Reflections on Smokescreen, a book by ecologist Chad Hanson
As I hopped onto a Zoom seminar led by Chad Hanson, research ecologist and environmentalist, I wasn’t sure what to expect, although I imagined I’d learn some interesting insights about wildfires. At the time, I had barely cracked his book, Smokescreen: Debunking Wildfire Myths to Save Our Forests and Our Climate. As the talk started, a fellow Sierra Club volunteer introduced him and noted his accomplishments. The impressive list spanned his long record of scientific research and environmental advocacy, including co-founding the John Muir Project.
(To hear Dr. Chad Hanson, you can watch this seminar on forest fires presented by Los Padres ForestWatch.)
As Hanson began his talk, one of the first things he told us was that his internet connection might be spotty. “I’m in a bit of a rural mountain area,” he explained. It’s funny, but that one small detail still makes me smile. This was a scientist and a nonprofit director, yes, but also someone with “boots on the ground” in a very literal sense. He didn’t study climate through data models or satellite surveys alone. He was deep in the midst of the habitats he sought to preserve. He spoke passionately about how forests behave before, during, and after wildfires, and as he did so, he shared first-hand memories of the California fires and trees he researched.
The same intimacy shines throughout Smokescreen. As one of many examples, here’s a delightful section describing how in-the-moment Hanson’s research can be:
I have been studying black-backed woodpeckers for more than eighteen years and have spent thousands of hours in the middle- and upper-elevation forests of the Sierra Nevada, hiking through large patches of snag forest in search of these rare and elusive birds […] Once we saw a black-backed woodpecker or heard its telltale “pik-pik” call nearby, we had to follow it, hoping to track it back to its nest. This was easier said than done, as the birds were not inclined to wait for us to catch up as they dodged and weaved through the snags. As we chased through the snag forest, jumping over downed logs and pushing through patches of naturally regenerating conifers and shrubs, we tried to keep an eye on the sky ahead to make sure we didn’t lose the bird, but we often did. (p. 128)
These anecdotes gave me stronger confidence in the data he shared. Analysis without context can be suspect, and the sanity check that comes with a wealth of personal experience is invaluable. I’ll give an example from my own work at a car insurance company. Our data indicated that drivers had accidents most frequently when driving under 15 miles per hour. Driving over 75 miles per hour showed the lowest frequency of accidents. Yet, we knew not to use these statistics as driving speed advice for our customers! Even if you’d never heard the phrase “correlation doesn’t equal causation”, you’d know there must be a confounding variable. We’ve all spent countless hours in motorized vehicles, and I was able to interpret our driving data through that lens.
But I don’t spend nearly as much time steeped in California forests. It’s easy for me to fall for the trap of digestible headlines and over-simplified statistics. So as Chad Hanson presented his facts and figures, along with describing months spent in the wilderness, I began to believe that he might open my eyes to a completely novel view of forests and fires.
