wildfire ecology
-
The Wallowa-Whitman National Forest is proposing to log the Lostine Wild and Scenic River corridor. The basic justification is to reduce the potential for large wildfires. Yet according to the Oregon Department of Forestry, in 2019 only acres 67,795 acres burned in the state, compared to 846,411 acres burned last year. Why the big difference?…
-
Governor Bullock recently created the Montana Forest Action Advisory Council that is biased towards logging and is dominated by timber industry interests and supporters to “reduce wildfire risk.” I don’t expect the Governor to be an expert on wildfire or forest ecology, but it is clear from the makeup of his council that its primary…
-
We often hear that our forests are “unhealthy” and among the indicators of forest ill-health are large acreages burning in wildfires. However, if you look back a few centuries or more, you find that we have a fire deficit. Many paleoclimate studies document major wildfires long before there was “fire suppression”. Indeed, one study by…
-
Recently I was wandering through a burnt forest in the aftermath of a wildfire with a mixed group of people as part of a field trip with a forest collaborative. We were examining the burn severity pattern that a wildfire had carved through the forest. In many places, the fire had barely charred the ground,…