Don’t Get Burned by ‘Wilder than Wild:’ Wildfire Documentary’s Omissions Mask Forest Service’s Logging Mission

The following piece was written by Douglas Bevington, author of The Rebirth of Environmentalism: Grassroots Activism from the Spotted Owl to the Polar Bear (Island Press, 2009). It was published by Counterpunch

This month, some PBS stations around the country are airing a documentary titled Wilder than Wild: Forests, Fire, and the Future. It is a one-hour film about wildfire issues in California. This is an extremely timely and important topic. Unfortunately, the filmmakers have chosen to make glaring omissions—excluding key scientific and environmental voices and leaving out essential facts—that cause their film to distort these issues more than it informs. As a result, the film gives cover to policies that are harmful to forests, dangerous for public safety, and detrimental to the climate, while steering attention away from genuine solutions.

The problems with Wilder than Wild can be traced back to filmmakers Stephen Most and Kevin White’s previous short documentary The Fire Next Time, which was about the Rim Fire. The Rim Fire was a very large forest fire that occurred in California in 2013, mainly on national forest lands that border Yosemite National Park. These are lands managed by the Forest Service. Large wildfires have become a big business for this federal agency because it can sell the burned trees to timber companies at cut-rate prices while keeping money from these sales to pad its budget.

The Forest Service saw a big opportunity in wake of the Rim Fire and proposed a massive post-fire logging project. In fact, the Forest Service sought to cut more trees in the Rim Fire area than had been cut on all of California’s national forests combined over the previous three years. Post-fire logging causes extensive ecological damage, so some environmental organizations such as the Center for Biological Diversity and the John Muir Project began working to challenge the Forest Service’s Rim Fire logging project.

Yet when the Rim Fire documentary The Fire Next Time was shown at an environmental film festival in 2015, it generated controversy because the filmmakers had not interviewed any of the environmental groups at the forefront of challenging the Rim logging project or any of the scientists researching the adverse impacts of post-fire logging. Instead, the filmmakers focused on an entity called Yosemite-Stanislaus Solutions (YSS) that was involved in promoting logging of the Rim Fire forests. YSS is an example of what is called a “collaborative.” Collaboratives bring together local logging interests and some local environmental groups to consult on Forest Service projects, and the Forest Service touts endorsements of logging by these collaboratives.

However, the role of collaboratives has received widespread criticism. Numerous environmental groups troubled by their experiences with collaboratives issued a collective statement on how collaboratives are dominated by logging interests. As a participant in a collaborative near YSS explained, “It became apparent that there was no real accountability, and the Forest Service would simply pick and choose what it wanted from the collaborative. Essentially, the collaborative served to provide cover for what the Forest Service was going to do anyway, with minor adjustments.”[1]

The underlying problems with The Fire Next Time became apparent when its script writer, Stephen Most, wrote about his experiences with the film. He explained the film’s science advisor was a Forest Service employee—Malcolm North—and the Forest Service threatened to block the filmmakers from using statements from North unless they changed the film to fit with the Forest Service’s messaging. Stephen Most candidly states that the filmmakers sought to have the Forest Service promote their film to rural audiences, so they altered their film to accommodate the Forest Service.[2]

Unfortunately, this pattern of deference to the Forest Service appears to have continued as they expanded their film into a longer version, retitled Wilder than Wild. Along the way, the filmmakers interviewed some scientists concerned by the Forest Service’s logging projects, but these segments were all left on the cutting room floor. Ultimately, the filmmakers chose to silence criticism of the Forest Service’s current actions, and instead constructed a film that fits comfortably with the Forest Service’s current messaging about forest fires. In so doing, they discarded an important opportunity to show what really happened after the Rim Fire, and, as a result, Wilder than Wild wound up with misleading conclusions about the broader implications of the Rim Fire for the climate crisis and public safety.

What Really Happened After the Rim Fire

It is shocking to compare the statements about the Rim Fire made by the Forest Service and its allies in the YSS, as presented in Wilder than Wild, with the on-the-ground reality. From the film, one gets the impression that the Rim Fire burned mainly at high severity—i.e., killing most of the trees. The reality is that the federal government’s own Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity analysis showed that less than 20% of the Rim Fire burned at high severity. In other words, while the Rim Fire had patches of high-severity effects, the majority of the fire burned at low and moderate severity. That’s how most forest fires in California burn now, and historical evidence shows that’s also how they burned prior to modern fire suppression.

