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They don’t seem to address the elephant in the room. Environmental groups have sued to stop every single logging plan the USFS has tried to put in place since s

They don’t seem to address the elephant in the room. Environmental groups have sued to stop every single logging plan the USFS has tried to put in place since sometime in the mid 90s. This even includes logging burnt areas where dead trees are left to rot and feed the next fire. Until these organizations are held to task for the conditions they have helped create in the name of the environment, the fires will continue to burn over grown forests that have had all natural and artificial management removed from them.

neolog 5y ago
No, fallen trees support healthy ecosystems. Allow regular prescribed burns, not out-of-control massive hot wildfires. See Tallamy - "The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees" See also USFS https://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/sciencef/scifi20.pdf https://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/sciencef/scifi20.pdf
- partiallypro 5y ago
  Does that matter if they just burn?
  - neolog 5y ago
    If you try to prevent fires, fuel will build up so that the next fire will be so big and hot it kills everything. Then there is no ecosystem. > Post-fire logging and associated activities (including roads) are unequivocally damaging to fire-rejuvenated forests and related aquatic ecosystems. https://web.archive.org/web/20180831203747/https://forestlegacies.org/images/projects/wildfire-report-2018.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20180831203747/https://forestleg... > When a forest burns frequently and thus has less plant litter build-up, below-ground soil temperatures rise only slightly and will not be lethal to roots that lie deep in the soil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_ecology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_ecology
    - robbedpeter 5y ago
      As usual, human intervention in ecosystems results in a disruption of processes that every organism in that system specifically evolved to live in. There are second and third order effects of allowing endless deadwood accumulation, pretty much guaranteeing that fires will be catastrophic. Not only do they cause super hot fires when it finally happens, but deadwood cover doesn't allow the usual plant life to take hold, increasing erosion and water retention, speeding the drying out of the forest. Deadwood around lakes and streams can really screw up fish and other wildlife, too.
      - jonnycomputer 5y ago
        Well, it is not like the Americas were in some kind of pristine state of nature when European colonists arrived. The indigenous people of the Americas made lots of changes to the landscape, including the use of fire.
        wizzwizz4 5y ago
        But it was a fairly consistent state of nature; as far as I know, those were old practices, and the ecosystem had adapted to them.
- jonnycomputer 5y ago
  Also see: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/08/09/how-wildfire-restored-a-yosemite-watershed/ https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/08/09/how-wildfire-restored-a...
eplanit 5y ago
It's time to re-educate or ignore the elephant, whose policies are what brought us what we have now. It was that elephant who eradicated logging, promoted extinguishing all natural fires, and told us that the best thing is to allow unchecked growth.
bsder 5y ago
I'd rather burn the forest than allow logging. Logging always turns into felling the valuable trees (read--old trees that fire leaves alone) and leaving behind the scrub that feeds the fires.
- billclerico 5y ago
  This used to be true, but really no longer is with modern logging practices and regulation
  - quantified 5y ago
    Given human nature and economic imperatives, I think some skepticism is warranted.
    - robbedpeter 5y ago
      Exactly, so we better do nothing at all and cower behind the maybes as the world literally burns down around us.
      - quantified 5y ago
        That would not be the right approach. What’s a maybe, or perhaps which maybe are you referring to, since there are several possible ones. (Suggest you include a sarcasm indicator if you’re being sarcastic.) Just pointing out that since people are involved, it’s very reasonable to think that there are going to be bad actors acting badly along with any benefit that might come from this. In response to words that said bad actors are gone from the scene. Do you disagree?
  - pvaldes 5y ago
    Loggers can be directly behind some fires also. Is well known that loggers in the south of Europe had been caught starting wildfires with the goal to buy the logs cheaper later (still suitable for paper pulp) or to have an excuse to steal the oldest trees that were perfectly viable but slightly charred. The practice stopped by new laws regulating the sell of burnt wood, but it was popular once (and can be still active in other parts of the planet). Anything that could be claimed as an excuse type 'this tree was ill so it must be taken down' is a temptation for promoting wildfires. And these survivor elder trees are necessary also. Some caterpillars are borers and kill trees in mass, creating a lot of extra fuel. Woodpeckers are among the only animals capable to remove larvae that dig deeper in the trunks. Respecting a few dead trees (here and there) where woodpeckers nest can reduce the final amount of fuel. More dense population of woodpeckers -> less larvae -> more trees surviving the attack -> less extensive patches of new dead wood ready to burn. Another reason to be very careful with the idea of a free unlimited pass to logging after wildfires.
