, often, the best way to promote new wilderness/park designation. There is an on-going effort by…
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WHY FIRE SUPPRESSION HAS HAD LITTLE INFLUENCE ON WILDFIRES A common assertion, oft repeated by the timber industry, the Forest Service, and even far too many conservation groups (like The Nature Conservancy) is that a hundred years of fire suppression has contributed to the large wildfires we are seeing around the West. The logic goes like this.…
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One of the assumptions behind federal legislation like the Resilient Federal Forest Act is that more thinning of our forests will halt or significantly reduce large wildfires. Yet the scientific evidence for such a conclusion is ambiguous at best. Any number of studies have find that thinning usually fails under severe fire conditions. First, the…
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One of the justifications for logging by the Forest Service around the West is the idea that fire suppression has led to fewer fires, and thus greater fuel build up than historically occurred. Therefore, mechanically reducing fuels—i.e. logging—is reasonable because otherwise we will see large wildfires. However, both assumptions—namely there is fuel build up…