Farm Bill Based on Flawed Assumptions about Forest Health and Wildfire

- by George Wuerthner

There are wide­ly held assump­tions that log­ging will reduce or pre­clude large wild­fires and bee­tle out­breaks. The recent Farm Bill pro­vi­sion that would allow cat­e­gor­i­cal exclu­sion to log up to 3000 acres with­out NEPA review is based on flawed assump­tions about for­est health and wildfire. 

1. LARGE WILDFIRE CLIMATE DRIVEN

Large fires are dri­ven by climatic/weather con­di­tions that com­plete­ly over­whelm fuels. Chang­ing fuels does not pre­vent large fires and sel­dom sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces the out­come of these large fires. The climatic/weather fac­tors dri­ving large blazes are drought, low humid­i­ty, high tem­per­a­tures and most impor­tant­ly high winds. High wind is the crit­i­cal fac­tor because winds will blow burn­ing embers over, through or around any fuel reduc­tions includ­ing clearcuts. When these con­di­tions line up in the same place as an igni­tion, it is vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble to stop such fires–until the weath­er changes.

2. BEETLE KILL REDUCES FIRE HAZARD

Bee­tle kill actu­al­ly reduces fire haz­ard once the nee­dles fall off, so all this pan­ic about dead bee­tle killed trees will lead to mas­sive fires is myth. We may have large fires, (but it is due to cli­mate) but the pres­ence of bee­tle kill has lit­tle do with the fire spread. 

3. FUEL REDUCTIONS FAIL UNDER SEVERE FIRE CONDITIONS

Fuel reduc­tions effec­tive­ness is incon­sis­tent. There are places where it appears to reduce fire spread under MODERATE fire weath­er con­di­tions but it tends to fail under SEVERE fire weath­er which is when you have the big fires. Many of the larg­er fires in Ore­gon in recent years have burned through “man­aged” forests. The Bis­cuit Fire in SW Ore­gon burned through sub­stan­tial sec­tions of pre­vi­ous­ly logged lands or the Bar­ry Point Fire by Kla­math Falls burned up about a third of Collins Pine man­aged pri­vate lands.Similar large fires occurred on pre­vi­ous­ly logged lands in Mon­tana like the Jocko Lakes Fire, Lolo Creek Fire, Der­by Fire, and many others. 

4. FUEL REDUCTIONS CAN SOMETIMES INCREASE FIRE SPREAD

Accord­ing to one meta-analy­sis of fuel reduc­tion effec­tive­ness, in about a third of cas­es reviewed, fuel reduc­tions INCREASED fire spread. This is typ­i­cal­ly due to the move­ment of fuel from trees to the ground dur­ing log­ging oper­a­tions as well as to the fact that log­ging opens up the for­est to greater dry­ing and wind penetration–both fac­tors that favor fire spread. Oth­er stud­ies also ques­tion the abil­i­ty of fuel reduc­tions to influ­ence LARGE fires under severe fire weath­er. And that is the key phase–severe fire weath­er. Even if fuel reduc­tions appear to work under mod­er­ate con­di­tions, they gen­er­al­ly fail com­plete­ly under severe fire conditions.

5. PROBABILITY OF FIRES ENCOUNTERING FUEL REDUCTIONS IS LOW

Fire is unpre­dictable. Most fuel reduc­tions will have no influ­ence on fires because the prob­a­bil­i­ty that a fire will encounter one in the time frames when fuel reduc­tions are pre­sumed to work (about 10–20 years at best is extreme­ly small. Sta­tis­ti­cal­ly fuels reduc­tions, except for those imme­di­ate­ly next to com­mu­ni­ties and towns, are a waste of tax dollars.

6. MOST FIRES ARE NOT UNHEALTHY OR OUT OF HISTORIC CONDITION

New inter­pre­ta­tions of for­est his­tor­i­cal con­di­tion are ques­tion­ing whether our forests are real­ly out of ‘whack” or out­side of their his­toric con­di­tion. This is espe­cial­ly true for all forests out­side of the low­est ele­va­tion dry for­est of pon­derosa pine. Thus log­ging to “restore” forests is an oxy­moron because it is ques­tion­able that most forests are not in need of restoration.

7. LOGGING HAS MANY EXTERNALITIES

Log­ging has many “exter­nal­i­ties” that are a con­se­quence of log­ging are not acknowl­edged by log­ging pro­mot­ers. These include the spread of weeds due to dis­tur­bance accom­pa­ny­ing log­ging oper­a­tions and roads, sed­i­men­ta­tion from log­ging roads into streams which destroys fish­eries, reduc­tion of wildlife secu­ri­ty cov­er because of increased access from log­ging roads, dis­tur­bance of sen­si­tive wildlife and so forth. When the­ses “costs” are inter­nal­ized, log­ging would almost nev­er make any eco­nom­ic sense.

8. PROTECT HOMES BY REDUCING FLAMMABILITY OF HOMES

The proven way to safe­guard com­mu­ni­ties is to reduce the flam­ma­bil­i­ty of homes through the adop­tion of fire wise poli­cies like instal­la­tion of fire resis­tant roof­ing mate­r­i­al, removal of burn­able mate­ri­als away from homes, zon­ing to pre­vent home con­struc­tion in the fire plain (like flood plain of a riv­er) and oth­er measures.

9. WILDFIRE, BEETLES, AND DISEASE ARE RESTORING FORESTS

Final­ly, wild­fire and bee­tle kill are ‘RESTORATIVE” process­es that are crit­i­cal to HEALTHY for­est ecosys­tems. Even if log­ging could pre­clude or lim­it the influ­ence of fire, bee­tles and so on, it would not be desir­able from an ecosys­tem health per­spec­tive. The eco­log­i­cal truth is that dead trees are crit­i­cal to healthy forests. Indeed, the snag forests that result after severe wild­fires are home to the sec­ond great­est bio­di­ver­si­ty after old growth forests, but this phase is short­er lived as forests regrow, thus rel­a­tive­ly-speak­ing scarcer.