cwlb 5y ago
burnt trees are not good fuel. areas that have "burnt through" are lower fire risk. dead, unburnt trees are the problem.
- Trisell 5y ago
  Dead burnt trees fall down and rot feeding the next fire that comes through that forest. Instead of logging those trees and using them leaving good trees and new growth behind.
  - droopyEyelids 5y ago
    Sounds like you're missing the concept of the fuel class of wood in a wildfire. https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs/rmrs_gtr164/rmrs_gtr164_06_fuel_load.pdf https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs/rmrs_gtr164/rmrs_gtr164_06_fue... That explains some of it, but different types of fuel take different amounts of time to catch fire, so like a dry prairie can catch on fire about instantly, but live saplings of 1" will not burn unless the fire keeps going for an hour. A decomposing log on the forest floor won't really burn till it has been in a fire for somewhere around 100 hours.
    - Trisell 5y ago
      Until you have walked through a modern fire nuke zone. It’s like walking on the moon. Nothing under a foot across is left. This picture is very typical of what is being left behind by the large self sustaining fires. https://images.app.goo.gl/jcLatNG6dAdpoALY8 https://images.app.goo.gl/jcLatNG6dAdpoALY8 Source: Spent 10 years as a wildland firefighter on major fires my whole career. And still have friends and family that are deployed on fires today.
      - nosequel 5y ago
        I appreciate you defending this position. I bought 50 acres of land burned in a very hot forest fire 9 years ago. While there is some grass and some bushes around, the 50 acres of trees have now all fallen by now and are rotting. Some of them have stayed hard and are super annoying to cut with a chainsaw, but others I can kick apart with my boots. Either way I use them for firewood at my campsite and they ignite instantly with no work on my part. Until you have walked through a real fire zone, you can't fathom what it really looks and feels like. Also, thanks for being a wildland firefighter, lots of us who live in hills and forests really really appreciate you.
jeffbee 5y ago
Can you point to one of these suits and its outcomes? The USFS opens up every national forest in California to timber harvesting, every year, and has done so since I can remember. You only have to spend about 1 minute hiking a national forest in California to hear the saws and trucks. Here, for example, are all the currently-available timber sales in the Plumas Nat'l Forest, which is currently extensively on fire. https://www.fs.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsinternet/cs/resourcelist?ss=110511&navtype=110511&cid=FSEPRD607802&navid=130120000000000&pnavid=130000000000000&position=TimberSales*&groupid=Y&ttype=detaillist&pname=Plumas%20National%20Forest%20-%20Resource%20Management https://www.fs.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsinternet/cs/resourcelis...
- Trisell 5y ago
  Here is an opinion article for Montana of one such group. This is typical of most of these groups. They prevent logging by getting injunctions against any logging project on National Forest Land. https://mtstandard.com/news/opinion/editorial/allow-the-forest-service-to-do-its-job-without-frivolous-lawsuits/article_09585582-1be6-5831-bcd3-542d617a078a.html https://mtstandard.com/news/opinion/editorial/allow-the-fore...
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    Well OK, you said they had sued every logging plan without exception. That seems like an exaggeration. I'm looking at a USDA document right now that says 50 million board feet were harvested in California in the first 90 days of 2021, and last year totaled 2.5 billion board feet nationwide. Maybe that's not as much as you'd like, but it is still the case that timber is harvested in every forest, every year. The entire purpose of the USFS is to provide wood products to America. They aren't parks.
    - Trisell 5y ago
      I was being hyperbolic to make a point, but you have at best proven that some suits do seem get overturned and some logging does happen. I will say that I think more logging, under regulation, should be allowed as the current 2.5b BF doesn’t seem to be enough considering the vast acreages that the federal government controls in the west. And given fire load of dead and down trees that I’ve seen over the years in our National Forests. To quote the article I posted. “Frivolous lawsuits over the past 20-30 years have nearly eliminated logging from forest management, and our forests have suffered and much of the current wildfires around us are the results. What once were healthy, diverse ecosystems with early successional and mature forests are now too often monocultures of insect and disease-ridden dead and dying trees primed for catastrophic wildfire.”
Animats 5y ago
20 million trees, about 150 of these [1], no problem. Clearcutting today, for a better tomorrow! Why burn? Cutting wide firebreaks every few miles would be a good start. Plus we need power line routes through the Sierras to the midwest wind belt. [1] https://youtu.be/T6lammZihzg https://youtu.be/T6lammZihzg
taf2 5y ago
