In The News

Random Lengths News
By Paul Rosenberg

[Hanson] cites three reasons it could actually increase the fire threat: by diverting resources, by giving a false sense of security, and by “removing trees and other vegetation” that “reduces wind friction and increases the speed of wildfires,” so that “they reach towns faster,” leaving less time for people to safely evacuate and for first responders to arrive and help.

Daily Montanan
By Jordan Hansen

“We’ll do all these logging operations, we’ll call it thinning and fuel reduction, with a wink and a nod, and it will tell communities it’ll stop the fire from reaching the towns,” Hanson said. “And that is a dangerous lie, because that’s not what’s happening. The fires are blowing right through those thin areas.”

It’s the same logic the Fix Our Forest Act is based on, Hanson said, which is why it’s drawn criticism from some environmental groups like the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and EarthJustice.

TRUTHOUT
By Mike Ludwig

Supporters of rescinding the Roadless Rule argue it creates barriers to active forest management and efforts to prevent wildfires that are intensifying with climate change, such as clearing potential fuel for fire. However, like [Jennifer] Mamola, Huffman says this is misleading.

TusconSentinel.com
By Paul Ingram

“We need more wild, intact ecosystems—vibrant landscapes that include everything from bustling post-fire snag forests to ancient old growth,” said Jennifer Mamola of the John Muir Project. “Nature has governed itself for eons and must continue to do so if we’re to protect biodiversity, store carbon, and sustain air and clean water.”

FOX13 Now
By Chris Reed

But ecologist Chad Hanson, the co-founder of the John Muir Project, said it’s a myth that forest mitigation prevents wildfires. “The most current research is telling us that the speed of fires is the key factor,” said Hanson. “And the one thing that almost all the science agrees on now is that removing trees from forests
increases the speed of fires, typically by a large degree.”

Sierra: The Magazine of the Sierra Club
By Alexander Nazaryan

The commission is “less a conservation effort and more a political stunt,” said Jennifer Mamola, policy director of the John Muir Project, which has decried the Trump administration’s efforts to expand logging in national forests. “It repackages extractive agendas under the guise of patriotism and public service. Despite its language around stewardship, this initiative promotes deregulation, expanded industrial access, and voluntary measures that have historically failed to protect ecosystems.”

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.”