New York Times today: “At Yosemite, a Preservation Plan That Calls for Chain Saws: With treasured forests perennially threatened by fierce wildfires, many experts say it’s time to cut and burn protectively. A lawsuit is standing in the way.” It’s subscription only, unfortunately. Excerpts:
A judge this month temporarily halted the park’s biomass removal efforts, as the tree cutting was euphemistically known, in response to a lawsuit filed by an environmental group based in Berkeley, Calif., that argues that the park did not properly review the impacts. The thinning project covers less than 1 percent of Yosemite’s forests.
Whether or not the lawsuit proves successful, it is resonating well outside of the park’s boundaries by raising larger questions about how to manage forests in the age of climate change.
Increasingly, leading forestry experts are propounding a view dissonant to a public accustomed to the idea of preserving the country’s wild lands: Sometimes you have to cut trees to save trees. And burn forests to save forests, they say.
The polarization during the Trump administration between climate scientists and a president who downplayed rising temperatures and stressed the need for greater forest management, or “raking” as former President Donald J. Trump once called it, has passed for now. It has given way to what many experts say is a consensus among scientists and political leaders on the need to thin and burn forests more proactively.
“Most of us are absolutely convinced that this is not only a good thing to do, but is absolutely necessary,” said John Battles, a professor of forest ecology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a science adviser to the California Wildfire & Forest Resilience Task Force.
…
About a century ago, the National Park Service, which manages Yosemite, effectively made a promise to the American people that it would keep valued places looking “more or less like they always did,” said Nate Stephenson, a scientist emeritus in forest ecology for the United States Geological Survey. The act of Congress that established the National Park Service in 1916 called on parks to remain “unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”
But, Dr. Stephenson added, “in this era of rapid and intense environmental changes, that promise is falling apart.”
Central to the thinking of scientists looking for ways to protect forests is research showing that the “natural state” of America’s wild lands was for millenniums influenced by humankind.
Decades of research have shown that the wilderness appreciated by early European settlers, as well as 19th century naturalists like John Muir, was often a highly managed landscape. Core samples from beneath a pond in Yosemite, retrieved in the way that scientists might bore deep into a glacier, showed centuries of layers of pollen and ash. The findings suggested a long history of frequent fires in Yosemite and buttressed the oral histories of Native American tribes who have long seen fire as a tool.
…
“Not all trees are good and not all fire is bad,” said Britta Dyer, a forest regeneration specialist at American Forests, a nonprofit organization that promotes the use of forests to slow climate change.
…
In the iconic Yosemite Valley, with its glacier-carved granite walls, vertiginous waterfalls and flowering meadows, Garrett Dickman, a forest ecologist at the park, is leading an effort to restore the area to what it looked like more than a century ago, when it was sculpted by native burning practices.
Mr. Dickman uses some of the earliest photographs and paintings of the valley to guide him in deciding whether trees need to be felled.
Photos by Carleton Watkins in the 1860s were viewed by Abraham Lincoln and helped convince the president of the need to declare Yosemite a protected public trust, a prelude to it becoming a national park. Mr. Dickman uses the same photos today.
“I will quite literally take the photo and look at where I think the view is and mark the trees that I think need to be removed to restore the vista,” Mr. Dickman said.
Live trees that are thicker than 20 inches are never felled, Mr. Dickman said. He has calculated that if he cannot wrap his arms around a tree it usually is too large to qualify for cutting.
…
Dr. [Chad] Hanson, who is well known among conservationists and loggers for the frequency of his lawsuits, takes a more conservative view.
One of his main arguments is that a heavily thinned forest is more vulnerable to fire, not less, because the cooling shade of the canopy is reduced, as is the windbreak. Other experts say that while cutting down trees can in theory create drier, windier conditions, forests in the West are already very dry for much of the fire season. They also say that even if wind speeds do increase, it is rarely enough to overcome the benefits of having reduced the amount of vegetation that can burn.
Dr. Hanson agrees that within 100 feet of homes, selectively thinning seedlings and saplings, and even removing lower limbs on mature trees, is essential to create “defensible space.” But he argues that instead of lopping down large trees, forest managers should allow more wild land fires to progress naturally.
“Natural processes are meant to be the primary approach,” Dr. Hanson said. “Not chain saws and bulldozers and clear cuts.”
A number of environmental groups, however, counter that they support careful forest thinning, including Save the Redwoods League, a group that advocates for preserving redwood and giant sequoia forests, and the Nature Conservancy, an environmental nonprofit.
Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Nature Conservancy, said it was “exhausting” having to confront Dr. Hanson’s flurry of arguments and litigation. He added, “It is a waste of time.” Other experts have published critiques of Dr. Hanson’s methodology.
I fault the NYT (and others) for continually going to Hanson when there are other researchers making the point that logging to reduce fires is not as simple as it sounds.
Also, I would hope that supporters of thinning acknowledge the reasonable concern that, even if it’s a good idea, lumber companies will prioritize profit maximization over biodiversity or other environmental values, and they’ll need to be kept under close watch and on a very short leash.
From “A 2021 Horizon Scan of Emerging Global Biological Conservation Issues”
https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-5347(20)30306-2
Increased Logging in Response to Fire Risk
As the frequency, size, and intensity of forest wildfires increase globally, emerging policies reflect the suggestion that tree removal may reduce the magnitude of these fires and therefore decrease human mortality and economic losses. The effectiveness of logging or thinning trees is uncertain. For example, logging or thinning exacerbates fire risk [40] and has limited potential to reduce fire severity in the western USA [41]. Moreover, any short-term reduction of the risk of fire from tree removal often is offset by the expansion of non-native, invasive grasses and herbaceous flowering plants (e.g., [42]), which themselves may be highly flammable. Media coverage may strongly affect public perceptions of the effectiveness of tree removal despite the limited scientific evidence. In the USA and Australia, for example, media coverage of fuels management policies emphasised the potential that such policies not only could reduce the risk of extreme wildfires but could justify increases in logging [40.,43.]. Given the recent increase in extreme fires worldwide, including in central Africa, South America, southern Australia, Russia, the USA, and Canada, and the evidence that such fires will increase in extent, frequency, and severity because of anthropogenic climate change, extensive tree removal in the name of protection from fire may become increasingly likely.
Of course, fire safety is just one benefit of properly planned and executed thinning projects. People often don’t understand and discount the silvicultural benefits, which never get ‘monetized’ by the media, or even scientific circles. There’s also the intangible benefits to having a healthy forest ecosystem, brought into better balance through scientific forest management.
Yet ANOTHER example of Hanson lumping Forest Service “thin from below” projects in with SPI’s clearcuts. It seems to be a common tactic, these days, to generate donations. He would litigate USFS commercial thinning projects…. if he felt he could actually win. *smirk*
(It is also ‘interesting’ that Hanson is almost ‘villainized’ in the excerpt.)
The last quote in the article, from Cicely Muldoon, superintendent of Yosemite, is illuminating: “doing nothing is really doing something.”
And what about leaving the park “unimpaired” for future generations?
“It’s a tricky word,” she said. In the early years of the park service, Ms. Muldoon said, unimpaired would have meant “leave it exactly as it is out there, don’t touch anything.”
“But if we’ve learned anything it’s that we have been touching these lands forever — humanity has — and doing nothing is really doing something.”
“Doing nothing is really doing something,” and usually with predictable results. Western Oregon and northern California public forests are good examples.
Chad Hanson and a co-author have an op-ed in the NY Times today (subscription), with familiar claims. You have to give him credit for persistence.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/30/opinion/california-wildfires-oak-fire-yosemite-sequoias.html
For example:
The truth is that logging activities tend to increase, not decrease, extreme fires, by reducing the windbreak effect that denser forests have, for example, and by bringing in highly combustible invasive grasses that are spread by logging machinery.
Yet federal land agencies, like the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service, are under significant political pressure to conduct commercial logging operations that benefit timber companies but tend to exacerbate overall fire severity. In December 2018, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing the Forest Service and the Interior Department to prioritize and expand commercial logging operations on public lands, targeting mature and old trees and forests with chain saws and bulldozers.
Yosemite National Park subsequently began an unprecedented commercial logging program, with the park’s superintendent, Cicely Muldoon, agreeing in August 2021 to initiate projects on over 2,000 acres of forest in the Yosemite Valley area under the auspices of thinning, with no prior public notice, comment opportunity or environmental analysis of impacts.
It’s a desperate cry for donations, because he hasn’t been winning court cases, lately. It is amusing that Hanson is becoming more known for his litigation than his scientific ‘prowess’. Seeking to prevent wildfires through the ‘Air’ side of the fire triangle seems like a fool’s quest, based on the Laws of Physics.
I give Steve credit for his persistent obsession with Dr. Chad Hanson. I also give Steve credit for continually only telling part of the story in his never ending quest to disparage Dr. Chad Hanson. The “co-author” of the oped is Dr. Michael Dorsey, the Rob and Melani Walton Sustainability Solutions Service Chair with a concurrent appointment as Professor of Practice in the College of Global Futures at Arizona State University.
