Maggie's Farm

Are we speaking past each other?

I did not read Sam L's comment as "no logging takes place in national forests", but as "there are some places where loggers aren't allowed in even for fire suppression.

Forests are always changing, and fire is one of the mechanisms of that change. If fires are frequent, then the fuel supply for any fire will necessarily be limited. And "controlled burns" are one of the many forest management practices used in the national forests.

The article was explicit that there have been cases where environmentalists have blocked even "controlled burns" on the grounds of air quality and destruction of habitat. This resulted in accumulated fuel that made the resulting fire uncontrollable (i.e., couldn't be restricted in area to burn itself out). Not quite as explicit was that thus the entire regional habitat for the animal in question was destroyed, and the stored carbon was all released into the atmosphere along with volatiles and soot. Also neighboring private properties were destroyed, and people died.

I don't disagree that there is a subsidy to logging -- that the stumpage fees do not reflect either the value of the resource they are extracting nor the loss to other uses during the cutting and aftermath. But the solution is to raise the stumpage fees, not to stop efforts to make such wildfires as there are controllable in area. We all know that the biggest variety of natural life is on the margins between types of vegetative cover, so letting the trees all grow uniformly to maturity and letting the fuel build up under them will not in the long run protect the forest, protect the habitat, or protect the recreational uses of the public. It also creates tremendous hazards and costs for the human neighbors and the services that try to protect them, as was so tragically illustrated in the Australian wildfires a few years ago.