{photoSource}Bend Bulletin{/photoSource}

In early July, the largest wildfire in New Mexico history, the 340,000-acre Hermit Peak blaze, came to a quiet end.

What stopped the fire? Was it firefighting? Did the fire run into fuel breaks? Did thinning halt its spread?

What happened is that the summer monsoon rains began to fall in New Mexico, and the Hermit Peak Fire was quickly squelched.

It may seem counterintuitive, but the entire “fuels are the problem” and “logging is the solution” to wildfires are based on flawed assumptions.

While some proponents of “active forest management” admit that climate/weather is one driving force in fires, they seem to ignore or downplay the outsized influence of extreme fire weather. For example, the West is under the most severe drought in a thousand years.

There is a direct correlation between weather/climate and wildfire. Drought, temperature, wind and humidity are the main factors in the spread of fires.

Furthermore, we have evidence that logging/thinning does not significantly influence wildfires around the West. The opposite is true. Places with substantial logging, including private timber lands, often burn at the highest severity.

Examples of wildfires that burned through areas with significant past “active forest management” include the Dixie Fire (California’s most significant fire in 2021), the Bootleg Fire (Oregon’s most enormous fire in 2021), the Holiday Farm fire (which charred massive clearcut lands on the west slope of the Cascades in 2020), and the Camp Fire, which burned down the town of Paradise, California.

Many of the largest blazes do not even occur in forested landscapes, so that logging will have no influence. For example, the 281,000-acre Thomas Fire near Santa Barbara, the half-million-acre Long Draw Fire in Oregon, and the 280,000-acre Soda Fire in Idaho, among others, burned mainly through chaparral or sagebrush shrub.

There are plenty of problems with logging as a solution.

First, logging is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Oregon. Logging, therefore, creates the very conditions that exacerbate climate warming. Even burnt forests store significant amounts of carbon.

Second, no one can’t predict where a fire will occur, so the majority of all logging/thinning projects never experience a blaze at the time when they “might” influence fire behavior.

Third, no forester with a paint gun marking trees for removal can tell which individual has genetic resistance to drought, bark beetles, disease or wildfire. Indeed, in many instances, logging reduces the “resiliency” of forests and degrades forest health.

Other factors also influence fires. For example, most human ignitions occur on or near roads. Thus, the proliferation of logging roads that come with thinning/logging means more opportunities for unplanned ignitions.

And logging roads, because they favor the growth of flammable weeds, also become natural corridors for fire spread.

While it may be difficult to accept, we see the landscape “adapting” to drier conditions across the West. Drought, insects and wildfires are restoring evolutionary balance to the landscape plant communities by naturally selecting which vegetation can survive under the new climatic conditions.

If we wish to moderate or reverse this climate warning trend, we must get serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions — including those from logging. Setting aside all national forests lands as “carbon storage” reserves would be a good first step.

Beyond this long-term solution, we can reduce human costs by controlling home development in the Wildlands Urban interface, hardening the home with fire-resistant construction materials, and removing flammable materials from the home site. Planning for emergency evacuations is also critical.

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