Posts by Nicholas Scritchfield
SOS Logging Bill Fact Sheet
When Your Backyard Burns
Apparently, we have money to alter entire landscapes, but making the homes within those landscapes fire-ready is somehow beyond our scope. I believe the broader scientific evidence weighs strongly against so-called “fuels reduction” in wild ecosystems as an effective strategy for protecting communities, and does not support manipulating wildlands in an attempt to control fire. But you don’t have to agree with me about that to agree about what should come first. Before we keep spending billions to alter forest densities and celebrate the number of backcountry acres we log, let’s prepare our homes.
Read MoreWebinar | The Truth About Forest Thinning
Clearcuts are widely understood to be detrimental to forests—but what about more selective forms of logging? In this webinar, Dr. Chad Hanson (Director and Principal Ecologist of the John Muir Project) and Stephen Kropp (President and Executive Director of the Legacy Forest Defense Coalition) examine the ecological consequences of thinning in the name of wildfire mitigation and forest health.
Read MoreWill a logging project save the Blue Ridge Parkway from fire — or imperil it?
Asheville Watchdog
By Jack Evans
The federal government sees a dead tree as a sort of time bomb. In recent decades, and especially under President Donald Trump, land management agencies have seized on dead trees as a type of “fuel” powering destructive wildfires — despite a growing body of scientific research casting doubt on this position.
Read MoreDebunking Wildfires | Dr. Chad Hanson Interview
NBC 6 South Florida interviews Dr. Chad Hanson about wildfires and how to protect our communities. We need to shift our efforts and resources away from backcountry fuels reduction toward strategies that immediately decrease community risks, such as home hardening and defensible space.
Read MoreWebinar | The Hidden “Fix Our Forests Act” Loophole
In collaboration with Wilderness Watch, our webinar dives into the language of the Fix Our Forests Act to highlight how a cleverly hidden loophole in S. 1462 would nullify any potential enforcement of all federal environmental laws on national forests and BLM lands nationwide. If you thought that the House version of FOFA was extreme, just wait until you learn about this newly discovered loophole.
Read MoreThe Deceptively-Named “Fix Our Forests Act”: Extreme Environmental Rollbacks and Subsidized Industrial Logging
Colorado lawmakers had a chance to protect homes from wildfires, but turned it down
April 9, 2026
By Nicholas Scritchfield
The Colorado Sun
Last month, Colorado lawmakers were handed a simple, science-backed opportunity: shift a fraction of wildfire funding toward the one strategy most consistently shown to protect homes—home hardening and defensible space grants. However, they said no to House Bill 1310, what was also known as the Wildfire Resiliency Grant Money bill.
Read MoreNew Science Is Changing How We Protect Giant Sequoias—Policy Should Catch Up
Today, as public concern grows over their future in a changing climate, new science is confirming what these trees have been showing us all along: that high-intensity fire is essential to their survival story. These forests, shaped by varied natural disturbance processes over evolutionary timescales, carry within them a remarkable ability not just to persist, but to thrive after intense wildfire.
Read MoreLosing Sight of Forest Ecology
Across North America, forests evolved with natural disturbance processes such as wildfire and cycles of native insects like bark beetles. The scale and intensity of these processes varied widely in a dynamic dance of constant change, shaping forest structure and the life within it.
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