Thanks for this. Forests are always talked about in terms of carbon, but water is the critical thing, especially in terms of fires. Big trees have deep roots and can pull up critical moisture during the dry season. helping to keep the forests cool and moist. The Lakota say Mni Wiconi, water is life, which also means life is water. When we remove big trees we remove water and water function, not to mention living beings that are essential for other beings. As always, it's about jobs and profits, not the health of the forest, which needs to be allowed to live, IMO.
Book suggestions for dendrophiles and a glimpse of a brief encounter I had when I crossed paths with someone choosing to embody modern western civilization's wendigo mentality (a wealthy journalist woman who thinks clearcutting the last of the old growth (primary) forest in bc is good idea.)
Max, Your writing is becoming more and more comprehensible and for me, I have several "AhA moments when i read what Max writes about our very existence.
A friend of mine worked for the local Forest Service a few years back, when a wildfire was burning through wilderness nearby - not threatening any people. The District Manager decided to let it burn, and was verbally attacked, ostracized, and inundated with hostile calls and emails due to the smoke impacts.
Oh yeah. We have one particularly vocal member of the community who loudly complains every time a lightning strike is allowed to burn in the Yosemite wilderness because of the smoke He is also well know for complaining about burn outs (which can produce a lot of smoke in a short time) has demanded that a fire should always be directly attacked and publicly announced that the reason fires were fought indirectly was because the firefighters were incompetent cowards. It was suggested, by a retired wild land firefighter, that the "gentleman" be given a shovel, a hardhat and directions to the nearest fire. There is a reason most of our public meetings have at least one uniformed leo in attendance.
Hi Max Wilbert, as a Natural Resources student at Oregon State University School of Forestry, and a team member at the Lake County Resources Initiative (LCRI), I must share my insights. It is an oversimplification to view forest thinning, logging, and fuel reduction efforts as solely profit-driven activities. Increased wildfires, that are burning hotter than historically known, necessitate informed forest management, which is scientifically grounded. My organization alone has been gathering a decade of research on our local forests.
Science-based methods like selective thinning and controlled burns are vital for mitigating wildfire risks and preserving forest health, balancing ecological health with wildfire risk reduction. Working alongside LCRI's Biophysical Monitoring team has deepened my understanding of forest management's crucial balance between ecological health and wildfire risk reduction. Overlooking responsible management neglects key ecological and scientific factors. This experience highlights the need for evidence-based, collaborative forest management to address climate change and preserve forest health.
I believe that you would benefit from further exploring this topic. It is frighteneing that you are sharing such misinformation and influencing others with these thoughts. This is why we have the problems that currently exist.
Amanda, The area around my home has burned. Repeatedly. Much of the Pinyon/Juniper forest that has not burned has received "treatment". In 2020 this small town was threatened by a fire (for the fifth or sixth time in the past 30 years) which had held over from a lightning strike in sagebrush a couple of weeks prior to a shift to a hot, dry north wind. The fire burned right over previously burned acreage and P-J forest that had been "treated" and left to weeds and slash piles. A shift back to the prevailing wind spared my house and the rest of the town while the fire burned into the adjacent wilderness.
Later that same year 100 homes in this town were lost to a fire which was ignited by a broken power line and pushed by winds blowing steady at 60 -80 mph with at least one gust of 125. After burning through town the fire continued on into the mountains to the east - rampaging through more P-J forest which had received heavy "treatment" some years prior to this fire. In the twelve hours of very active fire (before it began to snow) 20, 000 acres were burned. None of it was "forest" though some of it had been "forest" prior to "treatment" and previous fires. This former P -J forest was also left to square mile after square mile of cheat grass and other weeds as well as the easily ignited small fuels left behind by the “treatment”.
In 2021 the Dixie fire burned through a region which has been heavily logged. The fire also burned right through several experimental forest "treatments". Forest management people don't like to talk about this. I was threatened with expulsion from an on line discussion group for bringing the topic up. The Caldor fire also burned right through a region which had been heavily logged as well as several "treated" zones. It was a shift in wind direction and velocity that saved the homes of several of my friends.
When the "treatments" right around my town were being planned BLM went through the motions of notifying the public and accepting comments. When I began to dialog with the agency I was told several different reasons for the treatment ranging from sage grouse (none have been seen in the area before or after) to improving deer browse (nope - the Purshia has not expanded into the footprints of the former Pinyon pines more than 15 years later) fire protection (nope - see stories above) and the puzzling claim that the Pinyon Juniper forest was "encroaching". When I asked what the forest was "encroaching" on, mentioned my degree in Botany and asked if he was familiar with the process of plant progression he removed me from the mailing list and stopped responding to my inquiries.