Smokescreen didn’t let me down. Some of his research conclusions were incredibly surprising, conflicting with ideas I’d internalized for years. One of the most unexpected messages was that fires are not more prevalent today. I consider myself someone who cares about the environment and tries to stay informed. Coastlines rising, unprecedented species decline — weren’t these the stories of climate change? Didn’t I keep hearing that each year’s fire season was worse than the last? Yet the book cited numerous studies arguing the opposite:
Many may be surprised to learn that we currently have considerably less fire in our forests than we did historically, before fire suppression policies began. In the forests of the western United States, for example, conservative studies estimate that there were about three times more mixed-intensity fires prior to fire suppression than there are now […] This deficit is not limited to low- and moderate-intensity fire. Even in the more frequent-fire forest types of the western United States, such as ponderosa pine and dry mixed-conifer forests, groups of researchers using different methods have consistently found that there is less high-intensity fire now than there was before fire suppression. (p. 63)
Another surprise was his repeated refrain that large wildfires are beneficial, even critical, for forests’ well-being. For instance, he writes on their necessity for spotted owls:
Other research found that high-intensity fire patches are associated with an increase in spotted owl reproduction levels simply because food for their young is more readily available when the owls have access to snag forest habitat. (p. 36)
And, for old-growth sequoias:
The truth is, we have been loving these giant sequoia groves to death, treating them like living museums rather than the dynamic, wild forests they are. Giant sequoias are serotinous, which means that, like some other conifer species, they are dependent on fire to reproduce — and not just any fire. They need moderate- and high-intensity fire in particular. The flames need to reach high enough, and the fire needs to burn hot enough, to melt resins in the cones, which releases the seeds. The fire also needs to be sufficiently intense to consume the thick duff and litter (needles, leaves, and twigs) on the forest floor, creating a nutrient-rich bed of mineral ash that allows the seeds to germinate and produce seedlings that will survive and flourish. (p. 70–71)
Smokescreen also contains numerous photos of landscapes post-fire, taken by the author himself. Many display thriving “snag forests”, or patches of fallen trees that support flowering shrubs and plants. These snag forests supply food, reproduction, and shelter for a diverse range of animals, from insects to birds to elk. The photos also display examples of robust forest regrowth, with vegetation quickly taking root after fires have swept through. Hanson’s message is clear: far from destroying our forests, fires are what make forests the rich, biodiverse, beautiful habitats we’ve come to know in the first place.
What about the devastation these fires bring to human communities, then? The horrifying toll that California wildfires takes on locals cannot continue. The Camp Fire claimed 86 lives, and was the costliest disaster worldwide in 2018 in terms of insurance payouts. It would be callous to suggest we do nothing.
Smokescreen discusses the most effective solutions for these problems. In fact, Hanson is optimistic about our chances against fire. He shares strategies on fireproofing homes to save lives and limit property destruction. Inviting us to share his optimism, he offers a success story:
It started slowly at first, but over the next two decades [after the Bel Air fire of 1961], local governments increasingly focused on community protection, transitioning to a “from the home out” approach. Wood shingle roofs and siding were banned and replaced. Home owners were required to prune vegetation around their houses each year, in recognition of numerous scientific studies indicating that vegetation management beyond 100 feet from houses provides no additional protection from wildland fires. Reducing the ignitability of houses themselves, and their immediate surroundings, became the primary focus. Losses of homes in wildfires began to decline, and a number of success stories have merged.
One example was the La Tuna fire in the Verdugo Mountains, where I grew up, northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Driven by extreme fire weather, including high temperatures and howling winds, the fire scorched 7,194 acres of shrubland and forest […] What made the La Tuna fire remarkable was not its size, however, but the lessons it provided about protecting homes. By the time the fire was over, nearly 1,400 homes had been either within the fire perimeter or within 200 feet of its path, yet only five homes were destroyed. (p. 188–189)
These sections of the book were not as surprising to me. They echoed lessons I’d heard during my time volunteering with the Sierra Club. An important theme: preventing clearcuts and reducing logging will help fires spread less quickly towards communities. Smokescreen extensively covers scientific studies that show timber harvests cause fires to burn hotter and spread more quickly.
This was true for the recent, high-profile fires in California. It’s a popular misconception that logging projects will reduce fuel and help slow the spread of flames. But where logging and thinning projects took place, fires like the Camp Fire and Creek Fire burned the most intensely (p. 13–14, p. 23–24). This effect happens because of a combination of cascading effects, including but not limited to: invasive, flammable grasses moving into once forested regions; the lack of shade creating dryer forest floors; the lack of windbreaks from trees to slow fire spread; and “kindling-like debris” left behind by loggers. (p 15.)
As I write this blog post, the Dixie Fire is still burning. Though it ignited over two months ago, no amount of firefighting has been able to quash it. Now, as the weather cools and some much-needed rain mists over the Bay Area, the fire approaches 100% containment at last. We have limited control over the forces of nature, and sometimes our short-sighted efforts — such as forest thinning — make the situation worse. If we focus on what we can control, like fireproofing our communities, we will spend our resources on the most practical solutions.
