More Logging Won’t Stop Wildfires

July 23, 2015
By Chad T. Hanson and Dominick A. DellaSala
The New York Times Op-Ed

[I]t is fire season again in the West and, predictably, House Republicans have approved a bill that would suspend environmental laws to increase logging in our national forests falsely claiming the legislation will reduce fire risk and “restore” our forests, when in fact it will do neither.

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Fire Aftermath: Watching a Forest Grow Anew

By David Downey
The Press Enterprise

Chad Hanson tromped uphill through blue-green shrubs, over charcoal-black logs and around fire-red wildflowers. Then he stopped.

With tiny rivulets of water dripping off his nose and head in a light rain, Hanson issued a challenge: See any pine seedlings? Slowly, a pair of visitors craned necks and pointed to a 6-inch baby pine tree here, a 1-foot seedling there.

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JEFFERSON PUBLIC RADIO: How Fires — Even Big Ones — Help Forests

Jefferson Public Radio | Chad Hanson and Dominick DellaSalla talk about their new book, “The Ecological Importance of High-Severity Fire: Nature’s Phoenix”, and discuss why and how federal policy on wildland fire should change so that communities are better protected, firefighters are not put unnecessarily at risk and fire is allowed to improve our ecosystems all while saving billions in taxpayer dollars.

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Clearing the Smoke on High Intensity Fire

April 29, 2015
By Christy Sherr
The Union Newspaper

The April 16 opinion piece featured a forester with Sierra Pacific Industries who discussed historical assumptions about our Sierra Nevada forests and their complex relationship with fire. Scientists are examining these assumptions, and finding repeatedly that these assumptions are wrong.

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Our First Post

Welcome! Thanks for stopping by our blog. Soon we’ll be posting here regularly about topics of interest. Check back often for updates!

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Fire

FireFire

Natural Restorer of Ecosystems

Mixed intensity wildland fire is and has always been a natural and ecologically beneficial process in conifer forests. Burning in a mosaic pattern, fire restores natural heterogeneity essential for an ecologically healthy forest.

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High Intensity Fire

High_Intensity_FireHigh Intensity Fire

Great For Wildlife

Patches of high intensity fire in mature and old forest create one of the richest forest habitat types (“complex early seral forest”), with abundant standing dead trees (snags), native shrubs, downed logs and naturally regenerating conifers essential to healthy and productive wildlife populations.

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