Opinion

HOFFMAN: Proactive Forest Management Is Sustainable For The Environment

Photo By Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Font Size:

The National Interagency Fire Center reports 80 fires are now raging across the country.

The Caldor Fire currently engulfing Lake Tahoe in California has tragically scorched over 140,000 acres and displaced many people from their homes.

It’s unacceptable to tolerate this scale of destruction year after year. Nevertheless, preservationist environmental policies — namely a century of fire suppression — are responsible for our fire mitigation woes.

As these fires expand and grow more intense, Congress and the White House must prioritize proactive forest management. It’s not enough to organize two working groups on the issue. For forest management to be realized, policymakers must identify the root causes of high-intensity fires instead of solely assigning blame to climate change.

A recent IOP Science study of key drivers behind fires determined that live fuel contributes the most to fires (53%) — followed by weather (23%) and climate change (14%). Even in California, top forest scientists point to massive accumulation of wood fuel, not climate change, as the underlying factor behind intense events.

According to the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), the U.S. Forest Service maintains a backlog of 80 million acres requiring restoration and noted 63 million acres susceptible to “high or very high risk of wildfire.”

But instead of listening to the scientists and properly caring for these forests, policymakers have created ideals like “pristine wilderness.” Encouraging “pristine wilderness” is counterproductive because it demands forests to be left untouched — save for a few outdoor recreational activities.

And what has resulted from this? Our national forest public lands have become unmanageable due to being overgrown and overmature. The absence of active management leads forests to experience threats to “forest biodiversity, watersheds, and wildlife populations.” Thus, leading to them becoming fire-prone. Talk about a disaster in the making.

Proactive forest management is a viable alternative. It takes many forms but is perhaps best realized through prescribed burns — one such remedy available.

These burns are critical because, according to a 2017 Advancing Earth and Space Science report, wildfire smoke pollutes three times as much as smoke emanating from prescribed burns.

Why does the Southeast have fewer fire issues compared to the Western U.S.? Seventy percent of controlled burns occur in the former, which is largely private land. One state, Florida, has revolutionized this practice so well that even California is taking a page from them.

Unfortunately, the Clean Air Act deems wildfire smoke as “natural” — while smoke from prescribed burns is “anthropogenic” requiring regulation as a pollutant. This leads to fewer controlled burns. Controlled burns are necessary, however, because they “reduce smoke impacts, consuming accumulated fuels that could otherwise be conducive to wildfires, thus reducing wildfire hazards.” How can environmentalists oppose this remedy on air quality grounds given this information? They shouldn’t.

Another solution is thinning forests. Denser, unmanaged forests are more susceptible to high-intensity fires. The U.S. Forest Service recommends “mechanical thinning” to ameliorate fire risk in national forests. This process focuses on “tree density, tree species distribution, tree age distribution and natural gaps in the canopy.” By thinning dense stands of trees, they can better withstand wildland fires. Reluctance to thin forests leads to “greater tree mortality” and greater susceptibility to infestation and disease from invasive species like the bark beetle. That’s neither good for biodiversity nor the forests.

Sadly, these reforms will be further hindered by impenetrable regulatory red tape. Despite knowing the solutions to the wildfire issues, politicians would rather blame climate change instead of allowing funding and support for the state and federal forestry agencies to take proper action. But there has been some progress in recent years.

The Trump administration proposed Prescribed Fire Guidance to encourage active management. They also touted National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reforms to narrow the definition of “major federation action” to better manage forests and expand on “categorical exclusions” to discourage redundant efforts. The Biden administration should use this as a framework. Failing to take real action would suggest that they’re not serious about tackling the problem.

To conserve forests, human action is necessary. Native Americans viewed prescribed burns as “medicine” to create critical animal habitats, enhance resources, and prevent larger-scale fires. Active forest management policies enable forests to become more resilient and allow for low-intensity, regular fire cycles. Lawmakers would be well-served to incorporate this, among other policy prescriptions, in their rulemaking decisions.

For too long, destructive preservationist policies have guided policymaking in Washington, D.C., to the detriment of both nature and people. The federal government must follow the science and finally get serious about sustainably managing our nation’s forests.

Gabriella Hoffman is a visiting fellow with Independent Women’s Forum. Follow her on Twitter at @Gabby_Hoffman.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel