Wildfire
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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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The Ecological Importance of Mixed Severity Fires: Nature’s Phoenix Edited by Dominick DellaSala and Chad Hanson. 340 pages $89.95 This important new collection of essays in The Ecological Importance of Mixed-Severity Fires presents some of the latest research and thinking about wildfires by some of the most respected fire ecologists and other thinkers in the…
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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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A recent article in the Science section of the New York Times seemed to reiterate some of the common misunderstandings about wildfire. While there are parts of the article that I certainly agree with, the implicit message that large wildfires are ecologically destructive and that thinning forests will save them is questionable. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/science/as-fires-grow-a-new-landscape-appears-in-the-west.html?emc=eta1&_r=0 AFTERMATH OF…
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Livestock grazing has fanned summer’s fires in Idaho and the West- Livestock grazing in southwestern Idaho and across the West has contributed significantly to intensity, severity, and enormity of fires this summer. Important habitat for sage-grouse, redband trout, other wildlife species is now ablaze. Despite the livestock industry’s claims to the contrary, the Idaho fires…
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Oregon Congressman’s Greg Walden’s (other western legislators also are sponsors) support of the so-called Resilient Federal Forests Act is based on faulty assumptions. The Resilient Federal Forests Act will actually decrease forest resilience. Here’s a link to Walden’s position on the Act. Here’s just a few of the problems. Walden asserts that if beetles, and…