Also, the full NY Times oped is below. As you can see, there are about 20 links within the oped where people can read more about this issue and see some science and the fact that hundreds of scientists and groups agree with what Dr. Chad Hanson has been saying for decades. Steve, why don’t you write a rebuttal and try and get it published in the NY Times?
The Case Against Commercial Logging in Wildfire-Prone Forests
By Chad Hanson and Michael Dorsey
Dr. Hanson is a research ecologist with the John Muir Project, a subsidiary of Earth Island Institute. Dr. Dorsey is the director and chair of the Rob and Melani Walton Sustainability Solutions Service at Arizona State University.
When the Oak fire swept through more than 10,000 acres southwest of Yosemite National Park last weekend, it burned through forests where widespread logging, including commercial thinning, accelerated in recent decades. Much of the forest canopy had been removed, exposing the remaining vegetation to more direct sunlight and creating hotter, drier and windier conditions that favor the spread of flames.
But when the blaze reached the area hit by the Ferguson fire of 2018, it slowed to burning about 1,000 acres a day. The previous fire had left less available kindling such as dry leaves, pine needles, twigs and saplings on the forest floor.
The public has fretted about the threat that the Oak fire, which has burned over 19,000 acres and is less than 50 percent contained, poses to the famed Mariposa giant sequoia grove in Yosemite. One of the logging industry’s allies in Congress, Representative Scott Peters, Democrat of California, is trying to exploit the concern about giant sequoias, a species that depends on wildfires to effectively reproduce, to promote a series of sweeping commercial logging measures and environmental rollbacks under the guise of wildfire management.
The truth is that logging activities tend to increase, not decrease, extreme fires, by reducing the windbreak effect that denser forests have, for example, and by bringing in highly combustible invasive grasses that are spread by logging machinery.
Yet federal land agencies, like the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service, are under significant political pressure to conduct commercial logging operations that benefit timber companies but tend to exacerbate overall fire severity. In December 2018, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing the Forest Service and the Interior Department to prioritize and expand commercial logging operations on public lands, targeting mature and old trees and forests with chain saws and bulldozers.
Yosemite National Park subsequently began an unprecedented commercial logging program, with the park’s superintendent, Cicely Muldoon, agreeing in August 2021 to initiate projects on over 2,000 acres of forest in the Yosemite Valley area under the auspices of thinning, with no prior public notice, comment opportunity or environmental analysis of impacts.
That meant that as visitors arrived in Yosemite National Park this spring, they were met with a jarring sight in a crown jewel of the nation’s beloved national park system. Fully loaded logging trucks roared along the roads as commercial logging crews felled countless mature trees — some of them over five feet in diameter — and hauled them to lumber mills and power plants where they’d be burned in the Sierra Nevada foothills. That logging was then temporarily halted in early July by a lawsuit led by one of us and filed by the Earth Island Institute.
The effects were not limited to increasing the risk of more intense wildfires. Groups of giant dinosaurlike logging machines called feller-bunchers were also clear-cutting ecologically vital patches of forest, upon which many kinds of native wildlife, such as woodpeckers and bluebirds, depend for their survival.
Then, in June, a group of House Democrats and Republicans aligned with the logging industry and led by Representative Kevin McCarthy and several others introduced the deceptively named Save Our Sequoias Act. The act would curtail environmental laws, facilitate commercial logging of mature and old-growth trees and hasten postfire clear-cut logging in giant sequoia groves in Yosemite National Park, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park and national forests. In a letter dated June 17, over 80 environmental groups strongly opposed this destructive logging bill, for which its sponsors are trying to gather additional support in Congress.
Federal land agencies like the Forest Service and scientists funded by this agency have promoted logging for decades, dubbing it wildfire management or biomass thinning. The Forest Service is even in the commercial logging business, selling trees to private logging companies and keeping the revenue for its budget. In a case that involved Earth Island Institute, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit warned that the Forest Service has a “substantial financial interest,” in logging, one that creates bias regarding wildfire science.
In fact, a large and growing body of scientific research and evidence shows that these logging practices are making things worse. Last fall over 200 scientists and ecologists, including us, warned the Biden administration and Congress that logging activities such as commercial thinning reduce the cooling shade of the forest canopy and change a forest’s microclimate in ways that tend to increase wildfire intensity.