I recall growing up in Santa Cruz mountains and when a neighbor had a tree fall and crash through half his house during a storm with his whole family there that night… afterwards he removed a few of the other dead trees around his house that could potentially fall on the house as well - cut down… many in the neighborhood flew black flags on the mailboxes and protested him having the dead trees removed… I always loved the nature living there and at time being young it felt like he was the evil rain forest tree cutter … now in my 40s I look back and would have done the same thing as him. The fires out there are very scary and I just hope we get it figured out.
- coding123 5y ago
  Before Paradise burned to the ground it was the same way. The city stopped people from cutting down their own trees. Those same trees would fall and kill people. During the time I lived there at least 3 times. 2 in bed one in a truck. Some people even had trees that were small but just leaning into someone's house, maybe ruining the siding a little. We should basically cut a 1/2 mile of trees in the semi-urban areas. Leave the 5 or 10 acre properties alone, let them manage their own cruft, but for the "city" part in the WUI, that should be clear-cut with 1/2 mile and maintained yearly. It would create a lot of jobs too. Spend that money on weekly clearing jobs in many areas instead of insurance companies paying that money out to just replace the homes.
  - hadlock 5y ago
    There's a movement growing to build effectively a 9' gravel road around Santa Rosa as a fire moat of last defense. It would be paid out of funds given from the recent fire there. If you zoom in on tiny communities up in the foothills, occasionally you'll see roads marked on google maps as "Dozer Line" where the locals have built their own crude fire moats to protect the community as best they can. I don't know if these are maintained to any degree, but it's certainly not a new idea.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      I understand that low masonry walls also prevent heavier wind blown embers from travelling. One on the periphery of your property, and one a few feet from the house. Defense in depth.
glangdale 5y ago
Logging for profit is not the panacea that people criticizing environmental groups thinks it is. Here in Australia, at least (where we do a lot more controlled burns and let fires burn out a lot more) commercial logging tends to leave a huge amount of combustible waste behind. There's clearly a good middle ground, but there's a lot of simplistic theorizing about this from folks with ideological axes to grind.
- SilverRed 5y ago
  I would have assumed that logging clears out the old dense wood which does not burn so readily while leaving the shrub which is the most of the problem. The easiest solution IMO is to stop trying to control every single fire and designate some zones as essentially wild and focus all efforts at protecting a smaller city area with a buffer zone between buildings and the nature reserve. Problem is people want to live right in the middle of a forest but also do not want to face the reality that fires happen and that they are at risk.
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    As Northern California is currently demonstrating, wait and see can be unpredictable in historic drought conditions.
  - babesh 5y ago
    Smoke travels pretty far and causes obvious health issues. The undergrowth due to suppressing previous fires and the additional fuel from dead trees due to droughts result in very hot fires that grow huge. The Dixie fire that is ongoing is 762 sq miles and is 25% contained. It is the largest fire started from a single source and second largest overall in California history. If we let a fire just burn, will it just get so large that it can’t be contained and will just burn till there is nothing left? I read about natural fires that would span states and would burn till the rainy season. The fires currently burning in Siberia cover 4000 sq miles. The Bay Area is about 7000 sq miles. Alameda County is about the same size as the Dixie fire.
    - deleted 5y ago
cmurf 5y ago
Overly simplistic assumptions. https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ecs2.1492 https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002... https://www.sciencealert.com/logging-forests-to-halt-wildfires-would-destroy-essential-habitats-for-native-species https://www.sciencealert.com/logging-forests-to-halt-wildfir... https://www.opb.org/article/2020/10/31/logging-wildfire-forest-management/ https://www.opb.org/article/2020/10/31/logging-wildfire-fore... What evidence is there that logging reduces fires or fire severity? A far bigger problem than environmental groups are those opposed to building regulations requiring homes be made out of non-combustible materials. Across mountain communities we continue to see materials that are more combustible than dead trees being used to build new homes. You can see the effect of this in fires: homes burned to ash, surrounding by scorched but not incinerated trees. The house burned hotter because of the materials it was made out of. Homeowners, and local governments, consistently oppose retasking forest service fire fighting budgets, and making home insurance cover the true cost of the risk homeowners should assume for their voluntary decision to live in fire prone areas. Yes, they should pay the necessarily high premiums to live in these areas and protect their property. Why should everyone else subsidize this? It's not like living in fire prone areas has any national economic benefit, unlike living in certain flood prone areas: agriculture, and port cities. Where we shouldn't be federally insuring homes from floods is on the goddamn beaches with not a farm or port for 100 miles. Those houses should only be able to get private, for-profit, hazard insurance - to help discourage people from building in risky areas, or suck it up and bear the true cost of managing the risk.
