When Jim Neiman announced the closure of his sawmill in Hill City last spring, the forest exploiter claimed that big dumb government wouldn’t listen to his argument that allowing him to chop down more trees would reduce wildfires.
Ecologist Chad Hanson challenges the idea that logging can reduce wildfire risk. He says Neiman and the rest of the logging industry and the politicians they lobby get the science backwards to promote their business:
Hanson sees a dangerous political narrative developing, at state and national levels and among members of both political parties, based on an assumed association between forest density and risk. This notion has been refuted in numerous studies, including one that looked at 1,500 fires between 1998 and 2014.
“That narrative is being used and weaponized to target logging projects at old growth forests and some of our most ecologically sensitive and vulnerable forests, based on the idea that those are the most so-called overgrown,” he says. “Not only will this damage wildlife habitat and make climate change worse, when fires burn those areas again, they will burn more intensely” [Carl Smith, “Scientists Say Clearing Forests Worsens Wildfire Damage,” Governing, 2021.07.16].
Hanson argues dense forests resist fire better:
Logging changes the microclimate of a forest and creates a microclimate that is more conducive to the spread of flames and more intense fires, when a wildfire occurs. A dense forest that has a lot of trees and a lot of biomass also has a high canopy cover and it has a lot of cooling shade from that canopy cover. The trees, alive and dead, and the downed logs soak up and retain huge amounts of moisture and soil moisture.
You have a lot more water in the system overall, even in the ambient air. The ambient air temperature is lower and the relative humidity is higher. The higher level of tree density acts as a windbreak against the winds that drive flames. Everything stays more cool, more moist, more shaded.
When logging occurs, you reverse that. The canopy cover is reduced and this creates hotter, drier and windier conditions. In addition, logging equipment spreads highly combustible, invasive gasses and leaves behind kindling like slash debris, which is also highly combustible [Hanson, in Smith, 2021.07.16].
The real driver of forest fires is climate change. Hanson says logging makes climate change worse by reducing our forests’ capacity to pull carbon out of the atmosphere.
Hanson worries that President Biden’s infrastructure bill has “billions of dollars of new subsidies” that will make climate change and wildfires worse. The President’s FY2022 budget proposal does talk about biomass as “hazardous fuels” and proposed treating lands to reduce that biomass. However, pre-compromise, Biden’s infrastructure plan included $10 billion for a new Civilian Conservation Corps to engage in reforestation and other conservation work. The Senate compromise version does not include CCC 2.0, but forest and labor advocates say President Biden could establish the new Corps—perhaps rechristened a Civilian Climate Corps— by other means. Just this week, President Biden announced it will stop big timber sales that the reckless previous administration sought to allow in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska and “will focus on forest restoration, recreation, and other noncommercial uses.” According to a 2016 USDA finding, the Tongass stores more carbon than any other national forest in the United States.
We at least have a President who is open to talking about scientific approaches to reducing climate change and wildfire risk rather than a pyromaniac who just wants to burn everything down. And a sensible President committed to science and the public good has to take heed of this research indicating that we can mitigate both wildfires and climate change by chopping down less of our forests.
Not challenging the merits of you argument, Cory,
but a whole lot of us live in houses made out of wood.
And it seems that we keep needing more houses.
Unfortunately, it’s more complicated. There are a lot of variables. You can’t make blanket statements about fire or logging over all the forest types in the US, nor even about the forest composition and structure within those forest types. What you can do is look more closely at the environmental impacts of each proposed timber sale or forest management plan.
Dr. Hanson appears to be discussing forests in California, and he may have a point there. I’m not so sure all of that applies in the pine forests on south-facing mountainsides in the southern Black Hills. Maybe some of it applies in the older growth areas in the northern Hills.
I just read an excellent article on the South Dakota standard blog site this morning about the proposed uranium mine near Edgemont. That project is definitely a non-starter with me.
Nope…No way…Not Here…Never. I think the people of the Black Hills should all come together against the proposed uranium mine.
Early photos of the Black Hills, before “Smokey the Bear” suppression of the natural fire cycle show an open forest with fewer and typically larger and healthier trees than what we see nowadays.
Facts, though are facts. The Black Hills National forest put more trees into lumber last year than any other national forest. The Nieman cut is/was unsustainable and the Forest Service right in dialing it back. Nieman’s sawmills had been computerized and made so efficient that they HAD to have more socialized (our society’s forest) timber to run at optimum production. When told they’d have to scale back they cried ‘foul’ and blame the Biden Administration for following proper science.
This is the case of corporate protectionism-protecting their bottom dollar and blaming it on environmentalists.
Nobody wants to see a family man’s job go away, but corporate interests are more in tune with what’s good for the corporation, than that man’s family.
Dr. Hanson’s narrow observations are malarkey.
Dr. Hanson, along with boomers, grew up under the 1944 fire suppression propaganda of Smokey Bear. Dr. Hanson and the non-professional “foresters” NEVER cite pre-settlement forest conditions. NEVER. They instead substitute their personal observations and create “data” supporting their narrative to over-grow forests. “Foresters” goal is growing trees – not having sustainable forests. Gifford Pinochet, father of the Forest Service, saw trees as crops. Pinochet did not see forests as ecosystems. Pinochet’s acolyte, Aldo Leopold, saw, wrote, and advocated for sustainable forests – ‘one can stockpile biomass for a while until nature violently wipes out the biomass stockpile’ (see: Sand County Almanac, et al.).
