00:07:32.580But there's a deeper issue here that they're missing with all that rhetoric.
00:07:36.800And that's that when fires burn, even in those patches where they burn hot and kill most or all the trees, the forests regenerate in spectacular fashion.
00:07:46.400And that regeneration creates wonderful wildlife habitat.
00:07:49.960You know, we hear a lot of sort of hyperbolic statements out there that right now the forests are so dense and the fires burn so hot that it sterilizes the soil and nothing will grow.
00:08:03.620And in fact, our forests are not more dense now than they were historically.
00:08:07.500Actually, there's less biomass in our forests now than there was a century ago because of decades of logging.
00:08:14.700And so, you know, there's a lot of mythology we kind of need to cut through on this.
00:08:17.940But I'll just talk about, you know, how it really works in the forest when fire burns.
00:08:22.320So, you know, the first thing that happens after the flames pass and the smoke clears is that there are many, many species, native species of beetles we call wood-boring beetles.
00:08:33.620And they have evolved over many thousands of years.
00:08:37.220They've evolved receptors in their bodies to detect fires by heat or by smoke, depending on the beetle species.
00:08:43.720and they will make a beeline for fire areas because they need recently fire-killed trees
00:08:49.360in order to reproduce so the beetles they are really good flyers they'll fly from you know
00:08:54.580from miles away and they'll land on the the charred bark of a fire-killed tree they lay their eggs
00:08:59.880and the larva develops and bores through the bark into the wood of the fire-killed tree
00:09:04.180and it develops into an adult over the course of a year two years sometimes three or four
00:09:09.360years or more and then it emerges as an adult but when it's a larva inside these fire-killed trees
00:09:15.960when it's in that stage it's food for a number of native woodpecker species that depend on the
00:09:23.740larva of these wood boring beetles in order to survive and you know dead trees are softer than
00:09:29.520live trees and so the woodpeckers create nest cavities in these dead trees so for example the
00:09:35.040blackback woodpecker. It's a species I've been studying for about 15 years now. It's a monogamous
00:09:40.000species. And every spring, the male will create between two and four nest cavities. And the female
00:09:45.840picks the one she likes the best. And that's where they raise their young that year. But all the other0.56
00:09:50.320nest cavities that they don't use, those are available for all the other cavity nesting species
00:09:56.320in the forest that have to have cavities to reproduce and raise their young, but they can't
00:10:01.920make their own. So for example, bluebirds and nuthatches, wrens, flying squirrels, chipmunks,
00:10:08.400dozens and dozens of bird and small mammal species need these cavities, but they depend on the
00:10:12.900woodpeckers to create those cavities in these dead trees for them. And the woodpeckers can't do that
00:10:18.320unless they have dead trees and the beetle larva to eat. You can't have that unless you have fire
00:10:23.360or cycles of drought that kill patches of trees as well. And so you end up having this very,
00:10:29.440very rich and interconnected ecosystem that provides food and habitat for all kinds of
00:10:34.800species. But the other thing that happens is shortly after a fire, especially where it burns
00:10:39.300hotter and kills more trees, is it stimulates the growth of all kinds of fire-following plants
00:10:45.480that have evolved to depend on intense fire to basically spur their germination. And a lot of
00:10:52.560these are flower-producing plants, wildflowers and flowering shrubs. And they attract native
00:10:58.200flying insects and that provides food for fly catching birds and bats and the shrubs and the
00:11:05.800natural regeneration of conifer seedlings and oak seedlings that come in and the dead trees that
00:11:11.500fall all that understory vegetation and complexity provides great habitat for small mammals and
00:11:18.080because of all the small mammals and all the birds in the forest that also provides food for raptors
00:11:24.380owls and hawks. And a lot of the berry producing plants are great for the bears to get fat on
00:11:30.720before the winter. And so you end up having an ecosystem that is incredibly biodiverse. And in
00:11:37.180fact, interestingly, the areas that burn hottest, where most or all the trees are killed, those
00:11:42.520patches that represent typically 20 to 25, sometimes 30 percent of the area that burns in a
00:11:49.760forest. Those areas, we call that snag forest habitat, those areas that burn hotter. And that's
00:11:55.240actually comparable to old growth forest in terms of native biodiversity and wildlife abundance. So
00:11:59.700it's actually an ecological treasure, not a disaster.
00:12:03.280That is so interesting to really break down these myths and truly understand fires from an ecological
00:12:11.340standpoint. I want to get into that even more. But before we do, I'm wondering, is it beneficial or
00:12:18.340how beneficial is it to seed or plant trees after these high-intensity fires? I'm wondering,
00:12:25.220does that speed up the process? Or is it more about that the high-intensity fires uncover
00:12:30.440seeds that have been resting in the soil for long periods of time? What is the best way to
00:12:35.180look at restoration of these burned areas, if that's even beneficial at all?
