Forest thinning reduces wildfire risks when done right
Dana Nuccitelli
Dana Nuccitelli
Staff Action Team Leader Congressional Liaison
2254 Posts

I came upon a paper that did a 20-year study comparing forested areas in the Sierra Nevada Mountains without any wildfire management practices, with prescribed burns, with mechanical thinning, and with a combination of the two. It concluded,

All three active fuel treatments produced forest conditions at the end of 20 years that were much more resistant to wildfire than the controls, demonstrating that there are different pathways for achieving success in Sierra Nevada mixed-conifer forests … While federal planning frameworks such as the National Environmental Planning Act can slow down project implementation it is still critical to get the necessary work done in these forests.

Though as a recent article quoting the study's lead author and also climate scientist Daniel Swain noted, the mechanical thinning has to be done right. Simply increasing commercial logging, which tends to target the biggest and most economically-valuable trees (which are also the most fire-resistant), isn't the same as effective forest thinning, which targets smaller and less fire-resistant trees. But, US Forest Service wildfire management plans should do this properly.

Logging, he said, can be a viable way to mitigate fire risk, as long as it’s done sustainably and arborists are strategic about what trees they’re chopping down … commercial logging can be done sustainably. But it would have to be severely regulated.

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