Setting the Record Straight: “Thinning” = Logging

This is a very informative interview with Chad Hanson, author of Smokescreen, a book about preserving a stable climate by preserving forests. Hanson refutes wildfire risk as a justification for further forest destruction. It’s about the corporate takeover of public lands and forests, the public agencies inappropriately in the business of logging, and those who use “Orwellian language” to cover up the truth about what is happening. If you still think mechanical “thinning” (AKA logging)  is the answer to wildfire, just ask the residents of Paradise. The  USFS “Protection Project” is not about the “protection” of anything other than logging industry profits. Read what they want to do to OUR forest and make sure to comment by July 18th.

“Community Protection Project”: Plumas National Forest at Risk from Herbicides, Industrial Logging, Likely Worsening Fire Safety

Sorry to interrupt your summer vacation but this is important……

If you love the Plumas National Forest you need to be aware of this: The Forest Service has opened a 30 day comment period starting June 19th, 2023 for a project that could let loose industrial logging on more than 175,000 acres near communities and hazardous herbicides on more than 200,000 acres, potentially leaving lush diverse forestlands a dry, dead and dying tinderbox, as in the photo below of Crocker Mtn. Rd. off of Grizzly Rd. This whole area was clearcut as a fire break after the Forest Service failed for many years to underburn the area, as was planned.

The US Forest Service considers competition, never cooperation between plants and trees (despite much peer reviewed evidence to the contrary) and focuses on reducing fuels while ignoring how mechanical “thinning” (AKA logging) lets sunlight and winds into the canopy and results in dried out and heated up environments that are more- not less- prone to fire. Plus, often piles of slash are left to burn and spread embers across the landscape.

While the USFS claims that the Dixie and other recent fires are a result of accumulation of fuels in the forest, a recent analysis points directly to the human-caused climate crisis as being directly responsible for additional land burned in California over the past fifty years. We should not be running projects on public land that exacerbate — rather than heal– the climate crisis.

Make sure to read the Environmental Assessment and submit your comments ASAP, tell everyone you know, especially in this area, to do the same.

Middle aged trees marked for cutting in the Mapes project, now slated for felling in the “Protection” Project. These more fire-resistant trees could grow old, truly “protect” local communities and absorb unwanted carbon from the atmosphere over their lives if they are allowed to do so.