Tag: thinning

  • Forest Thinning Will Increase Wildfire Risk

    - by Charles Thomas, The Ore­gon­ian As fires again rage across the West, sen­a­tors from John McCain, R‑Ariz., to Ron Wyden, D‑Ore., echo the refrain “thin the forests” to pre­vent wild­fires. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, most of the advo­cat­ed thin­ning will actu­al­ly stoke the wild­fires of the future rather than lessen their occur­rence and impacts. Thin­ning pre­scrip­tions pro­posed in…

  • Farm Bill Based on Flawed Assumptions about Forest Health and Wildfire

    - by George Wuerthner There are wide­ly held assump­tions that log­ging will reduce or pre­clude large wild­fires and bee­tle out­breaks. The recent Farm Bill pro­vi­sion that would allow cat­e­gor­i­cal exclu­sion to log up to 3000 acres with­out NEPA review is based on flawed assump­tions about for­est health and wildfire.  1. LARGE WILDFIRE CLIMATE DRIVEN Large…