Replies

Massive, out of control forest fires are not prevented by cutting down the healthiest living trees in a forest. Such fires are prevented by first allowing smaller fires to occur on a natural basis. Second, if a lack of such policy leads to excessive fuel buildup, catastrophic fires are prevented by picking up the dead wood that has fallen due to disease, high winds, natural death, etc. Unfortunately, such wood is often not usable for lumber, and thus removing it is unattractive to the lumber companies (for whom this legislation is written). And when trees are lumbered, the branches are removed from the trunks so that the trunks can be stacked on trucks and removed. These branches, called "slash", are often not cleaned up particularly well, which actually ADDS to the fire risk.

The endpoint is that the healthy trees are removed, the fuel overburden is unabated, and fire still sweeps through the forest. This time, though, there's fewer healthy trees left to repopulate the forest, as the lumbering companies have removed them. Since the lumber companies only take certain species of trees, the balance of species in the resultant forest is out of whack and they are less likely to reforest properly and provide the same habitat as they once did. "Healthy Forests" is a rhetorical deception; it will in fact leave us with no such thing.

Now, if you want to see how a problem like this should actually be handled, go to the Superior National Forest web site. This is the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, where a huge storm in 1999 blew over hundreds of thousands of acres of trees at once. Fearful that all that dead wood would burn up and totally destroy the entire area (heavily used by canoeists, fishermen, and others for recreation), numerous alternatives were considered. Logging the downed trees was considered but eventually found unattractive; conventional logging would require building roads thoughout the entire area, destroying the wilderness character, and helicopter logging was uneconomic. Instead, the area was divided up into sections, and the overburden is being burned off section by section in controlled fashion.

This would work fine for the forests in California, Arizona, etc., as well. But getting rid of the fuel overburden in those forests, which is what causes the fire risk, is not the priority of the Bush administration. Allowing lumbering companies to cherry-pick the best healthy trees, which does nothing to reduce the fire risk, is.

Seems that if a forest has maybe 4 times the "normal" tree load, some selective thinning might be beneficial.

For example - in So. California, forests had perhaps 200 trees per acre, when a natural loading was 40 - 50 trees per acre before forest management and agressive fire-fighting was employed. Allowing lumber companies the rights to thin down to perhaps 80 - 100 trees per acre allows them to make a profit sufficient to require additional controls on the lumbering process.

It might even be beneficial to create zones where tree loading is thinned to 20 - 30 trees per acre as a more natural fire break to slow the spread of a massive fire from regions of high loading.

But dead wood on the ground is not the major fuel contributor that you suggest. After a few months with rain - the dead wood starts decaying. It quickly absorbs moisture and is far less significant to any fire than the live trees (or the diseased trees that are dying or dead, but still standing).

But Ecko-wackos would rather have a forest burn down "naturally" than allow any logging company from making a profit. (And when a logging company makes a profit, it means lumber for various projects - more jobs, more convenience for people ... good ol' capitalism, etc. ... and Ecko-wackos might be "Earth First" - but also "People Last".

Mike

You don't know Squat about our forests...most of the big trees are dying due to beetle infestation and drought..leaving them would be a safety hazard (falling down) and leaving the logs would cause sterilizing forest fires. One size does not fit all for forest management.

Allowing lumbering companies to cherry-pick the best healthy trees, which does nothing to reduce the fire risk, is.

Besides we already let those greedy tomato growers get away with doing this.

Trees are a renewable resource, cut old ones, plant new ones. Of course we can just let them burn then plant new ones which is what you propose I guess.