Moreover, the high-severity patches in the Rim Fire created ecosystem benefits, but viewers of Wilder than Wild do not hear about those benefits. Instead, the speakers featured in Wilder than Wild portray the high-severity patches as threat to wildlife such as the spotted owl, and they use this as a justification for trying to prevent similar fires in the future. The filmmakers ignored abundant scientific research on how high-severity fire patches create excellent wildlife habitat in dead trees and understory vegetation. These areas have some the highest level of wildlife diversity and abundance of any forest type, comparable to or even greater than old-growth forests. For example, post-fire forests are great places to find the spotted owl’s prey. It should come as no surprise then to learn that Forest Service’s own surveys found large numbers of spotted owls living in the Rim Fire area after the fire. In fact, spotted owls were using the Rim Fire area at higher than average levels compared to other forests in the region. However, the filmmakers chose not to mention these findings.

Likewise, at the time that the Forest Service was developing its massive post-fire logging project, it did not properly disclose its owl survey results to the public. When groups involved in challenging the project uncovered these surveys, they discovered that the Forest Service would be logging most of the occupied spotted owl habitat. In response, the Center for Biological Diversity, John Muir Project, and California Chaparral Institute filed suit against the Forest Service over the Rim Fire logging. These groups do not appear in Wilder than Wild. Instead, the filmmakers celebrate John Buckley, a leader of Yosemite-Stanislaus Solutions, yet they do not mention that Buckley intervened against this lawsuit and in favor of allowing the logging of occupied spotted owl habitat to proceed. With help from Buckley and the YSS collaborative, the Forest Service was able to do extensive clearcutting in the Rim Fire area. Nonetheless, the environmentalists’ lawsuit helped ensure that significant portions of the post-fire forest remained uncut for the time being.

Unfortunately, the Forest Service then developed another project to cut key portions of the post-fire forests that had escaped the initial logging. This next Forest Service project was based heavily on the claim that new trees would not grow back naturally in high-severity patches from the Rim Fire. This claim was also repeated by speakers featured in Wilder than Wild. However, one can now walk through even the largest high-severity patches within the Rim area and see abundant new trees growing naturally without replanting. This growth is most apparent in the unlogged areas, whereas the natural tree regeneration often gets crushed in areas where post-logging occurs. Yet rather than show the new trees growing in the unlogged areas, the filmmakers instead selected to focus on a Forest Service-sponsored tree planting in an area that had obviously been clearcut and bulldozed after the fire, leaving only bare ground.

Likewise, despite the extensive evidence of natural regrowth, the Forest Service chose to proceed with its new project, claiming that the post-fire forests needed to be clearcut to allow for artificial tree planting. Once again, YSS members promoted the cutting. And once again, environmental groups that were not featured in Wilder than Wild, including Greenpeace, challenged the project. Their lawsuit is currently still in court. This latest case helps to illustrate key problems with Wilder than Wild’s approach to climate issues and public safety, as described below.

The Climate Crisis, Wildfire, and Logging

One of the new plaintiffs on the current lawsuit against cutting the Rim Fire forests is acclaimed climate scientist James Hansen. He joined the environmentalists’ lawsuit out of concern regarding the carbon emissions that result from cutting down the post-fire forests, and how those emissions will increase the climate crisis. Yet, Wilder than Wild is silent about the carbon emissions from Forest Service logging projects done under fire-related justifications. Instead, the film only presents some early estimates of carbon emissions from forest fires, when subsequent research has shown those initial numbers to be highly exaggerated. The filmmakers ignore science showing that forest fires produce only a small fraction of carbon emissions, whereas logging is one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gases. Thus, Wilder than Wild contributes to the problem of misinformation about wildfire being used to promote logging policies that harm the climate.

Overlooking Public Safety Solutions—Working from the Home Outward

Much as Wilder than Wild is silent about the Forest Service’s fire-related logging, it is also silent about the crucial role of home retrofits in wildfire safety. The film contains numerous images of burning buildings, but vigilant viewers may notice that the burnt houses are often surrounded by green unburned trees. While the message of the film is that fire in forests must be altered for public safety, the reality is that most houses that burn during wildfires are not igniting from contact with forest fires flames. Instead, they are mainly ignited by windblown embers, or by the flames of adjacent houses that have not taken adequate fire safety precautions from these embers. The good news is that homeowners can protect their houses from igniting by taking steps such installing fine-mesh vent screens to keep embers from getting inside the house. The effectiveness of these steps was first demonstrated by a Forest Service scientist named Jack Cohen.