00:12:41.940Right. So going back to your question earlier about what does it mean when humans intervene
00:12:46.600after a fire. The bottom line is this. Basically, hundreds of scientific studies have been published
00:12:52.540on these issues. And what they're really telling us loudly and clearly is that the best thing you
00:12:57.180can do after a fire is absolutely nothing from an ecological standpoint. Now, if you have a dead
00:13:03.140tree that could fall on a house, then you need to cut that dead tree down because that's a public
00:13:07.880safety issue. But from an ecological standpoint, from purely forest ecology, you don't need to do
00:13:14.200anything. You don't need to replant. You don't need to cut trees down. The forest regenerates
00:13:18.160all on its own, just naturally, even in the largest patches of high-intensity fire.
00:13:22.560The areas where dead trees, you have nothing but dead trees across hundreds of meters
00:13:27.080of ground, those forests regenerate beautifully. I just published a study on that very issue.
00:13:33.800The reason is it's not just about how close to a given area live trees are. It's also about
00:13:39.320the birds and the small mammals distributing seed source all over the forest. So, you know,
00:13:45.360in some cases, there are certain conifer species, certain tree species that depend on intense fire
00:13:51.480to melt the resins in their cones and to release their seeds. Giant sequoia is one of those
00:13:56.720species. For example, Rocky Mountain Lodge pole pine, knob cone pine, there are a number of them,
00:14:01.560but there are also a lot of species that have other adaptations and they depend on intense fire or,
00:14:08.020you know, even low and moderate intensity fire to create the conditions that allow new trees to
00:14:13.120regenerate. And they regenerate beautifully. But the reality is this, is that in some places,
00:14:18.380the regeneration of the trees is going to be very, very dense and very quick. And in other places,
00:14:22.880it's going to be more open and it's going to be more oak and shrub dominated with more
00:14:26.860scattered conifer trees regenerating. Both of those things are good. And that's what we need
00:14:32.160to understand. It's not a cookie cutter approach. In nature, you want that kind of variety. You
00:14:37.820want that what we call heterogeneity. And we get that after fire. We get these natural varied
00:14:44.420patterns of regeneration in that mosaic, including in the biggest high-intensity fire patches.
00:14:50.460And that's good because certain species want different things. And if you're just doing
00:14:55.100one type of thing, which is what they do when they cut down the fire-killed trees and artificially
00:15:00.720plant trees in these post-fire logging operations after fire, you know, they basically plant for
00:15:06.420250 or 300 trees per acre. And what you get is a sterile, ecologically diminished area,
00:15:14.080basically a tree plantation. And it's really just a crop. It's not a forest ecosystem.
00:15:19.340So basically what they've done is removed the forest. And I think what we need to get to
00:15:23.600is an understanding that a forest ecosystem is not just the areas of mostly live green trees
00:15:30.680that haven't burned in a long time or have burned more recently at low and moderate intensity,
00:15:35.420where most of the trees survive. And that's what most fire is. Even the biggest fires
00:15:39.580are mostly low and moderate intensity, but there are significant high intensity fire patches. And
00:15:44.620the question is, what does that mean? And we have to understand that now there are hundreds of
00:15:50.620scientific studies that are telling us those high intensity fire patches create another forest
00:15:55.160habitat type that wasn't recognized historically. This is what we call snag forest habitat. And it's
00:16:00.760just as important as old growth forest in terms of, you know, wildlife diversity and abundance.
00:16:06.640And we need to recognize that. And so it's not a matter of restoring the forest after the fire.
00:16:12.100It's a matter of recognizing that the fire actually is the restoration.
00:24:36.660Will areas traditionally dominated by, say, shrubland and chaparral transition to grasslands?
00:24:41.920You know, how will this change impact species composition in areas like California?
00:24:47.260And then I think a second part to that question is the question of drought and how drought, which is most likely eminent in the near future.
00:24:56.580And I mean, we're already in it, especially in places like California and honestly, the whole Pacific Northwest.
00:25:02.180How is drought going to affect regrowth after fires?
00:25:05.780Does it become increasingly difficult for the earth to regenerate during periods of drought?
00:26:08.340And if anything, I'm actually seeing fire as an agent of maintaining vegetation types in a given area and rejuvenating those stands.
00:26:16.940I see the threat from climate change, from human caused climate change to our forests as being primarily about rising temperatures and possibly as well, drought cycles related to climate change.
00:26:27.720But a couple of things need to be understood in this context.
00:26:30.440First of all, we have a substantial deficit of fire in our forests currently, and that's not something that most people understand. I mean, it's well understood within the scientific community. It's not well understood among the general public or among policymakers.
00:26:46.560But this is an interesting thing because the fact is, is that there is no dispute in the scientific community about that fact. What people disagree about, what they debate all the time, what they fight about is how much less fire we have now than we had historically. Is it half as much? Is it one seventh as much? Is it somewhere in between?
00:27:08.680But there's a broad consensus that we have a deficit of fire and basically a deficit of all intensities, low, moderate and high in our conifer forest ecosystems.
00:27:17.320So we need to understand that because the reality is, from an ecological standpoint, we don't want too much fire and we don't we don't want too little.
00:27:25.980Right now, we actually have too little.
00:27:28.280So there are a number of models that are predicting that we'll have more fire in the future because of human caused climate change, because of increasing temperatures, which can influence fire.