Please forgive me if I have several reasons to scoff at the official pronouncements on the value of forest "management" - beginning with the perverse insistence that we have to kill the forest in order to "save" it. Why are those of us concerned with forests being treated like fools? Why are we being lied to? Why are we being silenced? Why is an entire species (Pinyon Jay) being driven to extinction due to loss of habitat (also insuring that we will never have any more Pinyon trees than are now alive - if you don't understand this statement perhaps you should do a little extracurricular reading) ? Why are the reasons for "treatments" (to quote Ronald Lanner, Phd in Forest Botany) a "moving target"? Why is a post settlement (and in some areas post gold/silver rush) baseline being used to support the "encroachment" excuse? Once again - if you don't understand why this is pertinent you should. Does it actually need to be said that anyone can easily count and roughly age the stumps?
I believe you would benefit from reading what George Wuerthner has to say about wildfire. It is frightening that you, like most of your peers, are parroting such incomplete information and influencing others, many of whom are frightened, with cherry picked "facts" at the same time that any counterargument is ridiculed, demonized and buried beneath the slash piles, highly flammable and noxious weeds and dead land that is left in the aftermath of "forest management". You and your peers, as well as the general public and the forest, would benefit from open and honest communication and the lack of open, honest and consistent communication is indicative of a motivation for "forest management" that could not be carried out if there was open and honest discussion. Yes. We need evidence based information that uses the gold standard of scientific inquiry - try to prove yourself wrong to avoid bias. Yes. We need high quality and egoless collaboration which means working with others, some of whom may have a different viewpoint, without having to fear that you will be silenced and even threatened when you tell the truth. That means addressing the "management" techniques that clearly have not worked. Silencing those different viewpoints and refusing to publicly discuss "management" failures for no apparent reason other than the obvious challenge to the current state of "management" is not collaboration and it is not science.
The wilderness that burned in the first fire I mentioned - the Slink fire if you wish to look it up - is doing better than I would have imagined. It is fascinating and inspiring to walk through the area. Bears are tearing into burned stumps and lying down to sleep off their feast of insect larvae, (sorry to have disturbed you, my friend) small trees that survived the blaze are reveling in the increased access to sun and the absolutely stunning array of wildflowers this past spring had many of us falling to the ground, laughing and crying at the same time. The forest that had been "treated" and burned is now little more than sand and weeds waiting for the next blaze. The second fire I mentioned was called the Mountain View fire. The land, which was buried by 3-5 feet of windblown sand after the flames , will never recover. These fires are being exacerbated by unprecedented drought and wind. I do not need any “science” and statistics, easily manipulated, to tell me I am wrong or that I have not witnessed what was and is happening right before my eyes. There is no amount of “treatment” or defensible space that can stand against those adversaries. The forest is being “managed” to death and the fires continue to burn.
So why is "forest management" ignoring the successes and suppressing the failures? And would you trust someone who "manages" discussion by eliminating any participant who fails to support what the "managers" want to do? I also believe that you would benefit from further exploring all aspects and consequences of "forest management" beyond what you are being tested on in school. You have the ability to alter the perception that many people have of "forest management". I hope you won't squander it.
Hi Amanda, thanks for reaching out. We may not agree but people who disagree are welcome here (as long as we can all be polite). I welcome debate and discussion.
A few points I'd like to make:
1. I've personally observed the BLM cutting down *centuries* old pinyon-pine and juniper trees in Nevada across thousands of acres as part of so-called "habitat improvement" projects. There is no way these lands were part of "forest encroachment" as the agencies claimed. And, even if they were; forests shift their range in response to climatic changes. At what point is intervention too much? And of course, there's the reality (as Ronald Lanner wrote extensively about) that much of this forest expansion is just re-occupation of areas logged for making charcoal for the mining industry.
2. More poignantly, at what point are interventions like PJ removal simply a way to avoid restricting industrial activities that have a much greater negative effect on sage grouse (oil and gas, cattle grazing, sprawl, mining, etc.)? I believe this is the hidden motive behind much P and J removal in the west. And in fact, it's not even hidden. This was explicitly stated during the formation of the Sage Grouse plans under Obama.