- rcpt 5y ago
  > making home insurance cover the true cost of the risk homeowners should assume for their voluntary decision to live in fire prone areas. Yes, they should pay the necessarily high premiums to live in these areas and protect their property. Why should everyone else subsidize this? Thank you. It's the clearest solution to this problem and likely the only financially viable one. The years where exurban sprawl into every corner of the redwoods made economic sense are long passed.
  - amelius 5y ago
femto 5y ago
A lot of work has been done on this in Australia, though the mostly eucalypt Australian situation might not apply to the US. It seems that at best logging has little effect on bushfires, and at worst logging makes them worse. https://theconversation.com/native-forest-logging-makes-bushfires-worse-and-to-say-otherwise-ignores-the-facts-161177 https://theconversation.com/native-forest-logging-makes-bush... https://theconversation.com/new-research-finds-native-forest-logging-did-not-worsen-the-black-summer-bushfires-160600 https://theconversation.com/new-research-finds-native-forest...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- wumpus 5y ago
  Actually one of our problems near the coast in California is that invasive eucalyptus trees are much more flammable than native trees.
nradov 5y ago
There's no way to hold environmental organizations to task. They're just using the law advocate for their position, as is their right. If we want to improve the situation then we need to change the law.
- maerF0x0 5y ago
  There are social ways, such as what OP is doing by calling them out as at best well intentioned but actually disastrous .
  - wumpus 5y ago
    OP is misrepresenting the facts, but OK, I guess it's their right to do that. Edit: He said, "I was being hyperbolic to make a point,"
    - kelnos 5y ago
      How so?
      - magicalist 5y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28137115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28137115
soperj 5y ago
Rotting trees are great for the forest. They also don't burn. Honestly, try using a rotting log for firewood sometime. It's impossible. They suck up a lot of water, and release it slowly, as well as releasing a lot of nutrients into the environment. Most new trees start in fallen logs.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  not if they re dry
  - soperj 5y ago
    Not really rotting then are they.
    - cblconfederate 5y ago
      things can get dry and wet again
- jonnycomputer 5y ago
  On the east coast, or the rainy northern California coast, this might be true. Not so sure its true in the relatively dry forests of the Sierra Nevada.
  - soperj 5y ago
    Rotting trees are good everywhere. If it's dry though, they don't really rot.
sdenton4 5y ago
Well, that's certainly an opinion... The lumber industries in the 90's were dead set on aggressively clearcutting old growth forest. Once environmentalists started having successes slowing them down, the lumber industry started using salvage logging exemptions to bypass environmental regulations and log protected areas. If a small fire ran through an old-growth area (a good and healthy event!), you could bet that it would soon be followed by an effort to cut down the 'damaged' surviving trees. The Timber Wars podcast is a pretty great recent look at the forest politics of the 80's and 90's. I think it does a great job of presenting many sides of the issues. At the end, it demonstrates a much closer relationship between current working environmentalists and lumber operations, with environmentalists even working to keep a mill open at one point. (Because they, too, support selective logging and healthy forests.) https://www.npr.org/podcasts/906829608/timber-wars https://www.npr.org/podcasts/906829608/timber-wars
downWidOutaFite 5y ago
One flaw with blaming California liberals is that we've been seeing historic fires globally, up the northwest into Canada, Australia, Turkey, Greece, and truly planetary sized burns in Siberia.
jonnycomputer 5y ago
I'm not convinced that dead trees in burnt areas are a major fire risk. Most of the fuel is already spent. I'm okay with some logging. But it also increase the risk surface for invasive species infestations because you create disturbed areas with traffic. The solution is more frequent, smaller fires. https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/08/09/how-wildfire-restored-a-yosemite-watershed/ https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/08/09/how-wildfire-restored-a...
throwawaysea 5y ago
Here is a US Forest Service expert from Oregon talking about why forest fires have become bad. The summary is that we have forests that are younger, denser, trees with inadequate forest management. We need more effort in clearing dead dry fuel, managing pests (that cause more dead dry fuel), limiting forest density, and introducing breaks between wide swaths of forest. https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_hessburg_why_wildfires_have_gotten_worse_and_what_we_can_do_about_it https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_hessburg_why_wildfires_have_g...