As one article summarized, “Cohen thought he had come up with a way to save houses and to let fires burn naturally—he thought it was a win-win. And so in 1999, he presented a paper about his findings at a fire conference in front of people from the Forest Service and state fire agencies. These were people who were in a position to change policies. But Cohen says they were totally uninterested. Cohen’s research implied that basically everything about how the Forest Service dealt with wildfires was wrong.”

Just as the Forest Service shied away from Cohen’s findings, so too do the Wilder than Wild filmmakers remain silent about this important opportunity. The most effective actions to help communities safely coexist with fire-dependent ecosystems involve what is called “working from the home outward.” Because the home fire-safety retrofits at the center of this strategy largely take place outside of national forest lands, the home-outward approach does not provide the same opportunities for the Forest Service to boost its budget as from the forest-alteration approach celebrated by Wilder than Wild. So the forest-alteration projects of the Forest Service have gotten the lion’s share of the attention and resources when it comes to wildfire policy, whereas there has been comparative little financial assistance provided to help communities with home safety retrofits.

The aftermath of the Rim Fire provides a stark example of this problem. The Forest Service’s fire-related logging projects can be quite costly. When the Forest Service sought to pursue its second project to cut down more post-fire forests in the Rim Fire area (as described above), it was able to get funding for it in a bizarre way. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) offered grants to states for community disaster recovery and rebuilding. With the support of the Yosemite-Stanislaus Solutions members and their allies, the California state government took $28 million dollars of these HUD funds and gave them to the US Forest Service to subsidize more clearcutting of post-fire forests in remote areas, rather than helping fire-impacted communities rebuild in fire-safe ways. That is another key issue in the lawsuit by James Hansen and the environmental groups against the project. And it illustrates how the promotion of logging in fire policy can come at the expense of public safety. But once again, Wilder than Wild makes no mention of these issues, even as the filmmakers celebrate the Forest Service and YSS members who promoted this problematic project.

Alternate Resources about Fire

Ultimately, Wilder than Wild presents a distorted lens for viewers hoping to understand forest fires and their implications for climate change and public safety. Many of the film’s problems stem from what the filmmakers chose to omit. They silence the voices of key scientists and environmental groups and avoid any content that casts an unfavorable light on the Forest Service’s current approach to wildfires. For example, the Forest Service’s fire-related logging is largely unacknowledged in the film. Instead, the filmmakers focus on the role of prescribed fire in the forest-alteration policies they promote, while not mentioning how the Forest Service generally makes logging be a precondition for prescribed fire. Furthermore, the word logging is replaced with innocuous-sounding euphemisms such as “fuels reduction” and “management,” while the ecological and climate harms from fire-related logging are not discussed. Viewers should stay alert to these omissions.

Other problems stem from the way that the filmmaker’s narrative is built around significant distortions of the actual effects of the Rim Fire in order to create a bogeyman for the rest of the film. The weblinks included among the text above will give viewers tools to help identify these distortions. And PBS stations should consider airing a different Rim Fire documentary called Searching for the Gold Spot: The Wild after Wildfire to offer their viewers a fuller view of what is really occurring after large wildfires.

Another useful resource is called “6 Best Kept Secrets about Fire.” It features a series of concise short videos about key wildfire-related topics, such as Climate Change & Fire. An excellent article from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology titled “Old Flames: The Tangled History of Forest Fires, Wildlife, and People” combines interviews with scientists on the frontlines of research on fire ecology and fire safety. Teachers seeking additional materials about fire can find them at “Resources for Teaching about Forest Fires and Climate Change.” And an introduction to the importance of fire-safety home retrofits can be found in “A New Direction for California Wildfire Policy: Working from the Home Outward.”

As that report illustrates, there are sensible ways to respond to the role of wildfires amid a changing climate that are effective for public safety, ecologically appropriate for forests, and help address the climate crisis, but viewers will need to look beyond the distorted lens of Wilder than Wild to find those solutions.

Notes.

1) Bevington, Douglas, “Lessons from Groups that Litigate Logging” in 193 Million Acres, ed. Steve Wilent (Society of American Foresters, 2018), 475. 

2) Most, Stephen, Stories that Make the World: Reflections on Storytelling and the Art of Documentary (Berghahn Books, 2017), 228. 

23 thoughts on “Don’t Get Burned by ‘Wilder than Wild:’ Wildfire Documentary’s Omissions Mask Forest Service’s Logging Mission”

  1. Yes, I agree with Doug, it’s tough when people do documentaries/news stories that don’t seem fair to both sides of the issue, especially when people with your point of view are not interviewed.

    If he’d be interested, we could go through his claims point by point, as a discussion so that people could learn more about why people disagree and get a fairer perspective.