3. The most important point I'd like to make is that the science is very difficult to do without bias creeping in, particularly in cases like this where many different factors overlap, and where ecological impacts are complex and mulitfaceted—and in regards to species like Juniper which have been, frankly, largely reviled and removed by ranchers and range managers in the Western U.S. for nearly a century. For example, destruction of PJ forests in some areas has led to (slight) increase in sage-grouse populations, while simultaneously being implicated in significant reductions in Pinyon Jays - a species whose populations are collapsing and should be listed under the ESA. Again, managing on very imperfect knowledge leads to major problems.
4. You're right that some forest thinning and logging isn't driven by profit, and that was an oversight in my piece. But there is another mechanism that I didn't mention: government funding availability and significant monetary contracts to local Forest Service and BLM offices and private contractors / NGOs. There is a pipeline funnelling tens of millions of dollars to these types of projects (and research dollars to professors). That's incentive to create projects that "work" and to report positive results.
5. There's yet another mechanism involved in all this, which is the culture of juniper-removal which has become deeply entrenched across the Western US for generations now. If you're interested in some previous writing I've done on this topic, check out https://www.pinyonjuniperforests.org/the-issues/. That website is no longer maintained and is about 5 years out of date, but the basics there are solid.
6. I'm not a scientist, but there are many scientists publishing data pushing back against Pinyon-Juniper "treatments" (a euphemism if I've ever heard one; reminds me of the way the term "collateral damage" is used in war). For example, see "Do Mechanical Vegetation Treatments of Pinyon-Juniper and Sagebrush Communities Work?" (Jones, 2019) for a literature review on that topic. I can pull together some more references if you're interested in some alternative perspectives.
PS - Amanda, I'm based down here in Eugene - I'd be happy to grab lunch sometime and discuss if you're ever in town. Cheers.
That's simply not true. The forests in North America have been around for millions of years and don't need human destruction, what you call "management." Get your ego under control, humans are not gods and they need to stop acting like it. Nature knows far better than humans, and humans need to allow the natural processes to run their courses.
I suggest you read some of George Wuerthner's work on this subject. He can disabuse you of the BS you're being brainwashed with in college.
I worked on juvenile spacing layout and contract management from 1991 to about 2000 on Vancouver Island. At the time the real focus of these projects were timber production and larger diameter trees for logging. Trees were roughly 6 ft to 15 ft tall that we were thinning and in many cases very high density forests following the old clearcut and broadcast burn model. Before spacing was abandoned as a practice here we had started variable density and riparian spacing to better mimic old growth attributes. Fire proofing here means pruning dead branches, piling and burning woody debris to reduce ignition and slow the spread of fire aroung populated areas. In the juvenile forest stage this work has benefits like better establishment of understory shrubs and deciduous species. I live on a 1 acre lot and the forest floor was a tinderbox, I did variable density spacing, pruning and burning small piles. First year the area took off with Saskatoon berries, mountain ash and several others.
Whether this type of work is beneficial is site specific. However, clearcutting always increases fire hazard and commercial thinning would do the same. The Forest Industry in BC went from broadcast burning to pile burning. Typically, every fall pile burns escape and burn larger areas. BC has a "take or pay" stumpage model which means large volumes of smaller diameter, lower grade logs are left to rot or burned. Waste has actually increased.
Thanks for sharing this, Brent. One point I strongly agree on is that an intervention has to be highly site-specific. I've been working to restore a wetland on the land where I live, and the first step in that process was to simply observe water flows and other characteristics closely for three or four years before taking action.
What's your perspective, Rob? From what I understand about fire and forest ecology, intentional burns can be a good thing in some places. I'd love to hear what scientists critical of logging and thinning like Dominick DellaSala or George Wuerthner think of that study.
Like I told Amanda above, read some of George Wuerthner's work on this subject. He's an old Earth First!er and has a proper perspective. Humans don't need to burn anything. In fact, humans start about 90% of all wildfires, so they need to STOP burning.
Thanks for this. Forests are always talked about in terms of carbon, but water is the critical thing, especially in terms of fires. Big trees have deep roots and can pull up critical moisture during the dry season. helping to keep the forests cool and moist. The Lakota say Mni Wiconi, water is life, which also means life is water. When we remove big trees we remove water and water function, not to mention living beings that are essential for other beings. As always, it's about jobs and profits, not the health of the forest, which needs to be allowed to live, IMO.
Well said, Rob. Thanks for sharing this, and for all your work in defense of the living planet!