Logging emits three times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per acre as wildfire alone. Most of the tree parts unusable for lumber — the branches, tops, bark and sawdust from milling — are burned for energy, sending large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. In contrast, wildfire releases a surprisingly small amount of the carbon in trees, less than 2 percent. Logging in U.S. forests is now responsible for as much annual greenhouse gas emissions as burning coal.
Worryingly, the Biden administration announced in January a proposal to spend $50 billion of taxpayer money to log as much as 50 million acres of U.S. forests over the next decade, again using the wildfire management narrative as a justification. Under this plan, which congressional backers are attempting to enact in piecemeal fashion in different legislative packages — including a wildfire and drought package passed by the House on Friday and the new climate and tax deal in the Senate — most of the logging would occur on public forests, including national forests and national parks.
The president and Congress must instead increase forest protections from logging to reduce carbon emissions and allow intact forests to absorb more of the excess carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. A failure to do so will put countless species at risk, worsen global warming and increase threats of wildfire to vulnerable towns. Current logging subsidies should be redirected into programs to directly help communities become fire safe.
Such policies could have prevented the loss of over 100 homes in the Oak fire. After all, fires occur in forests, as they have done for millenniums. Assuming otherwise is like living at the coast and expecting no hurricanes. We need to help communities prepare.
“… we demonstrate that Hanson et al. (2018) used erroneous data, inadequate statistical analyses and faulty inferences to reach their conclusion that the King Fire did not affect spotted owls and, more broadly, that large, high-severity fires do not pose risks to spotted owls in western North American dry forest ecosystems.”
From “Megafire effects on spotted owls: elucidation of a growing threat and a response to Hanson et al. (2018),” by Gavin M. Jones, R. J. Gutiérrez, H. Anu Kramer, Douglas J. Tempel, William J. Berigan, Sheila A. Whitmore, M. Zachariah Peery, Nature Conservation, 2019
https://natureconservation.pensoft.net/article/32741/
See also:
“Jones et al. “Megafire” paper is bad science”
https://www.wildnatureinstitute.org/blog/jones-et-al-megafire-paper-is-bad-science
A paper by Gavin Jones et al. “Megafires: an emerging threat to old-forest species” claims to describe negative effects of the 2014 King fire on California spotted owl occupancy and space use. There are several papers by other authors documenting how severe fire has little or no effect on spotted owl occupancy, and that they forage in high severity patches preferentially or in proportion to availability (Lee 2018). Jones et al. (2016) claim their data describe a strong negative impact of severe fire on spotted owls. The paper has fatal flaws in their analyses that render their results and discussion unreliable.
• Only 1 year of post-fire data which was erroneously compared with the mean occupancy rate of all previous years.
• Very small sample sizes. Authors of “Megafires: an emerging threat to old-forest species” are making a claim of large extinction effects from 8 severely burned, previously occupied sites, versus 9 unburned sites. Jones et al. fail to mention the high levels of post-fire logging that occurred in half of the burned sites. 4 of these 8 sites (those with the greatest amount of high-severity fire) had an average of 22% post-fire logging.
• Excluding known temporal trends from the occupancy analysis is the most onerous fatal flaw. Jones et al. neglected to include the temporal trend effect in colonization and extinction rates that were described in Tempel & Gutierrez 2013 using the same data up to 2010 as were used by Jones et al. (2016).
See also:
“Disentangling Post-Fire Logging and High-Severity Fire Effects for Spotted Owls”
https://www.wildnatureinstitute.org/uploads/5/5/7/7/5577192/hanson_et_al_2021_pf_logging_vs_sev_fire_cso.pdf
“Jones et al. did not dispute the main finding of Hanson et al., that post-fire logging adversely affects spotted owl occupancy, nor did Jones et al. dispute the data from Hanson et al. for seven of the eight fire areas studied. Rather, Jones et al. focused on a small subset of owl sites in a single fire, the King fire.
The authors criticized Hanson et al. for excluding four spotted owl sites with >80% high-severity fire in the King fire, speculating that the inclusion of these four sites (PLA050, PLA065, PLA067, and PLA113) would have shown “a negative effect of high-severity fire” on spotted owl occupancy, since all four of them were unoccupied in the year after the King fire. However, all four of these sites had been post-fire logged, with an average of 22% post-fire logging per site. Therefore, these sites could not have been included in the Hanson et al. analysis of high severity fire effects, since that analysis explicitly pertained to sites without the confounding influence of post-fire logging.”
“… logging activities such as commercial thinning reduce the overstocked conditions of the forest canopy and restore a forest’s microclimate in ways that tend to lessen wildfire intensity.”
Fixed it!