KGLP Station Manager Rachel Kaub speaks with and Dr. Chad Hanson, Ecologist with the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute in California, who, with Dr. Dominick DellaSala, Chief Scientist of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, are making a case opposing a logging rider that is being developed in Congress that could be attached to a spending bill very soon. These researchers make the following argument:
As Congress considers the "fire-borrowing" issue via legislation to prevent the wildfire suppression program from taking money from non-suppression programs, Republicans in the House and Senate are using fear and misunderstanding of forest fires to urge some Western Democrats to attach provisions that would exempt commercial logging from environmental analysis and public oversight, weaken environmental laws, and increase federal funding for logging on national forests. These provisions are out of touch with the latest fire science, and, as a result, could actually be detrimental to national forests and the safety of rural communities.
Dr. DellaSala and Dr. Hanson were the lead authors of a recent letter to Congress from over 260 scientists, informing policy-makers that large fires are not ecological catastrophes, rather, they create variety in forest habitat associated with extraordinary levels of plant and animal richness and diversity in the western United States, including many imperiled species that require post-fire habitat http://johnmuirproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Final2015ScientistLetterOpposingLoggingBills.pdf They are also the editors and co-authors of the recent book, The Ecological Importance of Mixed-Severity Fires: Nature’s Phoenix (http://store.elsevier.com/product.jsp?isbn=9780128027493&pagename=search), and a 2015 op-ed in the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/23/opinion/more-logging-wont-stop-wildfires.html.
As the work of Drs. DellaSala and Hanson and their colleagues demonstrates, there is generally a deficit of post-fire forest habitat created by these beneficial fires, and many wildlife species that depend upon the unique "snag forest habitat" created by more intense fire patches have become rare and imperiled, and/or are declining, due to fire suppression, "fuel reduction" logging, and post-fire logging.
The best available science indicates that comprehensive fire management should consist of:
• managing backcountry fires safely for ecosystem benefits and
• focusing the existing limited resources on protecting homes from fires.
• It also shows that the only effective way to protect homes from wildfires is to reduce the flammability of the homes themselves and encourage reduction of combustible vegetation within 100 to 200 feet of homes.
The logging appropriations rider currently being developed will do nothing to protect rural homes from fire; in fact, it will increase risks to homes by diverting scarce resources away from home protection and toward irresponsible and environmentally damaging backcountry logging, while creating unnecessary risks to firefighters by focusing fire management in steep, remote forests.
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