I weep.
Me too, Deb.
Book suggestions for dendrophiles and a glimpse of a brief encounter I had when I crossed paths with someone choosing to embody modern western civilization's wendigo mentality (a wealthy journalist woman who thinks clearcutting the last of the old growth (primary) forest in bc is good idea.)
https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/a-few-books-i-am-currently-readingre
Thanks for this important information Max.
Max, Your writing is becoming more and more comprehensible and for me, I have several "AhA moments when i read what Max writes about our very existence.
Interesting piece from Rob Lewis on this topic: https://theclimateaccordingtolife.substack.com/p/smokescreen?publication_id=1604432&post_id=144781104&isFreemail=true&r=8pc40&triedRedirect=true
Natural wildfires don't need a solution; they ARE the solution, and they should be allowed to burn.
People should not kill trees for any reason, period. The only legitimate excuse for killing is to eat what you kill, and people don't eat trees.
A friend of mine worked for the local Forest Service a few years back, when a wildfire was burning through wilderness nearby - not threatening any people. The District Manager decided to let it burn, and was verbally attacked, ostracized, and inundated with hostile calls and emails due to the smoke impacts.
Oh yeah. We have one particularly vocal member of the community who loudly complains every time a lightning strike is allowed to burn in the Yosemite wilderness because of the smoke He is also well know for complaining about burn outs (which can produce a lot of smoke in a short time) has demanded that a fire should always be directly attacked and publicly announced that the reason fires were fought indirectly was because the firefighters were incompetent cowards. It was suggested, by a retired wild land firefighter, that the "gentleman" be given a shovel, a hardhat and directions to the nearest fire. There is a reason most of our public meetings have at least one uniformed leo in attendance.
Yeah, well, if people don't like the natural processes on this planet, they're perfectly welcome to leave and find another more to their liking.
Hi Max Wilbert, as a Natural Resources student at Oregon State University School of Forestry, and a team member at the Lake County Resources Initiative (LCRI), I must share my insights. It is an oversimplification to view forest thinning, logging, and fuel reduction efforts as solely profit-driven activities. Increased wildfires, that are burning hotter than historically known, necessitate informed forest management, which is scientifically grounded. My organization alone has been gathering a decade of research on our local forests.
Science-based methods like selective thinning and controlled burns are vital for mitigating wildfire risks and preserving forest health, balancing ecological health with wildfire risk reduction. Working alongside LCRI's Biophysical Monitoring team has deepened my understanding of forest management's crucial balance between ecological health and wildfire risk reduction. Overlooking responsible management neglects key ecological and scientific factors. This experience highlights the need for evidence-based, collaborative forest management to address climate change and preserve forest health.
I believe that you would benefit from further exploring this topic. It is frighteneing that you are sharing such misinformation and influencing others with these thoughts. This is why we have the problems that currently exist.
Amanda, The area around my home has burned. Repeatedly. Much of the Pinyon/Juniper forest that has not burned has received "treatment". In 2020 this small town was threatened by a fire (for the fifth or sixth time in the past 30 years) which had held over from a lightning strike in sagebrush a couple of weeks prior to a shift to a hot, dry north wind. The fire burned right over previously burned acreage and P-J forest that had been "treated" and left to weeds and slash piles. A shift back to the prevailing wind spared my house and the rest of the town while the fire burned into the adjacent wilderness.
Later that same year 100 homes in this town were lost to a fire which was ignited by a broken power line and pushed by winds blowing steady at 60 -80 mph with at least one gust of 125. After burning through town the fire continued on into the mountains to the east - rampaging through more P-J forest which had received heavy "treatment" some years prior to this fire. In the twelve hours of very active fire (before it began to snow) 20, 000 acres were burned. None of it was "forest" though some of it had been "forest" prior to "treatment" and previous fires. This former P -J forest was also left to square mile after square mile of cheat grass and other weeds as well as the easily ignited small fuels left behind by the “treatment”.
In 2021 the Dixie fire burned through a region which has been heavily logged. The fire also burned right through several experimental forest "treatments". Forest management people don't like to talk about this. I was threatened with expulsion from an on line discussion group for bringing the topic up. The Caldor fire also burned right through a region which had been heavily logged as well as several "treated" zones. It was a shift in wind direction and velocity that saved the homes of several of my friends.
