Fire Works. FOFA Logs. Don’t Be Fooled.

Megafire Action’s January 14, 2026 memo claims Fix Our Forests Act (FOFA, S. 1462) will expand wildfire mitigation in Oregon and Washington. The evidence shows otherwise.

Across the Pacific Northwest, prescribed fire and managed wildfire – when paired with, defensible space, home hardening, improved evacuation routes and smoke centers – consistently reduce wildfire impacts on human-built communities more effectively and at far lower cost than mechanical thinning out in forest wildlands (Calkin et al. 2023; North et al., 2015).

Decades of research demonstrate that home ignition vulnerability – not forest condition – is the primary driver of structure loss during wildfire. Studies by Calkin et al. and Law et al. show that investments in home hardening, defensible space, and community preparedness deliver by far the highest risk reduction per public dollar. Landscape-scale logging does nothing to protect communities.Despite this, the Megafire Action memo misleads by promoting the long-disproven narrative that forests must be mechanically “treated” by thinning and other logging before fire can be safely reintroduced, even after a begrudging and equivocal admission that thinning isn’t really effective. Government scientists have published more than fifty years of peer-reviewed research showing that fire alone can be applied successfully – even in dense forests and in areas that have not burned for more than a century. Mechanical “treatments”, particularly under extreme fire weather, tend to increase burn severity and rate of fire spread, making these inevitable fires worse rather than safer for communities.

Importantly, reducing fire severity is not synonymous with ecological benefit. Mixed- and high-severity fire are natural and necessary components of Pacific Northwest forest ecosystems.

Unlike wildfire, which largely redistributes carbon retained on site – if not salvage logged – mechanical treatments emit carbon immediately. Research across Oregon and Washington consistently finds that logging-related emissions exceed those from wildfire and insect disturbance by several-fold, making industrial “treatments” one of the most carbon-intensive responses to a climate-driven fire problem.

FOFA and its proponents continue to frame mixed- and high-severity fire as failure, diverting attention and resources from what actually reduces wildfire losses: limiting human-caused ignitions, hardening homes, planning communities for fire, and allowing fire-adapted ecosystems to function as they evolved to do.

Public lands and taxpayers deserve solutions grounded in demonstrated outcomes – not a logging-first narrative repeatedly contradicted by the very fires used to justify it.

Call to Action

Call your Senators, 202-224-3121, and urge them to reject FOFA and any logging-first wildfire legislation.

Instead, support policies that:

• Prioritize managed wildfire and prescribed fire, where it naturally belongs,
• Invest in better evacuation routes, defensible space, home hardening, and smoke centers,
• Reduce human-caused ignitions,
• Keep wildfire pretense logging off our public lands.