What Our FOFA Comment Section Reveals About Our National Wildfire Debate: Part 2 of 2

Misunderstanding the complexity of forests and wildfires: Calling them ‘complex’ shouldn’t be an excuse to manage them; it should be a reminder to listen.

In Part 1, we unpacked some of the most common myths we see repeated about wildfire and forests; the ones that crop up under nearly every post about fire ecology. Part 2 takes a step back to look at why these misunderstandings persist and what’s really at stake when complex science gets flattened into soundbites.

We’ll share a few more comments that stood out and use them to explore what’s missing from mainstream wildfire narratives, why real science often gets overshadowed, and how we can all approach this topic with a little more curiosity and humility. Okay, let’s get started.

“This [logging before burning a forest] is a seriously complex issue but what are we defining logging as here?”

Logging or ‘thinning’ is often presented as a neutral term, something that could mean anything from light thinning to industrial clearcutting. In practice, however, most logging on public lands is commercial and mechanized, conducted under the guise of “forest health,” “fuels reduction,” or “restoration.” Regardless of the euphemised label, trees are removed, soils compacted, roads fragmented, and carbon stores released. The typical “thinning” project on national forests kills and removes most of the trees in a given stand, including many mature and old-growth trees.

The complexity of ecosystems doesn’t translate into complexity of justification. Whether selective or large-scale intensive, logging is not an ecological act in any capacity and has no evolutionary history in forest ecosystems. The scale of public lands operations, the machinery used, and the removal of living and dead trees all separate these actions from anything resembling natural processes, or Indigenous practices like cultural burning.

“Burn scars throughout the west say otherwise … You couldn’t be more incorrect.” [Note: The commenter was attempting to use fire-scar records to imply that high-intensity patches are unnatural in forests.]

Fire-scar studies can only tell us about the historical frequency of lower-intensity fires, for the simple reason that they are only conducted in live, old-growth stands. Fire-scar studies cannot tell us about past high-intensity fire; other methods must be used for that, including historical mapping and photos by early US agencies, as well as stand-age analysis. There are hundreds of sources of evidence of historical high-intensity fire patches. Much of this evidence is reviewed in the book, “Mixed Severity Fires: Nature’s Phoenix”. Moreover, burned forests are not destroyed. Most areas burn at low/moderate-intensity, where there is relatively little change, and high-intensity fire patches create some of the best wildlife habitats in forests. And just as we would never declare a person beyond hope because their skin bears severe burns, we should not dismiss a forest and its trees simply because its outer layer has changed. High-intensity patches – those often mistaken for devastation – support woodpeckers, small mammals, and countless insect species. Charred logs and standing snags nurture fungi, feed cavity-nesting birds, and stabilize soil as vegetation returns. Many native species have evolved to largely depend upon the habitat created by high-intensity fire in forests. Again, see “Mixed Severity Fires: Nature’s Phoenix” for a review of hundreds of studies on this topic.

Fire is a sculptor; post-fire ecosystems store immense biodiversity and carbon. The real damage occurs when humans intervene. Salvage logging removes the foundation that drives regrowth, leaving a barren landscape stripped of the complexity that actually supports post-fire regeneration.

“Please show how the ‘fact’ that [logging before burning] costs six times more [than fire alone] was arrived upon. Seems dubious.”

“Timber is a renewable resource … this is how a capitalist system works.”

“Forest products from harvested trees contribute to the local economy.”

The US Forest Service itself admitted this fact—that mechanical thinning plus burning is about 6 times more expensive per acre than burning alone, and also admitted that no thinning is necessary prior to burning. Please see JMP’s Fire Alone fact sheet on this point, and for citations.

The economics of logging are often misrepresented as public benefit when they are, in truth, public loss. Federal logging programs operate at a deficit—taxpayer dollars subsidize all aspects of logging on public lands, including planning, road construction, replanting, and oversight, while the timber industry profits. Meanwhile, the economies that actually thrive are the ones with more protected federal public lands, where employment and wages rise as logging declines. Recreation, tourism, and intact integrity of forests generate far more jobs and income than timber has.