neolog 5y ago

No, fallen trees support healthy ecosystems. Allow regular prescribed burns, not out-of-control massive hot wildfires. See Tallamy - "The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees" See also USFS https://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/sciencef/scifi20.pdf https://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/sciencef/scifi20.pdf

partiallypro 5y ago
Does that matter if they just burn?
- neolog 5y ago
  If you try to prevent fires, fuel will build up so that the next fire will be so big and hot it kills everything. Then there is no ecosystem. > Post-fire logging and associated activities (including roads) are unequivocally damaging to fire-rejuvenated forests and related aquatic ecosystems. https://web.archive.org/web/20180831203747/https://forestlegacies.org/images/projects/wildfire-report-2018.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20180831203747/https://forestleg... > When a forest burns frequently and thus has less plant litter build-up, below-ground soil temperatures rise only slightly and will not be lethal to roots that lie deep in the soil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_ecology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_ecology
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    As usual, human intervention in ecosystems results in a disruption of processes that every organism in that system specifically evolved to live in. There are second and third order effects of allowing endless deadwood accumulation, pretty much guaranteeing that fires will be catastrophic. Not only do they cause super hot fires when it finally happens, but deadwood cover doesn't allow the usual plant life to take hold, increasing erosion and water retention, speeding the drying out of the forest. Deadwood around lakes and streams can really screw up fish and other wildlife, too.
    - jonnycomputer 5y ago
      Well, it is not like the Americas were in some kind of pristine state of nature when European colonists arrived. The indigenous people of the Americas made lots of changes to the landscape, including the use of fire.
      - wizzwizz4 5y ago
        But it was a fairly consistent state of nature; as far as I know, those were old practices, and the ecosystem had adapted to them.
jonnycomputer 5y ago
Also see: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/08/09/how-wildfire-restored-a-yosemite-watershed/ https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/08/09/how-wildfire-restored-a...

eplanit 5y ago

It's time to re-educate or ignore the elephant, whose policies are what brought us what we have now. It was that elephant who eradicated logging, promoted extinguishing all natural fires, and told us that the best thing is to allow unchecked growth.

bsder 5y ago

I'd rather burn the forest than allow logging. Logging always turns into felling the valuable trees (read--old trees that fire leaves alone) and leaving behind the scrub that feeds the fires.

billclerico 5y ago
This used to be true, but really no longer is with modern logging practices and regulation
- quantified 5y ago
  Given human nature and economic imperatives, I think some skepticism is warranted.
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    Exactly, so we better do nothing at all and cower behind the maybes as the world literally burns down around us.
    - quantified 5y ago
      That would not be the right approach. What’s a maybe, or perhaps which maybe are you referring to, since there are several possible ones. (Suggest you include a sarcasm indicator if you’re being sarcastic.) Just pointing out that since people are involved, it’s very reasonable to think that there are going to be bad actors acting badly along with any benefit that might come from this. In response to words that said bad actors are gone from the scene. Do you disagree?
- pvaldes 5y ago
  Loggers can be directly behind some fires also. Is well known that loggers in the south of Europe had been caught starting wildfires with the goal to buy the logs cheaper later (still suitable for paper pulp) or to have an excuse to steal the oldest trees that were perfectly viable but slightly charred. The practice stopped by new laws regulating the sell of burnt wood, but it was popular once (and can be still active in other parts of the planet). Anything that could be claimed as an excuse type 'this tree was ill so it must be taken down' is a temptation for promoting wildfires. And these survivor elder trees are necessary also. Some caterpillars are borers and kill trees in mass, creating a lot of extra fuel. Woodpeckers are among the only animals capable to remove larvae that dig deeper in the trunks. Respecting a few dead trees (here and there) where woodpeckers nest can reduce the final amount of fuel. More dense population of woodpeckers -> less larvae -> more trees surviving the attack -> less extensive patches of new dead wood ready to burn. Another reason to be very careful with the idea of a free unlimited pass to logging after wildfires.

cwlb 5y ago

burnt trees are not good fuel. areas that have "burnt through" are lower fire risk. dead, unburnt trees are the problem.

