There's clearly a good middle ground, but there's a lot of simplistic theorizing about this from folks with ideological axes to grind.
The reason is that the kind of logging that's economical is not good fire suppression. IE, clear cutting is going leave a thicken of young trees and undergrowth in ten year that's a huge fire hazard but not economical to log. The state would have to pay for sort of logging that could effectively cut fire and that's usually not not called but logging but ground clearing. And it's done a bit but not affordable around every little town in the Sierras.
I know Americans hate the whole idea of taxes being used for useful things and would generally rather die a horrible death. But California usually seems a bit more European in its government style.
Has anyone done the maths on some kind of giant lawnmower that bags up the forest floor to create a fire break? Seems like it could be at a minimum burnt for electricity or anaerobically decomposed to hydrogen and be carbon neutral as a bonus.
Your information is wrong.
As I've stated elsewhere, it's well understood that commercially viable logging on public land (here in Australia at least) is not particularly effective for fire suppression (due to what's left over and what's left on the ground) and it wouldn't surprise me if it's true elsewhere. Maybe it's different in Oregon but there seems to be a surfeit of people "guessing" that it's somehow all the Greenies' fault.
[1] https://catalog.extension.oregonstate.edu/em9228/html
[2] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-107hhrg77615/html/C...
I'm particularly enjoying the fact that the mild-mannered folks at OSU (maybe they are part of the Ecoterrorism Conspiracy?) suggest bizarre ideas like "maybe having lots of people mucking about on public land increases the risks of discarded cigarettes and campfire accidents" and "perhaps having hot and dry conditions from climate change might lead to more fires" as opposed to your much more elegant explanation that all forest management in Oregon labors under some sort of Ecoterrorist Reign of Ecoterror.
I'm not going to spend hours researching proof for a topic that I've lived and experienced for more then 20 years of my life in that state. My lived experiences in Oregon are one of extreme environmentalism being a regular occurrence, including camping in trees to prevent logging, lighting privately held businesses on fire, justifying wolves killing farmers livestock, and actively working to take away access rights of public lands in the name of environmentalism. I'm not going to spend a day sourcing all of these claims as they are easily discoverable via simple google searches.
That said, the idea that these groups (or prevailing attitudes behind them) are preventing some form of logging that would actually help with wildfires (and yet is commercially viable) is something that you're more or less just making up from your hunches and anecdotes.
At least here in Australia they just pull mature trees out and leave scrub as well as highly flammable waste behind.
A lot of people need their asses kicked over this sort of issue: higher on the list are people who build right into the bush then yell bloody murder about controlled burns. CA definitely has a lot of these people, and there's probably a fake "greenie" undercurrent in the attitude (a sentimentalization of the bush). But the "greenies messed it all up" is a simplistic morality tale usually promulgated by people who know nothing about fire management and are looking to find something other than climate change to blame for our recent dire years.
I am not sure what fantasy world you live in but it’s obviously not Oregon. The same type of groups that decimated the logging industry via the Spotted Owl are now going after dams via the fish. First they create this enormous fire hazard and now they want the water that fights it to wastefully run unimpeded into the ocean.
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.
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.
Managing fires is very complex and takes a lot of resources but importantly political will. There's groups that don't want to spend federal money on infrastructure even though the federal government is responsible for significant amounts of infrastructure.
Establish regulations to allow logging if a healthy forest is left behind, and the free market will fix everything else.
Free market capitalism is really good algorithm at approximating an optimal solution to the problem posed to it. Regulation is needed to define the problem.
Regulation is really poor at coming up with solutions to problems, and free market capitalism is really poor at defining problems.
I'd recommend a quick re-read of Adam Smith.
Building codes are an example of a bad regulations. They require e.g. a specific spacing of wooden beams, and specific materials used. That's regulation defining a solution. When people come up with better ways to achieve the same level of safety, it's banned.
In contrast, for example, a lot of codes around EMI and consumer electronics are good regulations. They require bounds on how much EMI is emitted, but leave the free market to solve the problem. That works well.
Fines and mandatory insurance are another example of good regulation, whereas bans are usually bad regulation. If there is an externality, a fine places a cost on it, and a free market can optimize to it. A ban distorts a free market. Mandatory insurance too allows us to price in the cost of externalities with market mechanisms.
In this case, if you allow logging where:
- Underbush has to be removed to within some level
- Trees ought to be left to a specific spacing
... and so on, things will work out okay.
If you require loggers to have insurance, such that if a fire breaks out where they logged within some time window, insurance covers the damage, very smart finance people will figure out which things are high ROI and which are low ROI, and things will work out even better.
> I'd recommend a quick re-read of Adam Smith.
The "free" is on the forces of supply-and-demand, not a lack of regulations altogether (which is laissez-faire / anarchist). Wikipedia continues -- although with a bit of a non-sequitur in between, to explain that:
"All of these fields emphasize the importance in currently existing market systems of rule-making institutions external to the simple forces of supply and demand which create space for those forces to operate to control productive output and distribution."
Note that regulation is _external_ to supply-and-demand. It shouldn't interfere with the core concepts:
- Economic equilibrium
- Low barriers to entry
- Competition
- Spontaneous order
- Supply and demand
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.
