<\/p>\n
Erosion from logging road, thinning project, Montana.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
+ Logging\/thinning are not benign. They have collateral damage, including the spread of weeds, disturbance of wildlife, chronic sedimentation from logging roads that damage streams, removal of biomass and structure from the forest that is essential wildlife habitat.<\/p>\n
+ Most human-caused fires begin along roads, thus an increase in logging roads contributes to higher fire ignitions.<\/p>\n
+ Ironically logging also contributes to greenhouse gas emissions that are the factor behind the drought and rising temperatures driving wildfires. For example, in Oregon, 35% of the state\u2019s s GHG emissions are due to logging.<\/p>\n
+ Leaving forests intact preserve carbon. Even burnt forests retain most of their carbon\u2014all those snags left after a high severity blaze are carbon. Logging removes this carbon, and processing wood releases much of this carbon now.<\/p>\n
+ As fire scientist Jack Cohen has noted, it is treating the immediate area around homes that will protect structures. We do this by starting at the house and working outwards. Removal of burnable materials from the immediate area around the home, installing metal or other non-flammable roofs, and putting shutters on windows, among the strategies that work to protect homes even from high severity wind-driven blazes.<\/p>\n
+ Zoning to limit home construction in the \u201cfire plain\u201d is also necessary\u2014the rising costs of firefighting are due to efforts to protect homes in the Wildlands Urban Interface.<\/p>\n
As Albert Einstein said so succinctly, \u201cThe definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sourdough Creek in the Bozeman Watershed of the Gallatin Range, where thinning is proposed to reduce wildfire. Photo George Wuerthner. The Montana Forest Action Plan recently awarded funding\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118951"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118951"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118952,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118951\/revisions\/118952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}