The last theme from Smokescreen that surprised me was Chad Hanson’s litany of stories about public agencies, especially the US Forest Service, who willfully undermined forest health to make money off timber sales. I was uncomfortable reading these stories. In so many of the anecdotes, he describes the Forest Service behaving in a way that I would describe as “cartoonishly evil”: knowingly manipulating systems to justify environmental destruction, all for the sake of profits from logging.
He describes a battle with the Forest Service after the 2001 Star fire. The John Muir Project extracted a promise from the federal agency to leave surviving trees alone. The Forest Service then returned with a map where 71% of the fire region was marked as dead, with 0% green needles, and approved those areas for logging. Oddly, this designation contradicted a previous fire-intensity map the Forest Service itself had already issued. The previous map only marked 35% of the fire as high-intensity. Hanson decided to investigate.
As we drove and hiked through the high-intensity fire areas mapped by the Forest Service, our confusion grew. Contrary to the Forest Service’s claims of no surviving trees and no green needles, we found old-growth mixed-conifer forest stands with only light charring on the lower trunks of the mature and old trees. Most of the smallest trees had been killed, but the vast majority of the larger trees had deep green crowns full of live, healthy needles. […] There was no question about it. In stand after stand, we found that most of the trees were alive. But the postfire logging project was about to clear-cut these areas based on the claim that there were zero live trees.
We spent days taking field notes and photographs, extensively documenting the large areas of live, old forest where the Forest Service and the logging industry claimed none existed. At one point, a logging crew attempted to block our access [….] Despite our irrefutable photographic evidence, the Forest Service would not budge. It was intent on proceeding with its clear-cutting project in these lightly burned old-growth forest stands within spotted owl nesting territories. The Forest Service stood to generate substantial revenue from this timber sale, since it is allowed by law to keep 100 percent of the profits from timber sales if the cut trees are categorized as “dead.” Millions of dollars were at stake.(p. 97–99)
Ultimately, this case was taken to federal court, who reviewed the evidence, ruled against the Forest Service, and shut down the logging project. In the end, the forests won. But this anecdote was overshadowed by the many similar anecdotes about the Forest Service where logging continued as planned.
I suspect other new readers will be similarly taken aback by these stories. But though these sections will take some time to digest, I’m incredibly thankful to have heard these accounts that I would never have had access to otherwise.
As I discuss my takeaways from this book, there’s much I’m forced to leave out. There’s a tremendous amount of data packed into Smokescreen I’ve only begun to convey. To illustrate: the main contents of the book span 232 pages, but the referenced studies and articles add up to 345 separate citations. If you take the time to read Smokescreen, I hope you feel reassured — as I did — that these conclusions come from someone who has done his research, and importantly, has also spent a great deal of time in those same forests. Those years of personal experience radiated on every page, as did his knowledge and his passion.
As the Zoom seminar ended, Chad Hanson stayed on to enthusiastically answer question after question. He encouraged us to become involved directly: writing letters to the editor; reaching out to our legislators; voting for judges and lawmakers with science-first approaches to wildfires; and commenting on timber harvest plans.
He closes the book with his call for change:
To environmental journalists, my request is this: please dig deeper. Obtain genuine alternative views when government-funded studies or reports come out — especially if they promote more logging. Go on site visits with independent forest and fire ecologists, and recognize the bias of spokespersons and scientists employed or funded by the logging industry or pro-logging agencies, just as you do for the fossil fuel industry or chemical manufacturers […]
To anyone who cares about the natural world and about overcoming the climate crisis, here is my plea to you: if you are not already doing so, get involved, get active. Don’t rely on existing green groups to create the necessary change. Nongovernmental organizations do not have the situation covered or handled. We need help, and lots of it. Consider the work an honor and a privilege, not an obligation. (p. 232)
The more voices that join in, the more we shape the prevailing attitudes about wildfire management. Hanson’s call is a message I will remember.
