To Reduce Wildfire Risk, Stop Clearcutting
In 2020, California experienced record-breaking wildfires that burned over 4 million acres. Logging companies have leveraged the growing concern about wildfires to promote self-serving claims that logging will reduce fire fuel and thus decrease wildfire intensity. But don’t be fooled — this claim has been soundly rejected by the consensus of the scientific community. Scientists have examined the severity of 1,500 forest fires affecting over 23 million acres during the past four decades in 11 western states and found that fires burned more severely in previously logged areas. “Plantations burn hotter in a fire than native forests do,” ecologist Dominick DellaSala testified in Congress. DellaSala is one of 217 leading scientists who signed a letter opposing logging due to its contribution to wildfires.
Far from reducing fire fuel and fire risks, logging practices such as clearcutting actually increase fuel and risk. They leave slash on the ground after clearcutting. Clearcutting replaces old, diverse species of trees with young, single-species trees that have less fire-resistant bark, ignite easily, and burn quickly. Younger trees also absorb far less carbon, which in turn fuels temperature increases that exacerbate fire severity. These younger trees are shorter and less able to break the wind speeds to protect themselves from the winds that carry fire. The replacement plantation trees are also much closer together, which likely accelerates fire transmission. Finally, the scientists’ letter noted that the removal of native species makes the ecosystem more vulnerable to invasive flammable weeds.
A better alternative to this kind of same-age, single-species logging is uneven-aged management that aims to retain tall trees, species diversity, and canopy cover. Unfortunately, CalFire is slated to approve the even-aged logging project, Soda Springs Timber Harvest Plan (THP), which will increase the danger of wildfire risk for residents of Dunsmuir, Mt. Shasta City, McCloud and Castella.
Getting safer forest management is crucial to reduce the enormous costs wildfires inflict annually on California. In 2018, California suffered $102.6 billion in wildfire damages. That’s 102,600,000,000 dollars. That includes:
- The direct damages to houses and property, property and infrastructure repairs. Two million homes in California are at “high” or “extreme” wildfire risk.
- Increased medical bills from the diseases caused by polluted air, water, and soil. The Environmental Protection Agency found that the medical costs of long-term health exposures related to U.S. wildfires from 2008 to 2012 was $450 billion.
- Disrupted business of service industries, tourism, supply chains.
- Reduced government tax revenue as a result.
And that’s before the $2,500,000,000 that CalFire spends each year on fighting wildfires. With $2.5 billion of our tax dollars going to forest management, and hundreds of billions of dollars lost to wildfire damages, we deserve better.
What you can do
- Sign our petition to tell Governor Newsom to stop clearcutting California’s forests!
- Please contact CalFire and ask them to deny the Soda Springs THP using this sample letter to get started. You can also email Dunsmuir’s mayor, Mathew Bryan and John Stackfleth, Mayor of Mt. Shasta to ask them to take this issue up at the next City Council meeting.
