Wildfire
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Oregon State University (OSU) published a series of essays, “Not All Flames Are the Same,” on wildfire in Oregon. While the essays are written about Oregon forests, most of the main ideas about wildfire represented in the publications are similar to the propaganda found across the West. Like many forestry schools, the authors promote the…
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Senators Curtis, Hickenlooper, Padilla, and Sheehy introduced Senate 1462 Fix Our Forests Act (FOFA) legislation. Similar legislation has already passed the House of Representatives. FOFA is a solution looking for a problem. Unfortunately, our forests do not have problems; even if they did, FOFA would not fix them. The idea that logging and prescribed burns…
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In March, President Trump declared a national emergency by Executive Order to speed up the logging of our national forests. The order affects more than 112 million acres, larger than the entire state of California. It would remove or nullify most environmental safeguards on our national forests. Trump’s order exempts objections to timber sales by…
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On April 3rd, the Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, issued an Emergency Order (EO) to accelerate logging on national forest lands. The alleged emergency is the presumed increase in wildfires across the West. Unfortunately, most of the rationales for this “emergency” are based on flawed assumptions about “active” management (better known as logging) and wildfires.…
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The recent blaze that destroyed much of Altadena, California was an urban fire ignited by wind-driven embers. Photo by George Wuerthner A new report from Headwaters Economics concludes that 1,100 communities scattered across the country are vulnerable to urban wildfires, such as the recent Altadena and Pacific Palisades blazes in California. While the origins of…
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Here we go again. Yet another article “Bill plans to use livestock grazing to lower wildfire risk” about how livestock grazing can reduce wildfires. It seems that every month or so, someone (without much knowledge of fire ecology or even grazing impacts) rediscovers the fairy tale that fuel reduction by grazing will preclude large wildfires.…
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On January 7th, Santa Ana winds up to 100 mph whipped across the San Gabriel Mountains near Los Angeles. A blaze ignited in Eaton Canyon created a shower of embers that rained down on the community of Altadena that destroyed more than 9,000 structures and killed 17 people. The source of the blaze is still…
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Congress is considering Fix Our Forests legislation. The legislation is a Trojan Horse that seeks to increase fuel reductions on public lands through logging and prescribed burns. However, large wildfires are ultimately not controlled by fuels. Fires need fuel to ignite, but they only spread when the climate/weather is conducive to ignition and the spread…
