Why loging to control firestorms backfires

The Sea Ranch, CA, has for about 50 years lived adjacent to and in Redwood forest, and has dedicated itself to living in harmony with the land. It practices forest management, following the science.  Here is an excerpt of scientists addressing the issue of forest fuel:

The TSR Task Force decided to follow forest science to arrive at its conclusions about how TSR should properly manage its forest. For example, on the issue of forest biomass, the Task Force listened to, among others, Dr. Chad Hanson (B.S., UCLA, J.D., University of Oregon, Ph.D. UC Davis,) who is the director and principal ecologist at the John Muir Project. Dr. Hanson outlined the current scientific thinking on forests which does not parallel President Trump’s thinking. The following Chad Hanson comments are edited for space and clarity. 

[MODERATOR]:  So, some people to say we need to log more. That seems like the response, like Chad, we really, really need to log more, or you know, if we want to stop this crazy high intensity fire, we need to log more. Is that kind of what's happening?

DR. CHAD HANSON: That's certainly a political message that the [President!] and the logging industry has promoted and some other allies in Congress and elsewhere. The number of studies have looked at that, and what the science is telling us is very much the opposite. In fact, if logging happens ostensibly to try to curb fire, to try to pull trees out of the forest, under the guise of reducing fuels, what actually happens is a [number] of things.

First of all, in most cases increased logging is associated with increased fire intensity. So, in other words, the more trees that are pulled out of the forest, the fires don't tend to burn less intensely. The most heavily logged areas usually burn more intensely.

[Second,]  Logging reduces the cooling shade of the forest canopy. By removing a lot of trees, you have more sunlight reaching the forest floor, and what that does is it creates hotter and drier conditions and that means everything on the forest floor gets more dried out, more potentially combustible, and logging also spreads invasive grasses, which are very, very flammable.

[Third,] This is a little bit more technical, but basically when you have a lot more trees, it cuts down on the wind speeds that drive fires. It has a buffering effect in a sense. And when a lot of the trees are removed, that buffering effect is reduced or eliminated and fire spread through those forests faster.

[In] the forest areas where we've had tragic loss of homes and lives, these are mostly areas where we've had intensive logging, and it's as I mentioned earlier, you know, more logging is typically associated with more intense fire at a faster rate of spread. And we saw that tragically in the fire that burned most of the houses in the town of Paradise in northern California and where dozens of lives were lost. The area that it spread through before it burned down most of Paradise had been heavily logged on national forest lands and on private lands in the years prior to the campfire. And, so, this is a perfect example of what Donald Trump is trying to promote, is that kind of logging all across our forests.

Dr, Hanson also demolished Trump’s intuitive and incorrect assumptions about dead trees and dead leaves and forest floors. Our turning our forest floors into Donald Trump’s vision of clean swept parks increases fire risks and promotes more intense fires. 

DR. CHAD HANSON: [S]o many of the assumptions that drive fire and forest management policies seemed so obvious that no one bothered to test them scientifically for decades. I was a coauthor of the very first scientific study to look at [the issue of dead trees]  anywhere in the country. We actually had, you know, data on how many dead trees were in the forest.  Other researchers started doing more comprehensive analysis looking at more and more years after the trees die. Most of the data now, and this is not theoretical modeling, this is actual empirical data from real forest real fires. And what they're finding, is that with every year after the trees die, including after the dead trees fall, that went wild land fires come through, they tend to burn less intensely than in forests would have fewer dead trees or logs on the ground.  I mean, really what it comes down to is physics. In reality, dead fallen trees do not present much to drive flames or carry flames. And interestingly, when they fall, more than acting like fuel, they act in many ways like giant sponges because what they do is they soak up and they retain massive amounts of soil moisture and they keep the forest floor more moist.

We should not be surprised that a President who cares little about science does not know any modern forest science. We also should not be surprised that when seven intelligent TSR FTF members examined our forests with experts’ advice, they reached thoughtful, scientific recommendations which a unanimous TSR Board adopted.

Follow the science.