When the "treatments" right around my town were being planned BLM went through the motions of notifying the public and accepting comments. When I began to dialog with the agency I was told several different reasons for the treatment ranging from sage grouse (none have been seen in the area before or after) to improving deer browse (nope - the Purshia has not expanded into the footprints of the former Pinyon pines more than 15 years later) fire protection (nope - see stories above) and the puzzling claim that the Pinyon Juniper forest was "encroaching". When I asked what the forest was "encroaching" on, mentioned my degree in Botany and asked if he was familiar with the process of plant progression he removed me from the mailing list and stopped responding to my inquiries.
Please forgive me if I have several reasons to scoff at the official pronouncements on the value of forest "management" - beginning with the perverse insistence that we have to kill the forest in order to "save" it. Why are those of us concerned with forests being treated like fools? Why are we being lied to? Why are we being silenced? Why is an entire species (Pinyon Jay) being driven to extinction due to loss of habitat (also insuring that we will never have any more Pinyon trees than are now alive - if you don't understand this statement perhaps you should do a little extracurricular reading) ? Why are the reasons for "treatments" (to quote Ronald Lanner, Phd in Forest Botany) a "moving target"? Why is a post settlement (and in some areas post gold/silver rush) baseline being used to support the "encroachment" excuse? Once again - if you don't understand why this is pertinent you should. Does it actually need to be said that anyone can easily count and roughly age the stumps?
I believe you would benefit from reading what George Wuerthner has to say about wildfire. It is frightening that you, like most of your peers, are parroting such incomplete information and influencing others, many of whom are frightened, with cherry picked "facts" at the same time that any counterargument is ridiculed, demonized and buried beneath the slash piles, highly flammable and noxious weeds and dead land that is left in the aftermath of "forest management". You and your peers, as well as the general public and the forest, would benefit from open and honest communication and the lack of open, honest and consistent communication is indicative of a motivation for "forest management" that could not be carried out if there was open and honest discussion. Yes. We need evidence based information that uses the gold standard of scientific inquiry - try to prove yourself wrong to avoid bias. Yes. We need high quality and egoless collaboration which means working with others, some of whom may have a different viewpoint, without having to fear that you will be silenced and even threatened when you tell the truth. That means addressing the "management" techniques that clearly have not worked. Silencing those different viewpoints and refusing to publicly discuss "management" failures for no apparent reason other than the obvious challenge to the current state of "management" is not collaboration and it is not science.
The wilderness that burned in the first fire I mentioned - the Slink fire if you wish to look it up - is doing better than I would have imagined. It is fascinating and inspiring to walk through the area. Bears are tearing into burned stumps and lying down to sleep off their feast of insect larvae, (sorry to have disturbed you, my friend) small trees that survived the blaze are reveling in the increased access to sun and the absolutely stunning array of wildflowers this past spring had many of us falling to the ground, laughing and crying at the same time. The forest that had been "treated" and burned is now little more than sand and weeds waiting for the next blaze. The second fire I mentioned was called the Mountain View fire. The land, which was buried by 3-5 feet of windblown sand after the flames , will never recover. These fires are being exacerbated by unprecedented drought and wind. I do not need any “science” and statistics, easily manipulated, to tell me I am wrong or that I have not witnessed what was and is happening right before my eyes. There is no amount of “treatment” or defensible space that can stand against those adversaries. The forest is being “managed” to death and the fires continue to burn.
So why is "forest management" ignoring the successes and suppressing the failures? And would you trust someone who "manages" discussion by eliminating any participant who fails to support what the "managers" want to do? I also believe that you would benefit from further exploring all aspects and consequences of "forest management" beyond what you are being tested on in school. You have the ability to alter the perception that many people have of "forest management". I hope you won't squander it.
Well said, Heidi.
Hi Amanda, thanks for reaching out. We may not agree but people who disagree are welcome here (as long as we can all be polite). I welcome debate and discussion.
A few points I'd like to make:
1. I've personally observed the BLM cutting down *centuries* old pinyon-pine and juniper trees in Nevada across thousands of acres as part of so-called "habitat improvement" projects. There is no way these lands were part of "forest encroachment" as the agencies claimed. And, even if they were; forests shift their range in response to climatic changes. At what point is intervention too much? And of course, there's the reality (as Ronald Lanner wrote extensively about) that much of this forest expansion is just re-occupation of areas logged for making charcoal for the mining industry.