    Reply
  2. “Large wildfires have become big business for this federal agency because it can sell the burned trees to timber companies at a cut rate price and keep the money from these sales to pad it’s budget”.
    I am afraid this article has lost any credibility with me already wit this statement. Wildfires on federal lands are big business because of the hundreds of millions of dollars they spend every year fighting them. The small percentage of burnt timber that is sold I imagine does little for their budgets.

    Reply
  3. Ironically, only about 16,000 acres were initially salvaged. Lawsuits failed because the plaintiffs could not prove that mere occupancy by owls does not relate to protections. Additionally, the plaintiffs went public in saying that they did not oppose salvage logging in plantations, which were about half of the proposed acreage. The roadside hazard tree salvage and Raker Act actions cannot be lumped into the Forest Service Rim Fire plans, which fell under public review and litigation.

    Reply
  4. “…the Forest Service was able to do extensive clearcutting in the Rim Fire area.”

    I’m sure that must be where Chad Hanson and company published pictures of SPI clearcuts, claiming it was Forest Service. Yes, there ARE places near roads and power lines, where all dead trees which could damage improvements were cut, as per the Raker Act. In those hazard tree ‘clearcuts’, no green trees were cut. SHOW US the “extensive clearcutting” by the Forest Service, please. Not the private logging pictures. SHOW US on Google Maps, please!

    Reply
  5. Hmmm. No mention of the actual outcomes of the Rim Fire litigation. Cherry-pick much Mr. Koehler ? You have absolutely no credibility with your one sided garbage, making it highly ironic that you whine about a one sided film. You sir are a grade A hypocrite. Kudos to the Forest Service for their measured and common sense salvage logging, completely vindicated by the courts.

    Reply
    • In previous articles, Matt published Hanson’s photos (because Chad refuses to defend HIMSELF here). The photos were mostly debunked as private logging, and none of them were actually proven to actually be Forest Service lands. If you take the picture from the edge of roads or powerlines, it might look like a clearcut. Hanson is either a liar, or ignorant, or both. He’s desperate, after losing multiple salvage litigation cases. It’s great seeing those legal loopholes closed, and injunctions denied. I would encourage the Forest Service to get all those dead trees on the ground, after winning in local court districts. Make any appeal a moot point.

      Reply
    • Hmmmm. OkeyDOkeySMokey, if we’re going to have a name-calling contest…”You sir are a grade A” poor reader” as the blog post starts out by clearly stating: “The following piece was written by Douglas Bevington.”

      Reply
  6. “In fact, the Forest Service sought to cut more trees in the Rim Fire area than had been cut on all of California’s national forests combined over the previous three years.”

    Maybe the lunatic California Republican McClintock proposed that but, there was ZERO chance his idea would have passed, even in the House. The quote is full of ‘road apples’.

    Bevington, like Hanson, is an untrustworthy source of information.

    Reply
  7. From John Buckley
    Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center
    Twain Harte, CA

    As a 40-year environmental activist and the director for a non-profit environmental organization that has helped spare thousand of acres of old growth forests from clearcuts, helped locate rare at-risk wildlife species tn order to gain essential protection, helped get far higher minimum river flows established in local rivers through years-long hydro-electric FERC relicensing plans, and that has sued the Forest Service numerous times to protect wildlife, water quality, and wild places — I respectfully urge concerned environmentalists to look beyond the misinformation that Doug shares in his criticism of the documentary film “Wilder Than Wild.”

    In reality the film is incredibly well produced, highly accurate, and balanced in its message.

    See the film for yourself. Judge it on its merits. Consider whether Doug’s strong claims ring true.

    As a key environmental leader who participates in two local forest stakeholder collaborative groups, I was personally able to be part of negotiations with the timber industry after the Rim Fire that successfully gained agreement to a truly significant reduction in salvage logging levels from the agency-proposed 660 million board feet to instead end up with the timber industry actually supporting only 210 million board feet. The difference was staggering in the amount of dead trees left untouched in the forest. Overall, across all the federal lands that burned in that 400 square mile wildfire, at least 3/4 of all the burned forest areas never got salvage logged, but instead were left untouched. That outcome came from local environmentalists working for middle ground solutions with respect for all points of view.

    That outcome did NOT come from litigation filed by those who consistently oppose logging. The Forest Service has come to expect lawsuits from certain organizations, so making concessions does nothing to appease them. But when environmentalists build respectful relationships with loggers, local politicians, recreational interests, sportsmen, and others, middle ground solutions can often greatly benefit the environment when all stakeholders aim for win-win outcomes.