This type of fire behavior is nothing new. I’ve been around wildland firefighting since the early 2000s and we were seeing wind driven crown fires during those times every summer. We just called them big fire days and sat back and watched cause there is nothing humans can do to stop a fire with that type of behavior. Other then work nights and hope you can keep it out of the tops of the trees the next day.
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.
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://theconversation.com/native-forest-logging-makes-bush...
https://theconversation.com/new-research-finds-native-forest...
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002...
https://www.sciencealert.com/logging-forests-to-halt-wildfir...
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.
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.
It seems unfair that people who live in the woods and who live technologically simple lives would have to pay for the climate change induced by our modern lifestyles.
The fires aren't caused by climate change, even if it's making them worse. Building a community out of combustible materials in fire prone areas, while suppressing natural fuel removal via fire suppression policies, is a much more direct cause for loss of property.
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
> 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://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.
Deadwood around lakes and streams can really screw up fish and other wildlife, too.
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...
https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_hessburg_why_wildfires_have_g...
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.
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.
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.
Also, thanks for being a wildland firefighter, lots of us who live in hills and forests really really appreciate you.
Do you write/post about your land anywhere? Would be an interesting story to follow.
Edit: He said, "I was being hyperbolic to make a point,"
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/resourcelis...
https://mtstandard.com/news/opinion/editorial/allow-the-fore...
“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.”
Santa Cruz mountains burned last year and it could have been less devastating to f there were more thinning allowed. Thinning != clearcutting. Often there are interests besides the environment that come into play. People live in these forests. Trees prevent landslides. It’s complicated.
The link you give doesn't talk about thinning, and is (unusually) mostly talking about old growth forest. Is an organization preserving old growth forest actually calling for cutting down live trees?
This has given us dense forests with more vigorous, younger trees competing with mature trees for water and nutrients. Coupled with drought and higher temps from climate change, the mature trees become stressed and susceptible to beetle infestations and disease. The younger trees also serve as ladders for low intensity ground fires to become high intensity crown fires.
To answer your 2nd question: yes, Sempervirens, Save the Redwoods League, The Nature Conservancy have all partnered on projects to carry out ecological thinning to remove small diameter trees and promote a return to healthier forests that resemble the pre-1930s norm. It also happens that these practices maximize carbon sequestration.
The coastal redwood forest still needs lots of ecological thinning.
Here are some articles and papers you might find interesting from non-profit and governmental organizations:
San Vicente Redwoods [1]
- SV Redwoods is a collaboration between The Nature Conservancy, Save the Redwoods League, Sempervirens Fund, Peninsula Open Space Trust, and The Land Trust of Santa Cruz County
- One goal is to accelerate the return of the forest to old-growth, increase fire resiliency, and improve biodiversity and habitat.
Mill Creek Restoration Project in Redwood NP and CA Redwood SPs [2]
- A collaboration between Save the Redwoods League, Smith River Alliance, and Redwood National and State Parks.
-Video link[3] showcasing the forest restoration segment (starts at 4m00s and runs until 6m20s; it continues into road removal and salmonid benefits if you’re interested).
Thinning Stands Boosts Wildlife Diversity [4]
- Conducted in Redwood NP and Del Norte Redwood SP and supported by Save the Redwoods League.
- Found that small mammals and birds increased dramatically within five years of areas that were thinned vs. unthinned areas.
- “At a minimum, thinning results in vegetative developmental and ecological trajectories that are several decades, if not substantially longer, ahead of stands that were not thinned,” Slauson said. “The overall result is that restoratively thinned stands have begun to develop the understory vegetative complexity and productivity to support small vertebrate communities that much more closely resemble old-growth stands than stands that have not been thinned.”
Old Redwood Forest Restoration: Quantifying Forest Characteristics and Development of Initial Restoration Treatments [5]
- Funded by Save the Redwoods League.
- How do you move toward old-growth characteristics most efficiently? “With judicious thinning,” said Joe McBride, University of California, Berkeley, Forestry Ecology Professor. “You can look at old-growth stands as representing a process of natural thinning that took hundreds of years. You have a few survivors per acre that are now the big trees—they’ve outcompeted adjacent trees over time.”
- The results showed that at the better-watered sites (both in Humboldt), large, medium, and small redwoods were all randomly distributed. At the drier site (Armstrong), small and medium trees were clumped and large trees were randomly distributed. “One has the idea based on the fairy rings you see in redwood stands that the big trees are all clumped,” McBride said. “We found that not to be the case.”
[0] https://collaboration.worldbank.org/content/usergenerated/as...
[1]https://openspacetrust.org/blog/redwood-forest/
[2]https://smithriveralliance.org/millcreek/
[3]https://youtu.be/t_vWK7Kyix8?t=240
[4]https://www.savetheredwoods.org/grant/thinning-stands-boosts...
[5]https://www.savetheredwoods.org/grant/old-redwood-forest-res...
Logging always turns into felling the valuable trees (read--old trees that fire leaves alone) and leaving behind the scrub that feeds the fires.
Someone in another thread tried to make a distinction between public and private land, but last I checked wildfires don’t give a damn who owns the trees that are burning.
Driving through northern California on my way to Washington, a couple of weeks ago, I could see whole forests are dead where the fires went through. Large trees, scrub, everything.
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.
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?