{"id":31959,"date":"2018-03-06T06:43:19","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T11:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=31959"},"modified":"2018-03-06T06:43:19","modified_gmt":"2018-03-06T11:43:19","slug":"logging-cant-restore-burnt-forests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=31959","title":{"rendered":"Logging Can\u2019t Restore Burnt Forests"},"content":{"rendered":"

Logging Can\u2019t Restore Burnt Forests<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Photo by USDA Forest Service Alaska | CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Every time I drive up to Mount Bachelor in Central Oregon I pass the Deschutes National Forest\u2019s logging and mastication projects. The Forest Service and the Deschutes Collaborative suggest they are \u201cthinning\u201d the forest to preclude large wildfires and to \u201crestore it.\u201d (The collaborative is a working group of various stakeholders who advise the Forest Service about\u00a0management<\/a>\u00a0issues.)<\/p>\n

Neither of these assertions is accurate. What they are creating is tree plantations of largely even-aged trees \u2014 all done in the name of \u201cfixing\u201d the forest.<\/p>\n

The first myth they are selling to the public is that logging can preclude large wildfires. There is a host of research \u2014 much by Forest Service\u2019s own fire researchers as well as other ecologists \u2014 that concludes that under \u201cextreme fire weather\u201d nothing stops a wildfire.<\/p>\n

When you have high temps, low humidity, drought and high winds, wildfires are unstoppable. It does not matter how much \u201cthinning\u201d or other fuel treatment you have done; wildfires will charge through, over and around any \u201cfire break.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it appears that a fire break has stopped a blaze, check again. Almost always, the weather has changed. It is\u00a0weather<\/a>\u00a0change, not firefighting, that allows humans to stop large wildfires.<\/p>\n

I just visited the Thomas Fire in Southern California, the largest blaze in recent California history. Despite thousands of firefighters, and numerous fire breaks along the pathway of the fire, including 12-lane freeways, the only fire break that halted the Thomas Fire was the Pacific Ocean!<\/p>\n

The only way to protect Bend and other communities is through mandatory firewise regulations that include nonflammable roofs, removal of flammable materials from near\u00a0homes<\/a>, and planning for rapid evacuation in the event of a wind-driven blaze.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Logging Can\u2019t Restore Burnt Forests Photo by USDA Forest Service Alaska | CC BY 2.0 Every time I drive up to Mount Bachelor in Central Oregon I pass the Deschutes National Forest\u2019s logging and mastication projects. The Forest Service and the Deschutes Collaborative suggest they are \u201cthinning\u201d the forest to preclude large wildfires and to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5493,6008,7540,4553,11571,1595],"class_list":["post-31959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-counterpunch","tag-forest-fires","tag-forestry","tag-forests","tag-george-wuerthner","tag-logging"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31959"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31960,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31959\/revisions\/31960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}