    It is disingenuous for Doug to suggest that the Forest Service and local collaborative stakeholder groups active in post-Rim Fire projects had some anti-environmental agenda besides attempting to reduce the incredible overload of forest fuels that would have otherwise been left to burn in the next wildfire.

    Earlier this week I looked at non-salvage treated forest areas in the Stanislaus Forest and I also did the same doing a watchdog site visit in Rim Fire-burned areas in Yosemite Park. Every acre is unique, but overall the combination of rotting dead trees left from the Rim Fire combined with all the rotting dead trees that resulted from drought and bark beetles has ended up totaling huge amounts of heavy woody fuels that make it that much more difficult to suppress high severity wildfires or to re-introduce natural fire back into forest areas with prescribed fire treatments.

    I could respond at length to misinformation by Doug dismissing the severity of habitat loss caused by the Rim Fire. As a conservation leader who worked for decades to protect older forest habitat and rich multi-layer forest structure for goshawks, spotted owls, pileated woodpeckers, flying squirrels, and other species, it was heartbreaking to see the Rim Fire and subsequent high severity wildfires in the region roast priceless old growth late seral habitat – in many areas creating thousands of acres with nearly every green tree killed.

    As a side note, I worked for 13 years as a wild land firefighter and not only fought more than 200 wildfires, I also spent years participating in (and lighting) prescribed fire treatments. Fire is a pivotal tool that is essential to help restore forests, and Wilder Than Wild makes that very clear. But other forest treatment tools are also essential.

    For Doug to impugn the motives of Dr. Malcom North as supposedly biased towards Forest Service wood production shows how little Doug knows about not just Malcom, but about numerous USFS research scientists who have no pro-logging agenda, but who solely are aiming to use the best science to help strategize how to use all the tools in the forest management tool-bag to better protect precious old growth forests, watersheds that are priceless for water quality, and wild land urban interface zones where forest communities are at risk from yet another Camp Fire, King Fire, Mendocino Complex, and so many other major recent fires, etc.

    There are many middle ground, balanced, and reasonable actions that the Forest Service can take to help get densely overgrown conifer forests and oak woodland/brush fields back into a more natural mosaic condition that is reflective of historic conditions where fires generally burned at lower to moderate intensity. Local forest stakeholder groups can actively participate to make sure that the Forest Service does aim for balanced solutions instead of narrowly focusing on timber outputs pushed for by some politicians.

    There is no question that the Forest Service – especially under this administration – can be aligned more with industry than with conservation values. That is why local conservation advocacy is so important.

    But to attack the veracity and value of the documentary film “Wilder Than Wild” – which spells out the need for a wide range of forest treatments to reduce the risk of another Rim Fire or other massive wildfire – is both misguided and uninformed. See the film for yourself to best judge.

    John Buckley, executive director
    CSERC

    Reply
    • Outstanding response, John but, one minor quibble.

      The Forest Service had to produce an alternative featuring ‘max timber volume’, at least for comparison. It’s not likely that it was the ‘preferred alternative’, based on the site-specific conditions. Helicopter salvage logging had already become ‘de-emphasized’ in salvage logging on large Forest Service burns, with low volumes per acre (including snag requirements). Sure, there were millions of board feet, scattered on steep slopes, with difficult access (and significant felling damage). It’s REALLY expensive to helicopter log under Forest Service rules, laws and policies, now.

      Reply
    • Thank you so much for responding, John. Many of the general claims here are ones we have heard before and are more general, e.g., “research shows that protecting houses is enough.” Or “cutting dead trees is bad for carbon.” But the more specific ones are harder for those of us not in California to understand, e.g. “they’re replanting areas that don’t need it” or “the impacts of wildfire to streams is not that bad.” So we really needed to hear from someone else with on-the-ground knowledge.

      I don’t know whether that’s happened to you, probably not, but it’s not uncommon to have your motives (e.g. North) impugned when you come to conclusions that other people (of a polemical mindset) disagree with. If you don’t want to engage with someone on you disagreement, you can criticize their knowledge (not possible with North) or their ethics, or whom they are employed by.. I guess the point is to dismiss their views and not engage them.

      Thanks again and thank you for your work.

      Reply
    • The following reply to John Buckley was written by Richard Halsey of the California Chaparral Institute. It’s shared here with Halsey’s permission and also was posted as a response to Buckley’s comment on a Sierra Club listserve, where each of these comments originally appeared.

      Mr. Buckley,

      Could you please address the factual content of Doug Bevington’s article? He provides multiple citations. Your commentary below is mostly an opinion in defense of the collaborative you are representing and a personal attack on Bevington himself.