Since Dr. Hanson is prone to view his world in recent snap shots, consider a few. During the last housing boom, lumber production and the number of sawmills dropped – resulting in the cutting of fewer trees. “Between 2006 and the end of 2009, the production capacity of the softwood lumber sector covered by this report in the United States and Canada has shrunk from 190.8 million m3 (nominal) to 166.4 million m3. The corresponding number of mills slumped from 1,025 to 875 over the same time and from 1,322 recorded in 1995. The Canadian capacity went from 88.2 million m3 to 71.6 million m3, a loss of 19%, while the U.S. capacity dropped from 102.6 million m3 to 94.8 million m3, a loss of 8%. These losses are attributable to three unprofitable years of sawmilling caused by the contraction in construction. Construction and repair and remodeling of homes each accounted for about 35% of total lumber consumption in 2006. Their downturn has caused demand to lag substantially behind the capacity that was built up to supply the prior boom.” (USDA FS Profile 2009: Softwood Sawmills in the US and Canada). The long term trend is fewer sawmills, less US timber cut, and more severe fires. Dr. Hanson’s observations do not square.
The USDA FS has entire forests no longer served by sawmills. Some forests have small mills only working thinning and small “post and pole” contracts.
The USDA FS mismanaged implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for generations. The FS allowed unsustainable road building, clear cutting, and watershed debasement – in its single focus to “cut trees” for generations. The worst of those abuses are behind us. But the FS has yet to adapt forests as an ecosystem management, instead opting to “grow trees”. Well-intentioned but flawed “environmentalists” want to grow trees absent a discussion of pre-settlement forest conditions and sustainability. Some timber harvesters want to over-cut for short-term profit, while others seek sustainability. Large companies that own their acreages KNOW and PRACTICE sustainable harvesting. — as do the forest owning Tribes.
The fact is the Black Hills National Forest remains vastly overgrown when contrast to the pre-settlement forest documented by William Illingworth during the expedition of ‘The Last Unknown Place’ (Prolouge). See: Exploring with Custer: The 1874 Black Hills Expedition by Grafe and Horsted. Consider also the expedition documented that water ran in the creeks in July and August. Consider that for decades of forest overgrowth that water did not run in the Black Hills creeks year-round because artificially amplified tree growth through fire suppression over-taxed the sustainable water table. Consider that it’s relatively easy using modern methods to study Illingworth’s forest photos to discern a range of pre-settlement timber density per acre using basic geometry and extrapolation. Yet, the FS hasn’t bothered because sustainable forests are not in the FS culture, mandate, or practice.
This note advocates for sustainable forests. This note advocates that to achieve the pre-settlement sustainable level – that requires a near-term consistent high harvest to mitigate the gross over-growth allowed during the Smokey Bear fire suppression era. This note advocates than when the BHNF looks like and has a comparable density extrapolated from the Illingworth documentation — that is the time to transition the timber harvest to lower levels that sustain the pre-settlement forest and its density.
Fun Facts About Wood …
Women find the sight of a man chopping wood to be the most visually stimulating image, in a nationwide poll.
Logging should be confined to removing dead and nearly dead trees. Those are the ones that need to go.
I was a lumberjack in the Black Hills in 1975, working out of Central City, between Lead and Deadwood and drinking liberally at the Silver Dollar Bar.
Mr. Pay and grudznick have vaster amounts of knowledge of the forests in the Black Hills of South Dakota. This Mr. Hansen fellow is full of beans.
What’s eventually the future of the Black Hills indefensible residential urban development is playing out in Northern California and British Columbia where 3 towns burned to the ground.
There is too much fuel (trees) in the forests, including the Black Hills. The Black Hills should be cut and thinned back to the sustainable, resilient stand density documented at the settlement era of 1874.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/06/canada-wildfire-monte-lake-climate-crisis
I’ve known Hulett, Wyoming’s Jim Neiman for over forty years. He’s a ruthless negotiator and committed capitalist who would log the Black Hills into the dirt since he controls the Black Hills National Forest leadership and South Dakota’s Republican congressional delegation. In 2002, the National Forest Protection Alliance (NFPA) named the Black Hills National Forest the third most endangered. Neiman Enterprises bought the Homestake sawmill in Spearditch in 2008. Today, after closing his sawmill in Hill City Neiman admitted 80% of the timber he has taken comes from public lands owned by the Forest Service.
The Black Hills are tinder dry as an insect called the Ips engraver beetle is culling trees that are highly stressed by drought conditions. According to Kurt Allen, an entomologist for the US Forest Service in Region 2 impacts from the Ips beetle typically only last for two or three years but pine trees that are completely brown or red are dead and the beetle has moved on. The Forest Service generally allows the beetle to run its course and doesn’t treat affected stands. Bark beetles shape water supplies throughout the Mountain West.
https://rapidcityjournal.com/fire/climate-change-logging-collide-in-black-hills-national-forest/article_fceebd14-1bfd-55f8-978e-39d1498fd2d9.html