Farm Bill Based on Flawed Assumptions about Forest Health and Wildfire
- by George Wuerthner
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"111","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"338","style":"width: 333px; height: 300px; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: Doug Bevington","width":"450"}}]]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 fires are driven by climatic/weather conditions that completely overwhelm fuels. Changing fuels does not prevent large fires and seldom significantly reduces the outcome of these large fires. The climatic/weather factors driving large blazes are drought, low humidity, high temperatures and most importantly high winds. High wind is the critical factor because winds will blow burning embers over, through or around any fuel reductions including clearcuts. When these conditions line up in the same place as an ignition, it is virtually impossible to stop such fires--until the weather changes.