      Could you explain what forest was involved, as you claim, in the community destruction and loss of life during the Woolsey Fire in Malibu and the Napa-Santa Rosa Fires (especially the destruction of Coffey Park)?

      Can you explain what role forests played in creating the ember rain that destroyed Paradise in the Camp Fire? The fire burned over 8 miles and 30,000 acres of a salvaged logged, 10-year-old post fire landscape before the town began to burn from the embers generated during that run.

      Please reconsider your perceptions of what you think Bevington wrote about Malcolm North. Here’s what’s actually in the article when it mentions North while describing the script writer’s experience:

      “He explained the film’s science advisor was a Forest Service employee—Malcolm North—and the Forest Service threatened to block the filmmakers from using statements from North unless they changed the film to fit with the Forest Service’s messaging.”

      The article is saying the USFS is biased, something you also suggest at the end of your commentary.

      We were unaware that you and the group you are representing were responsible for stopping most of the salvage logging after the Rim Fire. It’s our understanding that it was public comment and threats of lawsuits (which the John Muir Project, we and others eventually filed) that did the trick. Can you provide evidence to the contrary?

      The film is not a documentary, but rather a biased narrative that conforms to USFS propaganda. How could it be anything else when it failed to offer a full examination of the science, especially the science that is contrary to the USFS political views?

      As the data Bevington cites demonstrates, the Rim Fire was not the disaster you describe. Please allow rich, post-fire habitats to thrive. All of them. The trees will return, just not tomorrow.

      Rick
      California Chaparral Institute
      Escondido, CA
      http://www.californiachaparral.org

      Reply
      • I have already shown where the Camp Fire burned through overstocked and unhealthy USFS forests before it even reached one of SPI’s clearcuts. Once again, a wildfire pushed by 60 mph winds will burn through ANY kind of forest. Also, the idea that the Camp Fire would have ended up differently if no private salvage logging had been done is ludicrous. I also did not see where ANY Forest Service salvage project affected the Camp Fire, whatsoever. I also contend that if SPI did not salvage their dead trees, the Camp Fire would have been far worse.

        Additionally, comparing Napa/Sonoma wildfires to the Rim Fire is also quite ridiculous. The Rim Fire did not include a wind event, other than the ‘normal’ winds generated by the firestorm and the terrain.

        Reply
  8. Rick, I didn’t see the personal attack on Bevington himself. Could you quote?

    I don’t see what the below has to do with the discussion…could you explain?
    “Could you explain what forest was involved, as you claim, in the community destruction and loss of life during the Woolsey Fire in Malibu and the Napa-Santa Rosa Fires (especially the destruction of Coffey Park)?

    Can you explain what role forests played in creating the ember rain that destroyed Paradise in the Camp Fire? The fire burned over 8 miles and 30,000 acres of a salvaged logged, 10-year-old post fire landscape before the town began to burn from the embers generated during that run.”

    As to the below, aren’t most salvage projects in California litigated? It’s an important question, would people collaborate without litigation as a hammer? Still, in many areas of the country, people collaborate because they think the outcome is better, because they believe that all involved should be heard. Sometimes groups still litigate, but collaborators and the FS feel that it is a better decision because of the collaboration.

    Even in places where groups almost always litigate, some people feel that decisions are better if done in public with engaged and knowledgeable people, rather than behind closed doors with lawyers in a settlement (and the public, except for those who can afford attorneys and intervene, excluded).

    “We were unaware that you and the group you are representing were responsible for stopping most of the salvage logging after the Rim Fire. It’s our understanding that it was public comment and threats of lawsuits (which the John Muir Project, we and others eventually filed) that did the trick. Can you provide evidence to the contrary?”

    That’s an interesting assertion, but again, in places where frequent litigants do their business, the FS often gives up on satisfying them via concessions, and focuses their attention on litigation-proofing documents.

    “The film is not a documentary, but rather a biased narrative that conforms to USFS propaganda. How could it be anything else when it failed to offer a full examination of the science, especially the science that is contrary to the USFS political views?”

    Many documentaries do not agree with my views and seem biased to me, but they are still documentaries. Let’s imagine a documentary with the “full examination of “the science””. We’ve had many of these discussions before on TWS- frankly they wouldn’t make for good TV.

    It seems to me that the only way we are going to get past rhetoric is to go one by one through the claims. I have offered to do that (with help from people more knowledgeable about the Rim Fire) but so far no one has taken me up on it. Fortunately, many of the claims in the Bevington piece have already been discussed on TWS.