Trisell 5y ago
Dead burnt trees fall down and rot feeding the next fire that comes through that forest. Instead of logging those trees and using them leaving good trees and new growth behind.
- droopyEyelids 5y ago
  Sounds like you're missing the concept of the fuel class of wood in a wildfire. https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs/rmrs_gtr164/rmrs_gtr164_06_fuel_load.pdf https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs/rmrs_gtr164/rmrs_gtr164_06_fue... That explains some of it, but different types of fuel take different amounts of time to catch fire, so like a dry prairie can catch on fire about instantly, but live saplings of 1" will not burn unless the fire keeps going for an hour. A decomposing log on the forest floor won't really burn till it has been in a fire for somewhere around 100 hours.
  - Trisell 5y ago
    Until you have walked through a modern fire nuke zone. It’s like walking on the moon. Nothing under a foot across is left. This picture is very typical of what is being left behind by the large self sustaining fires. https://images.app.goo.gl/jcLatNG6dAdpoALY8 https://images.app.goo.gl/jcLatNG6dAdpoALY8 Source: Spent 10 years as a wildland firefighter on major fires my whole career. And still have friends and family that are deployed on fires today.
    - nosequel 5y ago
      I appreciate you defending this position. I bought 50 acres of land burned in a very hot forest fire 9 years ago. While there is some grass and some bushes around, the 50 acres of trees have now all fallen by now and are rotting. Some of them have stayed hard and are super annoying to cut with a chainsaw, but others I can kick apart with my boots. Either way I use them for firewood at my campsite and they ignite instantly with no work on my part. Until you have walked through a real fire zone, you can't fathom what it really looks and feels like. Also, thanks for being a wildland firefighter, lots of us who live in hills and forests really really appreciate you.

jeffbee 5y ago

Can you point to one of these suits and its outcomes? The USFS opens up every national forest in California to timber harvesting, every year, and has done so since I can remember. You only have to spend about 1 minute hiking a national forest in California to hear the saws and trucks. Here, for example, are all the currently-available timber sales in the Plumas Nat'l Forest, which is currently extensively on fire. https://www.fs.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsinternet/cs/resourcelist?ss=110511&navtype=110511&cid=FSEPRD607802&navid=130120000000000&pnavid=130000000000000&position=TimberSales*&groupid=Y&ttype=detaillist&pname=Plumas%20National%20Forest%20-%20Resource%20Management https://www.fs.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsinternet/cs/resourcelis...

Trisell 5y ago
Here is an opinion article for Montana of one such group. This is typical of most of these groups. They prevent logging by getting injunctions against any logging project on National Forest Land. https://mtstandard.com/news/opinion/editorial/allow-the-forest-service-to-do-its-job-without-frivolous-lawsuits/article_09585582-1be6-5831-bcd3-542d617a078a.html https://mtstandard.com/news/opinion/editorial/allow-the-fore...
- jeffbee 5y ago
  Well OK, you said they had sued every logging plan without exception. That seems like an exaggeration. I'm looking at a USDA document right now that says 50 million board feet were harvested in California in the first 90 days of 2021, and last year totaled 2.5 billion board feet nationwide. Maybe that's not as much as you'd like, but it is still the case that timber is harvested in every forest, every year. The entire purpose of the USFS is to provide wood products to America. They aren't parks.
  - Trisell 5y ago
    I was being hyperbolic to make a point, but you have at best proven that some suits do seem get overturned and some logging does happen. I will say that I think more logging, under regulation, should be allowed as the current 2.5b BF doesn’t seem to be enough considering the vast acreages that the federal government controls in the west. And given fire load of dead and down trees that I’ve seen over the years in our National Forests. To quote the article I posted. “Frivolous lawsuits over the past 20-30 years have nearly eliminated logging from forest management, and our forests have suffered and much of the current wildfires around us are the results. What once were healthy, diverse ecosystems with early successional and mature forests are now too often monocultures of insect and disease-ridden dead and dying trees primed for catastrophic wildfire.”