00:27:38.100because of drought cycles, which can influence fire. There are other climate models that predict
00:27:43.820it's going to be a complex mix of regional or localized increases and localized or regional
00:27:50.160decreases in fire because of the combination of rising temperatures in some areas in combination
00:27:56.420with drier conditions and rising temperatures in other areas in combination with wetter conditions.
00:28:02.600So whether you have hotter, drier conditions or warmer, wetter, that makes a big difference in
00:28:07.780terms of what you can expect with regard to future fire effects. So we may get a complex mix. There
00:28:14.040are a number of studies predicting that. And there are other models that are predicting widespread
00:28:17.980decreases in fire, especially high-intensity fire, in the future. Even if we might have a
00:28:24.160short-term increase in the near-term decades, overall it'll decrease. And they're predicting
00:28:31.160that in a hotter, drier future on the basis of predicted shifts in understory vegetation
00:28:38.300with ongoing droughts and basically less understory vegetation to carry flames.
00:28:44.500And honestly, we're not going to know until we get there in the future, which is why it's
00:28:49.260so important to continue to publish studies on existing trends, where things are going
00:28:55.200right now, where they've gone since 1984, which is our earliest data from satellite
00:29:00.680imagery that allows us to track fires and fire intensity. And I've published some work on this
00:29:05.340and I'll continue to do that. So it's really important that we actually publish information
00:29:09.740on the actual existing trends and patterns. What we're seeing from those is that we
00:29:16.840have an overall incremental increase in the annual acres burned. So the total area that
00:29:24.560burns in fire in a given year is sort of incrementally increasing and has been for
00:29:29.640a number of decades. We still have a lot less now than we had historically, but it is increasing.
00:29:34.180But interestingly, what the great majority of the studies, including my own, show is that fire
00:29:40.580intensity is not going up. So even as the area that burns in a given year is starting to get
00:29:48.120inch by inch every year, a little closer to historical norms that occurred before fire
00:29:54.240suppression, the fires are not getting more intense, which was one of the biggest concerns
00:29:59.280or fears for a long time that if fire increases, it's going to increase also in intensity. But
00:30:05.220we're not seeing that. We need to keep looking at it, though.
00:30:08.540Just to go back to the thought of, and maybe we can't answer this right now, but
00:30:13.700do you think that drought is going to affect the regrowth after fires? Is that something
00:30:19.640that you're concerned about? Or do you think that it's just part of evolution and these seeds and
00:30:27.000shrubs and trees will find another way to capture water. Because I think about, well,
00:30:32.520potentially after a fire, the soil could maybe even retain more water, kind of thinking about
00:30:38.680the whole biochar effect. But I also, you know, I wonder about that. As temperatures get hotter,
00:30:45.960drought gets more permanent. How will it affect the regrowth after a fire?
00:30:52.360Yeah, I think drought can certainly have an effect on forest growth and forest regeneration.
00:30:58.240I don't think it's an issue of before or after a fire or whether or not a fire has occurred in a given area or not.
00:31:05.140I think it's rising temperatures from human-caused climate change and possibly exacerbated drought cycles as a result of that,
00:31:12.880that will affect vegetation and regeneration across ecosystems and across forest types, whether they burned or not.
00:31:19.120And that's really what I'm getting at is I think what we are concerned about is our shifts in forests upslope and north as a result of increasing temperatures in particular, but also possibly made worse by more intense drought cycles.
00:31:36.580Now, we've always had droughts, and we've had big droughts. If you go back in the paleoecological record, there are lots of studies on this showing we've had very, very long droughts, sometimes lasting for many years, sometimes decades, sometimes even longer. So that's not a new thing, droughts or big droughts. The question is the frequency of them and the duration. Will that increase beyond historical norms?
00:32:01.520You know, there's always that possibility and there's a lot of data that still needs to be gathered on that. But there's certainly a number of scientists that are predicting that climate change can make drought cycles worse. That is an issue that poses challenges, risks and threats to forest ecosystems and other vegetation without regard to whether they've burned recently or not.
00:32:22.540With regard to fire, there's a few things that happen in fire that are different from areas that haven't burned in a long time.
00:32:30.460One of those things is nutrient cycling.
00:32:32.440Basically, what that means is fire takes all of those twigs and branches and pine needles and leaves on the forest floor that have enormous amounts of important nutrients in them that are locked up in basically unusable forms in that woody material on the forest floor, what we call duff and litter.
00:32:53.580And fire, especially patches of more intense fire, they turn that into a nutrient rich bed of mineral ash. And that rich bed of mineral ash spurs the growth of the forest for decades to come after a fire occurs.
00:33:12.000So it's really important to understand that because, again, what I'm seeing right now is that we're seeing significant and very vigorous forest regeneration of conifers, of oaks, of shrubs, of all kinds of vegetation in these areas that are burned,
00:33:31.060including in the largest fires and even in the interior areas of the largest high-intensity fire
00:33:36.500patches, such as those in the Rim Fire that burned five years ago west of Yosemite. It's a place I'm
00:33:43.260doing a lot of research, and I published a study on post-fire regeneration in the Rim Fire earlier
00:33:48.420this year. And what I found was that the regeneration happened, I studied the regeneration in the most
00:33:56.300severe drought years after the rimfire occurred. And I studied in particular the largest high
00:34:02.020intensity fire patches. And what I found is that all of these areas are regenerating. I can't find
00:34:07.480a single acre where the conifer forest is not regenerating in these large high intensity fire
00:34:13.120patches, so long as they have not been subjected to post-fire logging, which I'll talk about in a
00:34:17.920minute. But if it's natural regeneration, just left to nature, what I'm seeing is very, very dense,
00:34:24.780very rapid regeneration, nearer to the live tree edges, basically the low and moderate intensity
00:34:31.240areas where you mostly have live trees. So closer to those areas, it's somewhat denser. There's more
00:34:37.800fir and cedar trees. In the interior areas, farther away from live trees, in these bigger
00:34:42.880high-intensity fire patches, we're getting conifer and oak regeneration too. But it's a little bit
00:34:48.420more open, which certain wildlife species really like. And it's more pine dominated. So it's
00:34:55.560possible that drought has played a role there because those were very significant drought years
00:35:00.900right after the fire occurred. It's also possible these are conifer species that have evolved to
00:35:07.020sort of take advantage of those spaces. You know, you get more fir and cedar closer to live trees
00:35:12.200and you get more pine dominated regeneration deeper in the interior of those high intensity
00:35:18.180fire patches, more open pine dominated, pine and oak dominated forest. And to me, that's all to the
00:35:24.460good because like I said, different groups of species like different things and depend on
00:35:29.840different things. Some like those open pine oak forests, some like the really dense fir and cedar
00:35:34.700dominated forests. And you're getting all of that in the regeneration and the rimfire.
00:35:42.200these are action points for this episode myths and mismanagement of wildland fires
00:35:55.800one call your state's u.s senators and congressional representatives at the
00:36:00.600capital switchboard 202-224-3121 and ask them to one keep the appropriation bill and the farm bill
00:36:08.980clean, keep all logging provisions off these two bills, and oppose any logging writers on these
00:36:14.120bills. Specifically ask them to keep the Forest Resilience Bill, or H.R. 2936, off of the Farm
00:36:21.440Bill reauthorization. Two, ask them to support an end to any logging on National Forest, and commit
00:36:27.500publicly to saying that they are in support of ending logging on National Forest. If you live
00:36:33.540in or near a wildfire zone, learn about defensible space. One, keep your chimney clean and screened.
00:36:40.660Two, keep your storage shed located away from your home. Three, avoid outdoor burning. Recycle
00:36:46.440mulch and compost when possible. Four, make sure your driveway is accessible and your address is
00:36:51.720visible. Five, scatter trees within 30 feet of your housing structure. Six, have 100 feet of
00:36:57.900garden hose attached. Seven, keep wood pile, fuel tanks, and other burnable materials 30 feet
00:37:03.520away from your housing structure. Eight, thin and prune conifer trees. Nine, keep grass green and
00:37:09.460mowed if it's within 30 feet. Keep vegetation mowed within 100 feet of your housing structure.
00:37:15.160Learn more at readyforwildfire.org backslash prepare-for-wildfire backslash. Our third action
00:37:22.840point is the John Muir Project encourages more birders. This is from their website. Did you know
00:37:28.860that most logging happens during nesting season? We need birders who will fight to document bird
00:37:34.000nests and occupancy in burned forests before these areas are devastated by logging. We want
00:37:39.540to use the weapon of information about the diversity and abundance of avian species in
00:37:44.060these areas to educate the public and the Forest Service on the true biodiversity cost associated
00:37:49.680with post-fire, aka salvage logging. Please sign up today and start helping to preserve species by
00:37:56.300making their presence known. Learn more at johnmereproject.org backslash get dash involved
00:38:02.860backslash. Lastly, join the John Muir Project's mailing list to stay up to date
00:38:07.740on the fight to preserve our national forest at johnmereproject.org.
00:38:26.300I really appreciate your perspective on this. It's such a complicated issue, especially when we mix climate change, drought, industrial scale logging, fires. It's a lot to take in and I really appreciate you breaking it down for us.
00:38:43.260I want to now talk about this forest carbon plan. And following the wildfires in California this
00:38:50.340past year, Governor Jerry Brown announced this forest carbon plan, which proposed to use $254
00:38:57.840million to double logging levels in California forest to at least 500,000 acres a year.
00:39:06.200So can you share with us why these sort of logging proposals actually leave communities
00:39:11.420more vulnerable to fires? You know, you've talked about how they harm forest ecosystems and could
00:39:16.660potentially even accelerate climate change. But also, how do they strengthen the logging industry
00:39:21.180and threaten existing environmental protections? Well, there's a few different things going on
00:39:28.260here. And, you know, first off, yeah, there are serious scientific problems with the Brown
00:39:32.680administration's forest carbon plan. It's not a scientifically sound document, to put it mildly.
00:39:38.140There are dozens and dozens of scientific studies that we submitted to the administration and other scientists, other organizations that they completely ignored.
00:39:47.400They misrepresented numerous scientific studies that were cited in the document.