    Reply
  9. There are numerous misleading and incorrect statements about Wilder than Wild in Bevington’s critique. For example he claims that the film promotes logging policies that harm the climate. The film says nothing about logging at all. And Bevington says one gets the impression that the Rim Fire burned mainly at high severity. In fact, there is a major sequence on ecologically beneficial effects of the Rim Fire. I urge readers to see Wilder than Wild, which recently began a round of PBS broadcasts across the US. For more information, check out our website: http://www.wilderthanwildfilm.org.

    Bevington does note correctly that some scientists who were interviewed for the film did not make the cut. But he fails to give full disclosure. One of those scientists is his associate Chad Hanson. A sequence in which Hanson speaks about a snag forest in the Rim Fire burn area was edited into the film until we had to drop some content in order to cover the wine country wildfires.

    I wrote about the making of Wilder than Wild in the last chapter of Stories Make the World, Reflections on Storytelling and the Art of the Documentary. Another chapter gives a history of impartiality, which I and many filmmakers regard as a crucial value in documentary making. The last chapter includes an account of the film’s relationship with Chad Hanson. Here is an excerpt:

    The claim that “The Fire Next Time” lacks “scientific accuracy” came from Chad Hanson and Rachel Fazio, whose John Muir Project uses Earth Island’s non-profit status. Hanson and Fazio, who both have law degrees, unsuccessfully sued the Forest Service, attempting to stop its post-Rim Fire recovery efforts. They did so citing scientific studies. “Patches of high intensity fire, wherein most or all trees are killed, creates [sic] ‘snag forest habitat,'” explained Hanson in Earth Island Journal, and this is “one of the most ecologically important forest habitat types.” He had a point. Severe natural disturbances, like the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, can generate rampant growth. As one study observes, “species-diverse plant communities develop because substantial amounts of previously limited resources (light, moisture, and nutrients) become available.” From Hanson’s perspective, the expanses of snag forest left in the wake of the Rim Fire provide such crucial habitat for black-backed woodpeckers and other species that those who, like John Buckley, lament the megafire’s incineration of old growth forests are wrong to do so.
    Hanson’s problem with “The Fire Next Time” was not scientific accuracy but rather its representation of a megafire’s negative consequences. Hanson minimizes the loss of carbon storage and the destruction of old-growth forests and instead emphasizes the wildlife habitat snag forests provide—a claim that his studies substantiate. The real issue between us was our choice as opposed to his and Fazio’s of which facts are important. That difference depends upon our respective worldviews.
    When Kevin White and I interviewed Hanson for our broadcast-length documentary about megafires, Wilder Than Wild, he said, “Most of what the public thinks about wildland fire and therefore most of what the policymakers think, and land managers, and the media thinks is basically based on mythology.” He would have us believe that unlike those who have had first-hand experience working with fire and land management throughout their careers, whose views he dismisses as mythology, his thinking is based on science. Yet his claim that the knowledge of those who do not share his worldview consists of opinions—or, as he puts it, a mythology—is an opinion that none of his facts substantiate.
    The failure to distinguish between fact and opinion is characteristic of an era in which information is limitless in quantity, immediately available, and removed from contexts that ground it in reality. Self-reinforcing mindsets pick and choose whichever facts lend them credibility while ignoring the commitment to factual truth on which science is based. Absent the recognition that opinions contrary to one’s own may be based on facts one does not know, a person is caught within the whirlpool of a closed worldview.
    A crucial distinction between worldviews divides those that are low context, focusing on a particular interest or issue, from those that are high context, taking all potentially relevant considerations into account. Advocacy, which is the job of a lawyer, and impartiality, which is the responsibility of a scientist, are often on opposite shores of this gulf, although there is also high-context advocacy, like that of politicians who understand the full range of their constituents’ interests and issues, and no- to low-context impartiality, as is found among narrowly specialized scientists and doctors who examine symptoms while disregarding information about a patient’s life. Low-context advocates like Hanson dismiss every fact that contradicts the assertions that make their case. Documentary filmmakers, like high-context scientists who seek out contradictory facts in order to attain knowledge and develop theories, acknowledge every valid perspective in attempting to grasp the big picture.

    Reply
    • Great response, Stephen! Particularly the last paragraph. As a veteran of many salvage projects, over the decades, it is my opinion that Forest Service salvage projects are merely an exercise in snag thinning. Hanson has become desperate and has slipped into dishonorable practices to push his agenda-based science. I’ve always welcomed objective science truths to shape my opinions, as well as translating to actions on the ground.

      Reply
    • This paragraph is a keeper — well said! Not merely for this discussion, but so many others as well.