A few videos from these experiences:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQZ5Udkt_qc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7oUNJBURiM
2. More poignantly, at what point are interventions like PJ removal simply a way to avoid restricting industrial activities that have a much greater negative effect on sage grouse (oil and gas, cattle grazing, sprawl, mining, etc.)? I believe this is the hidden motive behind much P and J removal in the west. And in fact, it's not even hidden. This was explicitly stated during the formation of the Sage Grouse plans under Obama.
3. The most important point I'd like to make is that the science is very difficult to do without bias creeping in, particularly in cases like this where many different factors overlap, and where ecological impacts are complex and mulitfaceted—and in regards to species like Juniper which have been, frankly, largely reviled and removed by ranchers and range managers in the Western U.S. for nearly a century. For example, destruction of PJ forests in some areas has led to (slight) increase in sage-grouse populations, while simultaneously being implicated in significant reductions in Pinyon Jays - a species whose populations are collapsing and should be listed under the ESA. Again, managing on very imperfect knowledge leads to major problems.
4. You're right that some forest thinning and logging isn't driven by profit, and that was an oversight in my piece. But there is another mechanism that I didn't mention: government funding availability and significant monetary contracts to local Forest Service and BLM offices and private contractors / NGOs. There is a pipeline funnelling tens of millions of dollars to these types of projects (and research dollars to professors). That's incentive to create projects that "work" and to report positive results.
5. There's yet another mechanism involved in all this, which is the culture of juniper-removal which has become deeply entrenched across the Western US for generations now. If you're interested in some previous writing I've done on this topic, check out https://www.pinyonjuniperforests.org/the-issues/. That website is no longer maintained and is about 5 years out of date, but the basics there are solid.
6. I'm not a scientist, but there are many scientists publishing data pushing back against Pinyon-Juniper "treatments" (a euphemism if I've ever heard one; reminds me of the way the term "collateral damage" is used in war). For example, see "Do Mechanical Vegetation Treatments of Pinyon-Juniper and Sagebrush Communities Work?" (Jones, 2019) for a literature review on that topic. I can pull together some more references if you're interested in some alternative perspectives.
PS - Amanda, I'm based down here in Eugene - I'd be happy to grab lunch sometime and discuss if you're ever in town. Cheers.
That's simply not true. The forests in North America have been around for millions of years and don't need human destruction, what you call "management." Get your ego under control, humans are not gods and they need to stop acting like it. Nature knows far better than humans, and humans need to allow the natural processes to run their courses.
I suggest you read some of George Wuerthner's work on this subject. He can disabuse you of the BS you're being brainwashed with in college.
I worked on juvenile spacing layout and contract management from 1991 to about 2000 on Vancouver Island. At the time the real focus of these projects were timber production and larger diameter trees for logging. Trees were roughly 6 ft to 15 ft tall that we were thinning and in many cases very high density forests following the old clearcut and broadcast burn model. Before spacing was abandoned as a practice here we had started variable density and riparian spacing to better mimic old growth attributes. Fire proofing here means pruning dead branches, piling and burning woody debris to reduce ignition and slow the spread of fire aroung populated areas. In the juvenile forest stage this work has benefits like better establishment of understory shrubs and deciduous species. I live on a 1 acre lot and the forest floor was a tinderbox, I did variable density spacing, pruning and burning small piles. First year the area took off with Saskatoon berries, mountain ash and several others.
Whether this type of work is beneficial is site specific. However, clearcutting always increases fire hazard and commercial thinning would do the same. The Forest Industry in BC went from broadcast burning to pile burning. Typically, every fall pile burns escape and burn larger areas. BC has a "take or pay" stumpage model which means large volumes of smaller diameter, lower grade logs are left to rot or burned. Waste has actually increased.
Thanks for sharing this, Brent. One point I strongly agree on is that an intervention has to be highly site-specific. I've been working to restore a wetland on the land where I live, and the first step in that process was to simply observe water flows and other characteristics closely for three or four years before taking action.
I suggest comment on this analysis. https://www.uniondemocrat.com/news/article_49296bda-b029-11ee-95f7-171698d01d03.html
What's your perspective, Rob? From what I understand about fire and forest ecology, intentional burns can be a good thing in some places. I'd love to hear what scientists critical of logging and thinning like Dominick DellaSala or George Wuerthner think of that study.
Like I told Amanda above, read some of George Wuerthner's work on this subject. He's an old Earth First!er and has a proper perspective. Humans don't need to burn anything. In fact, humans start about 90% of all wildfires, so they need to STOP burning.