00:39:54.040And what it all stands for is this, is basically they're proposing a massive increase in logging supposedly to maintain more carbon in our forests.
00:40:03.980Now, this is completely contradicted by the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence, which indicates that if you remove a bunch of carbon from the forest through logging, guess what?
00:40:16.720You don't actually result in a net increase in forest carbon, even if you assume that the forest management activities that they're doing will curb fire, which it oftentimes doesn't do.
00:40:28.820But even if you make that assumption, a given area that's logged is so unlikely to burn within 15 or 20 years, there's very, very little chance that an area with, for example, mechanical thinning will even encounter a fire.
00:40:43.300And so these areas get mechanically thinned again and again and again every 15 or 20 years.
00:40:48.700And that can happen for 200 years before you even have a 50-50 chance of that stand even encountering fire.
00:40:54.720So this is a sham, basically, you know, from a climate change standpoint, it's a disaster.
00:40:58.980It results in a huge net loss of forest carbon storage and a massive increase in carbon emissions from all that increased logging.
00:41:06.780But it's also a disaster from a community protection standpoint, because what it's doing, it's selling a lie.
00:41:13.380It's selling a myth to the public saying we're going to double down on logging out in your forests and we're going to somehow protect you from fire, protect the rural homes and communities.
00:41:24.240from fire by doing all these logging projects out in the forest. What the science is telling us
00:41:29.280loudly and clearly is that the only effective way to protect homes is to help homeowners make their
00:41:36.440homes more fire safe. Things like fire resistant roofing, rain gutter guards, so pine needles and
00:41:43.180dry leaves don't accumulate in the rain gutters where an ember floating on the winds a mile in
00:41:48.220advance of the flames can land on the roof and roll down into that rain gutter, and exterior
00:41:52.720your vents so an ember doesn't float into an attic space, things like that. That in combination with
00:41:58.780what we call defensible space, which is basically removing most of the small trees, shrubs, grasses,
00:42:05.140and then removing the lower limbs on the mature trees, but leaving those mature trees in place,
00:42:10.720doing that within 100 feet of homes in combination with these fire state principles for the home
00:42:15.220itself dramatically increases the odds that a home will survive a wildland fire. And in fact,
00:42:21.400when this is done properly in communities, what we're seeing now is over 95% of homes surviving
00:42:27.420fire. The fire, in many cases, is just moving right through the community like water through
00:42:31.680a sieve, but the vast majority of the homes survive. However, if instead of focusing on
00:42:37.620home protection and focusing and directing our resources there, where we know it will save homes
00:42:43.280and save lives, if instead we're doubling down on backcountry logging and backcountry fire
00:42:49.220suppression and trying to turn back the clock to the mid 20th century, then we're not only going
00:42:53.860to destroy forest ecosystems and further threaten imperiled wildlife species. We're not only going
00:42:59.060to exacerbate climate change, but we're going to further threaten communities because you're
00:43:04.700basically giving people a false sense of security, telling them that this logging project out there
00:43:09.540way over the ridge somewhere has protected them. And so people think, well, I don't need to do my
00:43:13.960defensible space. Maybe they don't even know what that is because they weren't told how to make
00:43:18.160their homes fire safe. So it really is a very dangerous sort of approach. It's a regressive
00:43:25.300approach. And frankly, it's just a gift to the logging industry and the biomass logging industry
00:43:31.440in ways that are not consistent with the current science.
00:43:35.440Yeah, I see that type of just sheer insanity in so many resource extraction projects where
00:43:44.520the government and the large corporations are completely ignoring science and all of the studies
00:43:53.500that have been done over all these years. And it's really interesting because I think we need to look
00:44:00.060at that whether it's Governor Jerry Brown or the National Forest Service, they're looking at the
00:44:07.560forest as a commodity first and foremost. And if we don't understand that, then we can't really
00:44:13.960understand what's behind all of these bills that are trying to be passed, such as the forest carbon
00:44:18.260plan. You know, I was even thinking about the healthy forest initiative that was a political
00:44:25.880strategy from the Bush administration. You know, the notion that commercial logging is a preventative
00:44:30.860measure in addressing catastrophic fires, which is something that you've been debunking this whole
00:44:35.120time. But this policy garnered little attention because it capitalized on the belief that healthy
00:44:40.540forests are full and green, which again, that's something that you've been debunking too. So
00:44:45.300the forest carbon plan is nothing new in a sense. It seems like it's just a new spin on a forest
00:44:53.120mismanagement plan that's been happening for decades. And I guess I'm really interested in
00:44:59.580just hearing a bit more of the political underpinnings of some of the details of, you know,
00:45:07.020and I don't want to even ask why, because I know why is money, but how are these things even still
00:45:12.560being passed when there is so much science? Why is it that the general public either doesn't know
00:45:18.940about it or potentially just doesn't have the power to shift these types of large forest
00:45:24.520management plans, especially when it's in their county, their state? I mean, there just seems to
00:45:28.720be this major misconnection happening here. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. I think in order to
00:45:34.600understand how to change things. We need to understand how information is being misused
00:45:42.180and how misinformation is being spread. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, the Forest Service and the
00:45:49.560logging industry and their political allies, when they were talking about logging on national
00:45:53.960forests, including clearcutting, they would say, hey, we're doing this because there's money to
00:45:58.220be made. The Forest Service makes money. It sells public timber to private logging companies and
00:46:03.460pockets most of the revenue for its budget. The logging industry makes money. The politicians make
00:46:09.100money. They get campaign contributions off the top, essentially. And they would say, look,
00:46:13.800we're clear-cutting old growth forests because the best thing you can do is clear-cut that
00:46:18.180decadent, overmature forest, which is what they called it back then, and plant a thrifty,
00:46:23.020fast-growing tree plantation. That was their worldview, as you put it. They looked at forests
00:46:28.560as a commodity. Well, you know, that hasn't changed. The fact that they look at the forest
00:46:33.980as a commodity, what has changed is the political spin. And that's really important to understand
00:46:38.100because, you know, by the early 1990s, the spotted owl became a household name and people were
00:46:43.820starting to wake up to the fact that their national forests were being destroyed for greed and economic
00:46:50.420motivations. Large areas were being deforested and clear cut and turned into natural wild forest,
00:46:55.960turned into tree plantations and tree farms. And there was a large public backlash. And people
00:47:01.980started saying, listen, we don't want our national forests logged. We want them protected.