      “The failure to distinguish between fact and opinion is characteristic of an era in which information is limitless in quantity, immediately available, and removed from contexts that ground it in reality. Self-reinforcing mindsets pick and choose whichever facts lend them credibility while ignoring the commitment to factual truth on which science is based. Absent the recognition that opinions contrary to one’s own may be based on facts one does not know, a person is caught within the whirlpool of a closed worldview.”

      Reply
    • Thank you so much for your thoughtful response, Stephen. This whole discussion made me put the screening of Wilder Than Wild on my calendar.

      Just a few thoughts, building on what you said:

      1. Hanson et al. use scientific means of gathering data in support of their policy positions. So it is very difficult to get into a discussion with different framings of the issue or issues under consideration- or even to interject that there are a variety of disciplines involved in fire whose points of view are just as scientific. Here’s a previous TSW post, and Matthew posted the relevant E&E story in the comments. https://forestpolicypub.com/2017/08/08/chad-hanson-activists-quixote-like-goal-no-logging-on-public-lands/

      2. I think you hit the nail on the head with
      “Hanson’s problem with “The Fire Next Time” was not scientific accuracy but rather its representation of a megafire’s negative consequences. Hanson minimizes the loss of carbon storage and the destruction of old-growth forests and instead emphasizes the wildlife habitat snag forests provide—a claim that his studies substantiate. The real issue between us was our choice as opposed to his and Fazio’s of which facts are important. That difference depends upon our respective worldviews.”

      Most of us have seen that wildfires can have good and bad effects to humans, other organisms, soils, and watersheds. Almost all people want to increase the good effects and minimize the bad effects through management, including prescribed fire, fuel treatments, WFU and fire suppression. But some people (say Denver Water, a local community, or aficionados of a species) are more interested in some things than other things. We are all entitled to our values.

      But fundamentally, “how many snags are enough?” is not a science question. Enough for what? At the expense of what other values? As Larry and others have observed, there is no shortage of snags in the Sierra. We might ask Hanson, “pick a number and we’ll let you know when the total snags fall below that number.” Or perhaps “x snags evenly distributed (or not) over y acres.” But why?

      And then we might ask him on what basis he selected those number. And that would be a great discussion to have. But we can’t have that in-depth discussion as the biz of science only has peer-reviewed paper exchanges as an (ineffective) conflict resolution tool. If science is supposed to influence policy- and yet practitioners, stakeholders, and scientists with differing views can’t weigh in to a rollicking discussion of the framing, design, analysis and so on.. it’s a system with obvious flaws.

      4. I find the idea that “all the people who work in this field are wrong and I’m right” a little low on the humility side. Or you can do a thought experiment: what if someone said that about climate scientists? The nicest word they would probably use about a person like that would probably be “curmudgeon.” Social media outfits would block their posts.

      And yet, many in the media find Hanson’s message appealing. I think it’s worth reflecting on why that would be. Which disciplines have credibility to whom and why?

      Reply
  10. “But fundamentally, “how many snags are enough?” is not a science question.” No, on national forest lands it’s a legal question. There must be enough snags to sustain the ecosystem, which means within the natural range of variation. That frames the question, so have the debate. (It seems to me the hard question is the scale or distribution over time, which should be based on some sustainable disturbance regime – which I think ought to be the foundation of forest planning.)

    Reply
    • No, no no…you have to define what “ecosystem” you are “sustaining”, and what “natural range of variation” is.. Native American burning practices? Early 20th century human? Those are just abstractions. They are abstractions which were put into regulation because they are abstractions used by (some) scientists. So now they are legal, albeit still undefined in practicality or possibly undefinable.

      Reply
      • There still seems to be people out there who want a pre-human landscape, in this world dominated by humans. Clearly, such a desire can never be ‘sustainable’. Our Sierra Nevada forests have been manipulated ever since the last glaciers receded. That manipulation is often considered to be “natural”, by some.

        Reply
  11. Yes, yes, yes … here is how the Flathead defined NRV for snags (or at least I assume that from the fact that NRV is a requirement and this is what they put in their plan; they also identified historic snag amounts in the Assessment, which forms the basis of plan components).

    “Table 10. Desired minimum in average snags per acre of conifer species, as measured across all forested acres of the Forest, by forest dominance type, potential vegetation type, and snag diameter (p.34).” There is also a narrative in the desired condition (FW-DC-TE&V-15) that addresses distributional questions (though I would rather see these quantified in the table as well).
    https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fseprd603490.pdf

    Not abstract at all.

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Jon Haber Cancel reply