Animats 5y ago

20 million trees, about 150 of these [1], no problem. Clearcutting today, for a better tomorrow! Why burn? Cutting wide firebreaks every few miles would be a good start. Plus we need power line routes through the Sierras to the midwest wind belt. [1] https://youtu.be/T6lammZihzg https://youtu.be/T6lammZihzg

taf2 5y ago

I recall growing up in Santa Cruz mountains and when a neighbor had a tree fall and crash through half his house during a storm with his whole family there that night… afterwards he removed a few of the other dead trees around his house that could potentially fall on the house as well - cut down… many in the neighborhood flew black flags on the mailboxes and protested him having the dead trees removed… I always loved the nature living there and at time being young it felt like he was the evil rain forest tree cutter … now in my 40s I look back and would have done the same thing as him. The fires out there are very scary and I just hope we get it figured out.

coding123 5y ago
Before Paradise burned to the ground it was the same way. The city stopped people from cutting down their own trees. Those same trees would fall and kill people. During the time I lived there at least 3 times. 2 in bed one in a truck. Some people even had trees that were small but just leaning into someone's house, maybe ruining the siding a little. We should basically cut a 1/2 mile of trees in the semi-urban areas. Leave the 5 or 10 acre properties alone, let them manage their own cruft, but for the "city" part in the WUI, that should be clear-cut with 1/2 mile and maintained yearly. It would create a lot of jobs too. Spend that money on weekly clearing jobs in many areas instead of insurance companies paying that money out to just replace the homes.
- hadlock 5y ago
  There's a movement growing to build effectively a 9' gravel road around Santa Rosa as a fire moat of last defense. It would be paid out of funds given from the recent fire there. If you zoom in on tiny communities up in the foothills, occasionally you'll see roads marked on google maps as "Dozer Line" where the locals have built their own crude fire moats to protect the community as best they can. I don't know if these are maintained to any degree, but it's certainly not a new idea.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    I understand that low masonry walls also prevent heavier wind blown embers from travelling. One on the periphery of your property, and one a few feet from the house. Defense in depth.

glangdale 5y ago

Logging for profit is not the panacea that people criticizing environmental groups thinks it is. Here in Australia, at least (where we do a lot more controlled burns and let fires burn out a lot more) commercial logging tends to leave a huge amount of combustible waste behind. There's clearly a good middle ground, but there's a lot of simplistic theorizing about this from folks with ideological axes to grind.

SilverRed 5y ago
I would have assumed that logging clears out the old dense wood which does not burn so readily while leaving the shrub which is the most of the problem. The easiest solution IMO is to stop trying to control every single fire and designate some zones as essentially wild and focus all efforts at protecting a smaller city area with a buffer zone between buildings and the nature reserve. Problem is people want to live right in the middle of a forest but also do not want to face the reality that fires happen and that they are at risk.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  As Northern California is currently demonstrating, wait and see can be unpredictable in historic drought conditions.
- babesh 5y ago
  Smoke travels pretty far and causes obvious health issues. The undergrowth due to suppressing previous fires and the additional fuel from dead trees due to droughts result in very hot fires that grow huge. The Dixie fire that is ongoing is 762 sq miles and is 25% contained. It is the largest fire started from a single source and second largest overall in California history. If we let a fire just burn, will it just get so large that it can’t be contained and will just burn till there is nothing left? I read about natural fires that would span states and would burn till the rainy season. The fires currently burning in Siberia cover 4000 sq miles. The Bay Area is about 7000 sq miles. Alameda County is about the same size as the Dixie fire.
  - deleted 5y ago

cmurf 5y ago

Overly simplistic assumptions. https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ecs2.1492 https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002... https://www.sciencealert.com/logging-forests-to-halt-wildfires-would-destroy-essential-habitats-for-native-species https://www.sciencealert.com/logging-forests-to-halt-wildfir... https://www.opb.org/article/2020/10/31/logging-wildfire-forest-management/ https://www.opb.org/article/2020/10/31/logging-wildfire-fore... What evidence is there that logging reduces fires or fire severity? A far bigger problem than environmental groups are those opposed to building regulations requiring homes be made out of non-combustible materials. Across mountain communities we continue to see materials that are more combustible than dead trees being used to build new homes. You can see the effect of this in fires: homes burned to ash, surrounding by scorched but not incinerated trees. The house burned hotter because of the materials it was made out of. Homeowners, and local governments, consistently oppose retasking forest service fire fighting budgets, and making home insurance cover the true cost of the risk homeowners should assume for their voluntary decision to live in fire prone areas. Yes, they should pay the necessarily high premiums to live in these areas and protect their property. Why should everyone else subsidize this? It's not like living in fire prone areas has any national economic benefit, unlike living in certain flood prone areas: agriculture, and port cities. Where we shouldn't be federally insuring homes from floods is on the goddamn beaches with not a farm or port for 100 miles. Those houses should only be able to get private, for-profit, hazard insurance - to help discourage people from building in risky areas, or suck it up and bear the true cost of managing the risk.

