In The News

Munhwa Broadcasing Corporation in Korea
By Lee Hwi-jun

“Any practice of removing trees from a forest—whether it’s thinning or large-scale logging—ultimately tends to increase the intensity of a wildfire. Reducing the density of trees, branches, and leaves in a forest allows more sunlight into the forest, and the winds become stronger, making the forest drier. Governments around the world, including the United States, spend hundreds of millions of dollars, sometimes billions of dollars a year subsidizing these logging projects and paying these agencies to enforce them. But what they’re really doing is wasting enormous amounts of money on things that are making wildfires worse.”

Backpacker
By Elizabeth Miller

Like the president, former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke blamed environmental activists for wildfires’ increased intensity. But Hanson and other fire ecologists caution that the administration has it backwards: More logging can actually make wildfires burn hotter and faster. Instead, they say, it’s well-placed, smart management that will reduce the impacts to communities from wildfires—and unchecked logging is neither.

Nevada Current
By Dana Gentry

“The Forest Service uses the term ‘thinning and fuel reduction,’ a euphemism for commercial logging,’” says Dr. Chad Hanson, an ecologist and vocal critic of traditional fire management practices at a time when climate change has increased fire severity. “What they’re really doing is selling and removing large, commercially valuable trees on a fairly significant scale. Not only does that fail to protect homes, it will actually make a fire spread faster, and often more intensely toward the homes.”

San Francisco Chronicle
By Kurtis Alexander

Despite citing fire prevention, the Trump administration is calling for a 25% increase in logging in U.S. national forests.

But forest ecologists–and the data–tell a different story: “It [logging] tends to make them burn faster and hotter toward towns,” says Chad Hanson of the John Muir Project. Is this really about fire, or about profit?

Note: This article is behind a paywall

ABC4
By MJ Jewkes

Researchers believe active wildfire management practices, like forest thinning, may do more harm than good. “Many of the things being done in forests will potentially make them more flammable, not less,” said David Lindenmayer, distinguished professor with the Australian National University. Lindenmayer says he, along with a team of researchers, including Dr. Chad Hanson and Dr. Dominick DellaSala, began studying active management strategies shortly after a number of wildfires tore across Australian forests in 2009.

Spectrum News 1
By Jamie Kennedy

“Removing trees from forests reduces wind resistance,” Hanson said. “And that’s a really big factor. Reducing wind resistance means that the flames, the winds, can push the flames faster through the forest.” Hanson believes wildfire efforts should focus on hardening homes and defensible space, with prescribed and natural burns as the best forest strategy. “We actually want more fire in most areas and not just low intensity creeping surface fire,” Hanson said. “In most forest ecosystems, there is a natural component that is high-intensity fire.”

Context
By Carey L. Biron

The executive orders and implementation cite a focus on reducing wildfires and safeguarding at-risk communities. But wildfire scientist Chad Hanson, director of the nonprofit John Muir Project, said this viewpoint flies in the face of years of scientific findings. “Claiming that removing millions of trees somehow will curb wildfires and therefore communities don’t have to worry, that approach is unconscionably dangerous … based on the evidence we have,” he said. In fact, thinning has been found to dry out forests and allow winds to spread fires more easily, he said.

USA Today
By Elizabeth Weise, Terry Collins, Zach Urness, and Joel Shannon

“Logging doesn’t curb fires, it intensifies fires. Trump falsely claims that more logging will curb wildfires and protect communities, but there’s an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence showing the exact opposite,” said Chad Hanson, a co-founder of the John Muir Project. “The more trees you remove, the faster wildfire flames sweep through the forest. It gives less time for people to evacuate and less time for first responders to react.” Wildfires move faster because removing trees reduces wind resistance, allowing winds to sweep through faster, Hanson added.

The Guardian
By Oliver Milman

Donald Trump has ordered that swathes of America’s forests be felled for timber, evading rules to protect endangered species while doing so and raising the prospect of chainsaws razing some of the most ecologically important trees in the US. The president, in an executive order, has demanded an expansion in tree cutting across 280m acres (113m hectares) of national forests and other public lands, claiming that “heavy-handed federal policies” have made America reliant on foreign imports of timber.

Big Bear Grizzly

Environmental groups say thinning forests can actually increase the threat of forest fire. And in 2023, the John Muir Project and Friends of Big Bear Valley submitted a lawsuit against USFS to halt the project.

It’s unclear where the North Big Bear Landscape Restoration project stands. The USFS is unable to comment on the issue due to a national freeze on media relations. Both the John Muir Project and Friends of Big Bear Valley say they have not received a substantive update on the project.