Redding Record Searchlight - Letter to the Editor
Clear-cutting worsens forest-fire hazards
By Sue Lynn
Friday, April 6, 2007
In timber country, the glory of spring is followed all too quickly by the dreaded wildfire season of summer. Preventing forest fires is a major concern for all of us. Yet how many of us realize that clear-cutting increases the chance of fire?
During the mid-1990s large timber companies like Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI) and Roseburg Lumber shifted from employing selective logging to increasingly relying on clear-cutting. After clear-cutting, the forests are replanted with single-age and usually single-species trees. Forests that would naturally include eight or 10 different species of trees are replaced by plantations that consist of ponderosa pine, with a few fir trees mixed in.
Such plantations create high fire hazards. Lacking large old trees with thick bark that can resist fire, they burn quickly and thoroughly in a wildfire. Furthermore, ponderosa pine forests promote more intense fires than some other species, according to one study based on wildfires in Northern California in 1987.
Other factors that increase the threat of wildfire today include the policy of suppressing fires during much of the 20th century, which led to buildup of dead fuels on the ground. Second, global warming has exacerbated the problem, as warmer temperatures cause earlier snow runoff and drier summer conditions. As a result, the average number of large fires in the West has almost quadrupled in the past 34 years, according to a study by the Scripps Institute. In a feedback loop of causation, clear-cutting followed by tree plantations increases the release of carbon, accelerating global warming.
SPI plans to clear-cut a million acres in the Sierra Nevada and southern Cascades in the next decade, and Roseburg Lumber is also clear-cutting much of its land in Northern California. Between clear-cutting and wildfires, we may soon face a state that looks dramatically different from what it does today, with forests on private lands replaced by plantations or housing developments like the ones SPI may be considering along Highway 44.
Is extensive clear-cutting worth putting our already vulnerable forests at even higher risk for devastating wildfires? Clear-cutting is done in part because it provides higher profits to the logging companies, as they can log with more machinery and fewer workers used. If our society thoughtfully weighed these short-term gains for wealthy timber companies against the long-term need to maintain diverse, healthy forests that can support wildlife, maintain water quality by avoiding the spraying of herbicides that follows clear-cutting, and help combat global warming, what would the result be? I hope we would choose sustainable forests and a healthier planet for our grandchildren to enjoy.
Sue Lynn lives in Montgomery Creek.