rcpt 5y ago
> making home insurance cover the true cost of the risk homeowners should assume for their voluntary decision to live in fire prone areas. Yes, they should pay the necessarily high premiums to live in these areas and protect their property. Why should everyone else subsidize this? Thank you. It's the clearest solution to this problem and likely the only financially viable one. The years where exurban sprawl into every corner of the redwoods made economic sense are long passed.
- amelius 5y ago

femto 5y ago

A lot of work has been done on this in Australia, though the mostly eucalypt Australian situation might not apply to the US. It seems that at best logging has little effect on bushfires, and at worst logging makes them worse. https://theconversation.com/native-forest-logging-makes-bushfires-worse-and-to-say-otherwise-ignores-the-facts-161177 https://theconversation.com/native-forest-logging-makes-bush... https://theconversation.com/new-research-finds-native-forest-logging-did-not-worsen-the-black-summer-bushfires-160600 https://theconversation.com/new-research-finds-native-forest...

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wumpus 5y ago
Actually one of our problems near the coast in California is that invasive eucalyptus trees are much more flammable than native trees.

nradov 5y ago

There's no way to hold environmental organizations to task. They're just using the law advocate for their position, as is their right. If we want to improve the situation then we need to change the law.

maerF0x0 5y ago
There are social ways, such as what OP is doing by calling them out as at best well intentioned but actually disastrous .
- wumpus 5y ago
  OP is misrepresenting the facts, but OK, I guess it's their right to do that. Edit: He said, "I was being hyperbolic to make a point,"
  - kelnos 5y ago
    How so?
    - magicalist 5y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28137115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28137115

soperj 5y ago

Rotting trees are great for the forest. They also don't burn. Honestly, try using a rotting log for firewood sometime. It's impossible. They suck up a lot of water, and release it slowly, as well as releasing a lot of nutrients into the environment. Most new trees start in fallen logs.

cblconfederate 5y ago
not if they re dry
- soperj 5y ago
  Not really rotting then are they.
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    things can get dry and wet again
jonnycomputer 5y ago
On the east coast, or the rainy northern California coast, this might be true. Not so sure its true in the relatively dry forests of the Sierra Nevada.
- soperj 5y ago
  Rotting trees are good everywhere. If it's dry though, they don't really rot.

sdenton4 5y ago

Well, that's certainly an opinion... The lumber industries in the 90's were dead set on aggressively clearcutting old growth forest. Once environmentalists started having successes slowing them down, the lumber industry started using salvage logging exemptions to bypass environmental regulations and log protected areas. If a small fire ran through an old-growth area (a good and healthy event!), you could bet that it would soon be followed by an effort to cut down the 'damaged' surviving trees. The Timber Wars podcast is a pretty great recent look at the forest politics of the 80's and 90's. I think it does a great job of presenting many sides of the issues. At the end, it demonstrates a much closer relationship between current working environmentalists and lumber operations, with environmentalists even working to keep a mill open at one point. (Because they, too, support selective logging and healthy forests.) https://www.npr.org/podcasts/906829608/timber-wars https://www.npr.org/podcasts/906829608/timber-wars

downWidOutaFite 5y ago

One flaw with blaming California liberals is that we've been seeing historic fires globally, up the northwest into Canada, Australia, Turkey, Greece, and truly planetary sized burns in Siberia.

jonnycomputer 5y ago

I'm not convinced that dead trees in burnt areas are a major fire risk. Most of the fuel is already spent. I'm okay with some logging. But it also increase the risk surface for invasive species infestations because you create disturbed areas with traffic. The solution is more frequent, smaller fires. https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/08/09/how-wildfire-restored-a-yosemite-watershed/ https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/08/09/how-wildfire-restored-a...

throwawaysea 5y ago

Here is a US Forest Service expert from Oregon talking about why forest fires have become bad. The summary is that we have forests that are younger, denser, trees with inadequate forest management. We need more effort in clearing dead dry fuel, managing pests (that cause more dead dry fuel), limiting forest density, and introducing breaks between wide swaths of forest. https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_hessburg_why_wildfires_have_gotten_worse_and_what_we_can_do_about_it https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_hessburg_why_wildfires_have_g...