00:47:06.340And the Forest Service understood that. The timber industry understood that. The pro-logging
00:47:11.000politicians understood that. But instead of changing direction, they instead changed the
00:47:16.240messaging. Instead of saying logging, they say, oh, we're not logging. We're doing fuel reduction.
00:47:26.840fuels work. There's all these euphemisms, a whole parade of euphemisms that are used
00:47:32.280to disguise what's really happening. But it's just the same old logging that's always occurred.
00:47:36.940It's just being presented or spun as a benevolent or benign activity. And we need to kind of see
00:47:43.220through that smokescreen in order to really change things. And I think, frankly, we also need to
00:47:48.780confront politicians and land managers and others when they basically play into or disseminate that
00:47:56.820same kind of misinformation and those same kind of euphemisms. Yeah, I just when you had mentioned
00:48:02.620the word resilience, I know that back in November 2017, the House passed the Resilient Federal
00:48:08.740Forest Act, which increases salvage logging on federal properties. And Senator John Barrasio
00:48:15.340from Wyoming introduced the Wildfire Prevention and Mitigation Act to the Senate, which similarly
00:48:21.280would exempt logging projects and environmental law and public participation on national forests
00:48:27.480and prevent federal judges from being able to enforce environmental laws. So this has really
00:48:33.520been, it's happening, you know, from so many different angles, so many different states,
00:48:39.560so many different national forests, state forests. It really is an attack on our public lands, an
00:48:45.580attack on our public forests. And I'm so glad that you're speaking to it in this way and really
00:48:51.180debunking these myths for us. Because for the listeners out there, when we do hear things like
00:48:56.160fuel reduction, resilient forest act, we need to look deeper. We need to understand who is behind
00:49:03.320this, who is making money, what is the purpose, and really look into the scientific research
00:49:08.640to see is this actually backed by ecologists and it's it's just you know it's like everything else
00:49:16.480in this time that we cannot take things at face value and it's you know of course it's disturbing
00:49:23.260to know that the government is spinning these myths to us so that we somehow think and I and
00:49:30.100just to even hear you say that it's sometimes being sold as restoration I mean it is really
00:49:35.940really subversive. So I so appreciate you spelling it out for us. I think we absolutely
00:49:44.160need to understand forest policy from this angle. It gets me all worked up.
00:49:53.520Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned what we call the Westerman bill that passed the House
00:49:58.140earlier. It didn't pass the Senate, fortunately. We fought it. A lot of other organizations fought
00:50:04.300it. And, you know, we had a sign-on letter from hundreds of scientists that fought back against
00:50:09.600it. But it is really important to understand because this is a piece of legislation that
00:50:14.940would essentially eliminate environmental laws on national forests nationwide and allow the most
00:50:20.960intensive, destructive kind of logging, including clear-cutting of post-fire habitat, clear-cutting
00:50:25.820of old-growth forest, without any environmental analysis and with the most minimal public notice.
00:50:31.880and it's all packaged under the guise of forest health and restoration and resilience. The word
00:50:37.380resilience is actually in the title of the legislation. Resilience is a climate change term
00:50:41.760and the lead author of this bill, a Republican from Arkansas who comes from a logging industry
00:50:48.220background and many of the others who promote these bills, these are climate change deniers.
00:50:53.980These are people who proudly proclaim that climate change is a hoax and they're spinning
00:50:59.980that kind of misinformation. Meanwhile, they're cynically using terms like resilience, climate
00:51:04.960change terms to promote a rollback of environmental laws and a massive increase in logging in ways
00:51:10.220that would exacerbate climate change and destroy habitat. So we are pushing back against that. Lots
00:51:16.780of people are pushing back against it. And lots of people are waking up to these euphemisms and
00:51:22.020this misinformation and calling their members of Congress and saying, listen, we want our national
00:51:27.960forest protected. We're not buying this. We want you to focus resources on helping people protect
00:51:33.460their homes from wildland fire within 100 feet of homes out there on the national forests.
