Over the last few months, we have written extensively about the extreme wildfire season in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) and some of the lingering effects that the devastation will have in the near-term. The fires have been in the mainstream news for months, but a recent Wall Street Journal piece about the “controversial” subject of forest thinning and its impact on fire suppression simply gets it wrong.
In the article, journalist Jim Carlton failed to discuss the myriad benefits that regular thinnings have on the overall health of our forests and their peripheral ecosystems, wildlife habitats, and the safety and economic wellbeing of the communities that border them. Indeed, the only controversial practice in this case was giving credence to fringe environmental groups that have no tangible experience in forest management.
As a Forest America rebuttal to the piece noted, the process of thinning has increased in national forests more than 34 percent over the last decade. Forest America adds, “A forest that’s not managed and allowed to grow unchecked crowds out wildlife and becomes a tinderbox, susceptible to forest fires that cost the U.S. government billions to fight each year, to say nothing of the billions in damage to public and private property. State and local governments that once relied on the proceeds from the sale of timber from sustainable forest management, where trees are thinned and replanted, have lost this revenue under pressure from environmental groups who believe trees should never be cut unless diseased.”
Importantly, Forest America also notes that private forestlands suffer fire damage at a much lower rate than public forests, which is due to proper forest management (including thinnings) performed by private landowners. Despite the logistical challenges of maintaining millions of acres of public forestlands, the US Forest Service also understands the value of thinning, which is why the practice has increased within national forests over the last decade.
Read more at Forest2Market: https://blog.forest2market.com/six-reasons-thinning-trees-is-good-for-the-forest?utm_source=F2M+Newsletter+2015+December&utm_campaign=F2M+News+2015+05&utm_medium=email