Old-growth forests take centuries to form; no tree plantation can replicate their biodiversity or carbon storage. Calling trees “renewable resources” reduces living ecosystems to crop fields and treats short-term revenue as worth more than long-term resilience.

“I like to compare it to starting a fire in a fireplace. Sometimes you need to take some fuel out … to safely burn.”

There is half a century of science showing that there is no need to remove any trees prior to burning, even in the densest forests and even in forests that have not burned in over a century. The US Forest Service admits this too. Please see JMP’s Fire Alone fact sheet on this point.

Moreover, forests are not fireplaces, and trees are not logs on a hearth. A fireplace burns because its components are static and enclosed; a forest is alive, self-regulating, and dynamic. It is not “cluttered” with fuel but composed of interacting layers – soil microbes, understory vegetation, canopy trees – all cycling nutrients and moisture in balance.

When we “take fuel out” through logging, we dismantle this balance. We dry soils, expose the forest floor to wind and sunlight, and disrupt moisture cycles that help regulate fire behavior. The result is not safety but volatility. This is a great springboard to explain why small-scale human analogies break down when applied to complex forest ecosystems. Forests are multi-layered, interconnected systems that don’t respond like a small, confined fireplace. Check out JMP’s Thinning/Fire fact sheet to see the many studies, including many Forest Service studies, finding that thinning and other logging actually increases the intensity and severity of wildfires.

“The fire intensity and the damage to the soil … is way more severe without logging removing the forest fire fuel.”

“Clearcuts are Nature’s normal applied system in these places … Logging systems try to match the forest types.”

Logging and wildfire are not ecological equivalents. Natural fire redistributes nutrients and fosters renewal; logging exports biomass and erodes the land’s capacity to regenerate. Forests are fire-adapted systems. They have burned, regenerated, and evolved in cycles far longer than human memory. When we remove their structure, alter moisture and wind patterns, and carve roads through their continuity, we replace resilience with fragility. “Matching” forest types through industrial templates misunderstands the basis of ecological function, no matter how much damage has been done through human intervention that some now hope to solve with more of the same. Again, most current research finds that logging exacerbates wildfires, as JMP’s Thinning/Fire fact sheet demonstrates.

These recurring misconceptions persist for several reasons:

• Simplified analogies, like comparing forests to fireplaces or treating standing dead trees as “clutter,” make complex systems seem understandable, but in doing so they obscure the processes that sustain life and resilience.
• Industrial narratives disguised as ecological guidance frame extraction as restoration or protection, giving commercial interests a veneer of science while leaving the public with a skewed perception of risk and benefit.
• And the allure of “quick fixes” that promise safety or economic gain, offering the comfort of immediate solutions without acknowledging the long timescales and intricate cycles forests actually follow, and without acknowledging the huge body of science that contradicts the false industry claim that logging curbs wildfire.

When complex science is made reductive, the public, policymakers, and even well-meaning commentators and scientists, can be misled despite decades of peer-reviewed, ecological research.

What Science and Curiosity Demand

Complexity should lead us to humility, not hubris. The notion that human precision can outperform natural processes is a relic of the industrial mindset that brought us here. The best ‘restoration’ we can offer is restraint — allow burned areas to regenerate, provide habitat for the many species that need burned forests, connect habitat corridors, while we refocus resources where lives are truly saved — in and around communities, not in remote forests.

Rhetoric must not guide action. It is research that we must continue to put to application in our conversations, communities, and policy. To understand forests, one must first listen to them: their patterns, their intervals, their silences. It takes centuries to see the cycles they live by, and only moments, or misguided policies, to break them.

The “Fix Our Forests Act” (FOFA) has passed out of the Senate Agriculture Committee and will soon be voted on by the full Senate. There is still time to make your voice heard. Please take action: read our action alert and tell your Senators to vote NO on FOFA. You can also call the Senate switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

Catch you later on the digital signal,
Bekah