00:51:38.800Let fire be fire. We don't have too much. It's doing important ecological work.
00:51:43.280And we should stop logging on our national forests and protect them, much more like national parks.
00:51:47.620More and more people are saying that and waking up to it. And I think that's a real message of
00:51:52.400hope. And I think also about all the carbon that's burned through these quote-unquote
00:51:57.680restorative thinning methods, and the machines, and like you were saying, the damage that the
00:52:03.340machines cause the forest soil, and all the time it takes for the forest soil to rebuild
00:52:09.840and create the complexity with the mycelial webs. I really wanted to ask you that question,
00:52:16.680and I'm so excited to hear your answer. And honestly, this whole conversation has really
00:52:21.420it's been enlivening it's this topic i'm so invested and engaged in so i've had just really
00:52:29.440the best time talking to you about this but i would love to ask you one more question before
00:52:34.260we close and i've read that you've been called a polarizing figure in forest policy which i can
00:52:41.140see why and you know you've gone as far as suing the forest service to stop salvaging operations
00:52:46.500So I'd love if you could share with us how the John Muir Project and yourself are working to ensure that these managed lands are allowed to exist in optimal ecological conditions.
00:52:58.520Well, you know, the John Muir Project is kind of a full service operation.
00:53:01.580We stand up for science in every way we possibly can.
00:53:05.520We go out in the field, we gather field data, and we publish original scientific studies, several per year, on these key questions about forest regeneration, about fire history, about wildlife species that depend, many of them, on post-fire habitat.
00:53:20.200We do public education work and get the message out to the public.
00:53:23.660We educate policymakers as much as we can.
00:53:28.320The other thing we do is we stand up for environmental laws when the Forest Service misrepresents or ignores key scientific studies.
00:53:37.700One of the things that the National Environmental Policy Act, what we call NEPA, requires basically is that the Forest Service and other land management agencies tell the truth to the public about the impacts and about the science.
00:53:49.720And if they don't do that, that can be a problem for them.
00:53:52.620Now, it's difficult in terms of enforcing federal environmental laws on national forests.
00:53:57.840The courts are required to defer to the agencies, to the Forest Service and other agencies in terms of their interpretation of the regulations of the science.
00:54:07.900And so it's a very, very, very high hurdle.
00:54:09.960So there's a lot of illegal logging going on out there that doesn't get stopped because of that deference standard.
00:54:18.100But sometimes you can surmount that standard and stop an illegal logging project.
00:54:24.500And we've done that on a number of occasions through the John Muir Project, working with other partners, including the Center for Biological Diversity, among others, and especially stopping these post-fire logging projects, what the Forest Service calls salvage logging.
00:54:38.700And really, it comes from what you mentioned earlier, that term salvage.
00:54:42.600That comes from their view that the only thing that's good about a post-fire area is what you can salvage economically from it in terms of value.
00:54:51.620And it really just shows and underscores how much they're not seeing it as a forest and how much they're seeing it as a crop.
00:54:58.560You know, there's a very, very strong consensus in the scientific community that post-fire logging and all the associated activities that go along with it,
00:55:07.420like the herbicide spraying of toxic herbicides that the Forest Service does after they clear cut this post-fire habitat and the artificial planting of trees,
00:55:16.260that that's about the worst thing you can possibly do after a fire.
00:55:20.100And so, you know, we're standing up for the science in every way we can.
00:55:23.660And, you know, on some of these projects, we wish we could actually challenge more in court, but we do what we can with what we have.
00:55:31.720And we do stand up for the science and for the environmental laws as often as we can in courts, especially after post-fire logging projects.
00:55:40.240Well, thank you so much for your work and for the others at the John Muir Project.
00:55:45.020I so respect the way in which you are working within the systems and outside of the systems
00:55:53.720and really putting a lot of effort into debunking these myths to the public that our culture is
00:56:00.700built on and the way that we interact with our forests and our natural ecosystems is built on
00:56:06.880are these myths, these lies. And to see them for what they are, to understand why they're happening
00:56:15.580because of the economic value rather than the ecological value, which at the end of the day,
00:56:23.080ecological value is everything. We can't live on money alone. We really, really need to protect
00:56:31.340these forests for our own survival, let alone the survival of all the species who directly depend on
00:56:37.840forests. So I'm so with you. I really appreciate you and your work. And this has been a wonderful
00:56:44.020conversation. So thank you so much. It's been my pleasure. Anytime.
00:57:01.340Thank you for listening to For the Wild podcast.
00:57:58.780Thank you so much for talking to me so last minute, so late at night.
00:58:02.480And I thought today, just a couple quick questions about just the current fire.
00:58:08.560So we talked a lot about forest fires and forest policy and honestly, just the ridiculousness
00:58:14.920of the rhetoric that's coming out and the myths about forest fires.
00:58:18.280And I want to get into what Trump is saying right now about the fires in California.
