Climate Is Driving Wildfires, Not Excessive Fuel Load
Prescribed Burns And Logging Won’t Work
Northern Cascades, Washington State
Caption: Pasayten Wilderness, the Diamond Creek fire (taken on 7/27/17, Bill Wolfe)
Once again, major wildfires are burning in western forests.
And once again, forest managers and proponents of the current flawed forest management approach are using wildfires to justify and expand their status quo flawed management approach: i.e. “prescribed burns” and “thinning” (actually logging).
The false assumption (myth) being used to justify these flawed forest management programs is that excessive “fuel load” created by fire suppression is the primary source of the problem.
But the best available science finds that the primary causal factors are high temperatures, low humidity, and high winds, exacerbated by climate change.
The NY Times coverage illustrates both the myth and the scientific reality, see:
Here’s the myth: (from the mouth of a former US Forest Service manager)
What’s more, there’s not only dry fuel, but a lot of it. The blaze has spread across parts of the state that haven’t experienced fire in decades. Fire suppression practices have allowed vegetation to build up over long periods, in contrast to the frequent burns that were a common forest management tool of Indigenous tribes in California pre-1850, said Hugh Safford, a research ecologist at the University of California, Davis, and a former ecologist for the United States Forest Service in California. Those policies mean the rapid spread of the Park fire was “absolutely not surprising at any level,” he said.
But here’s the science:
Extreme heat in June and July was the most likely cause of the fire’s rapid growth, said Park Williams, a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It’s the record-breaking hot and dry weather that’s singed the fuels and made them as ready to burn as they could possibly be,” Dr. Williams said.
Heat has been breaking records all summer, and Dr. Williams said records will probably continue to fall over the next several years as the burning of fossil fuels continues to add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
The NJ Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) climate, land use, and forest management policies and management programs share this flawed US Forest Service (timber industry) analysis based on myth, not science.
So, I again urged Murphy DEP Commissioner LaTourette to change course:
Dear Commissioner LaTourette – The Department has taken a strong interest in wildfires and the climate emergency, but unfortunately misdiagnosed the driving causal factors, prescribed a flawed forest management approach, and failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The best available science finds that the driving causal factors of wildfires are high temperatures, low humidity, and strong wind, not fuel load. Climate change makes all these factors worse.
Yet the Department’s forest management approach (e.g. prescribed burn and “thinning” (logging)) is based on a false assumption that excessive fuel loads drive wildfire and seeks to reduce fuel load. The Department’s failure to more strictly regulate land use in the Department’s mapped high wildfire hazardareas invites risks to public safety. Similarly, the Department is failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and is instead approving major new fossil fuel sources.
The Department’s flawed forest management programs do not work to reduce wildfire frequency and intensity, while they exacerbate greenhouse gas emissions, worsen NJ’s unhealthy air pollution, and destroy forest ecosystems.
Failure to restrict and better manage development increases wildfire hazards to public safety and property.
Permitting new GHG emission sources and failure to regulate and reduce current emissions worsens the climate emergency.
The current Park Fire in California is another illustration of the Department’s mismanagement – from today’s NY Times:
“Extreme heat in June and July was the most likely cause of the fire’s rapid growth, said Park Williams, a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It’s the record-breaking hot and dry weather that’s singed the fuels and made them as ready to burn as they could possibly be,” Dr. Williams said.
Heat has been breaking records all summer, and Dr. Williams said records will probably continue to fall over the next several years as the burning of fossil fuels continues to add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/30/climate/park-fire-california-heat.html
I again strongly urge you to: 1) abandon the Department’s forest management approach, 2) impose a moratorium on logging and burning NJ’s forests and permitting new sources of GHG emissions, 3) regulate all major sources of and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and 4) develop a far more aggressive integrated climate and forest management and regulatory strategy based on the best available science.
Should you not commit to major changes, perhaps Senator Smith will consider legislative policy mandates to force revision of the Department’s current forest management and climate programs.
Bill Wolfe