Wildfire
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Thinned lodgepole pine forest on Oregon’s Deschutes National Forest. As often is the case, thinning puts more “fine” fuels on the ground which can promote fire spread. Photo George Wuerthner Montana Senator Daines announced that he intends to reintroduce wildfire legislation co-sponsored by California Senator Diane Feinstein that, among other things, would speed up and…
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Large blazes like the Camp Fire which leveled this McDonald’s in Paradise CA are driven by extreme fire weather, particularly wind. Active forest management including thinning and prescribe fire does nothing to prevent such blazes. Photo George Wuerthner Recently California Governor Newsom came out with a proposed fire budget of over a billon dollars.…
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Rural subdivision in Gallatin County, Montana. Photo George Wuerthner Back when I was a student at the University of Montana in Missoula, I had a girlfriend who managed to rent a house adjacent to the Bitterroot Mountains near Hamilton. All of us were very jealous of her luck in obtaining a place to live so…
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Previously logged and thinned forest that burned at high severity in the Jocko Lakes Fire, Montana. Photo George Wuerthner There are daily news stories about the recent large wildfires in 2020. In nearly all of these media accounts, the large blazes are almost always attributed to a lack of active forest management. In other words,…
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Lodgepole pine forests like these in the South Plateau Timber sale tend to burn at fire rotations of hundreds of years, yet the FS wants to log them to preclude a future fire that may not occur for a century or more. Photo George Wuerthner The Custer Gallatin National Forest proposes to log and otherwise…