00:58:22.660But first, I wanted to ask you about what you think about the current fire situation happening in California from L.A. up to Northern California, because when we talked even just, what, two weeks ago now, these fires hadn't broken out.
00:58:36.980So I'm really interested in hearing your outlook on the cause, what's contributing to these, and, you know, what do you think can be done?
00:58:45.180Right. Well, we have to have two completely separate conversations about the effect of wildland fire on communities and the effect of wildland fire in wildlands.
00:58:58.000And they're totally separate things because the fact is, especially in forests and woodlands, we actually still have a pretty significant deficit of fire in our forests.
00:59:08.540We have less fire now than we had historically. And so we don't want to be putting resources into trying to further suppress fire because, A, that's unnatural, and B, that takes resources away from protecting homes.
00:59:24.480So we've always had big fires in California.
00:59:27.540We've had big fires in grasslands and chaparral.
00:59:29.860We've had big fires in forests or a combination of those things.
00:59:33.460We actually do have too much fire right now in chaparral ecosystems, basically shrub habitat, lower in elevation, below the forest.
00:59:41.360And that's overwhelmingly because of so many human ignitions, accidental ignition, some arson adjacent to communities.
00:59:49.260And so we really need to focus on preventing unplanned human ignitions near communities and letting more lightning strikes burn without trying to suppress those fires in the mountain forests.
01:00:01.940You know, so ecologically speaking, there's nothing unprecedented about big fires in California.
01:00:07.120You know, the fires that we're seeing right now are not record fires in terms of their size or intensity.
01:00:12.360But what is unprecedented is the effect, the impact they're having on homes and on lives.
01:00:19.800And that is something we can really do something about.
01:00:22.780So, I mean, there's a few things that go into this.
01:00:24.740You know, first off, Donald Trump's tweet over the weekend is so incredibly heartless and destructive because, you know, first of all, most of the fires that are burning homes and costing people lives are not in forests in California or elsewhere.
01:00:40.900Most of the big fires where homes are lost and lives are lost are in grasslands and chaparral.
01:00:47.820They're in low elevation areas that are nowhere near a forest.
01:00:50.900And so this whole idea, this whole focus on logging, on forest management, is really just a diversion to really enrich and benefit Donald Trump's timber industry political allies and the political allies of the GOP.
01:01:05.120So, you know, I think that's pretty cynical.
01:01:06.680But the second thing is, and this is something that is really key to understand, is that the areas that are in forests where we have big fires and where homes and lives have been lost, like we saw just days ago in the Camp Fire in Northern California, those are areas where some of the heaviest and most intensive logging has happened anywhere in the state.
01:01:29.420So in the places that minor portion of fires where it is in forests and lives and homes are lost, these are areas where that's happening not because of the lack of logging, as Donald Trump would like Americans to believe, but because of logging itself.
01:01:43.920And we published the most comprehensive analysis on this ever a couple of years ago.
01:01:49.040We looked at millions and millions of acres of fire across three decades of data in the
01:08:30.440We really can do this, but we're going to have to move away from these 20th century myths and superstitions that have been driving our fire management policies and encouraging us to look out there over the ridge and think about the problem as being the threat, as being somewhere out there in the wildlands.
01:08:50.180And it's not. It's right there in the communities. And that's where it has to be addressed.
01:08:54.320And that's what you were saying earlier in this brief conversation we're having is that in these suburban urban communities, there's some type of human combustion, plus weather related fire issues that are combining to create these fires.
01:09:09.300That's right. Yeah, there are all kinds of things that are highly combustible in human environments. In fact, if you look at a lot of the imagery that we see coming out of a lot of the fires, you'll see a house that's burned down and it's on fire or it's already smoldered down to ash.
01:09:23.940and you'll see that the trees and other vegetation next to it that are slightly singed but otherwise
01:09:30.280green. You'll see homes that are burned down to ash with a green lawn. And that's a circumstance
01:09:35.200where those homes are burned because they were ignited by embers. In many cases, in fact, most
01:09:41.000cases, the homes are not burned because they come in direct contact with flames. They burn from
01:09:47.680embers that are floated by the winds in advance of the flames and land on something combustible,
01:09:52.240usually a human structure. And the human structures ignite the vegetation around it or
01:09:57.700singe the vegetation around it. I mean, that's what's actually most combustible in a lot of
01:10:01.800these areas is the actual human structure. It's not the vegetation in many cases.
01:10:05.700So basically, one spark in a heavily populated area can create a massive destructive fire
01:10:13.980because of all of this material that's just ready to combust.
01:10:17.060Well, it can or it can basically be nothing at all. I mean, a community that's well defended where these principles are applied throughout the community can experience thousands and thousands of embers being driven by the winds from a fire that's nearby through that community and not have homes burn or have very, very few homes burn.
01:10:39.200Or you can have one home that has a vulnerability because something was missed or because they didn't do their fire safe work or whatever, but the neighbor's homes won't burn because they're properly defended.
01:10:49.780And that damage is very much minimized and contained.
01:10:54.720And we know it can work that way because we have numerous case examples of real fires, real towns, where these principles were taken very, very seriously before the flames occurred and the vast majority of the homes survived.