This is the first in a series of two Public Lands Blog posts regarding the idea that commercial thinning of frequent-fire-type forests should take place before reintroducing fire. Part 1 sets the stage with a review of past thinking about thinning. Part 2 will examine the new science and its implications for policy.
Top Line: A new scientific review of many scientific papers suggests it is not necessary to thin before reintroducing fire into fire-dependent forests.
Figure 1. Prescribed burn in ponderosa pine forest near Black Butte, Oregon. Source: Oregon Wild.
I have long been on record (egad, I sound like a politician) in favor of limited logging in certain degraded forest types to aid in the conservation or restoration of old-growth forests. Until very recently, scientific papers have generally confirmed both the problem and the solution to degraded (roaded, high-grade-logged, livestock-grazed, and/or fire-excluded) frequent-fire (aka dry) forest types. Coincidentally, the thesis has also been supported by political science (aka politics). But of late, the conservation science of dry forest restoration has changed—and politics must follow.
When Belief in Thinning Held Sway
Here’s the abstract from a white paper I did in 2007:
Politics makes for strange bedfellows and that is particularly the case today with the restoration of Oregon’s public forests. Conservationists must work with cooperative elements of the timber industry to achieve ecological restoration of certain forest types exhibiting certain stand conditions. Significant amounts of this forest restoration will require some commercial logging—“thinning”—albeit only for a few decades and taking much smaller diameter trees than in the past. Logging for ecological restoration will produce much less timber than was historically removed from federal forests, but significantly more timber than has been removed in recent years. Carefully controlled thinning projects in certain forest types with certain stand conditions must be a part of a scientifically justified program of forest restoration that includes protecting all old growth trees, creating more old growth trees, preserving roadless areas, removing roads, removing livestock and/or reintroducing natural fire to forest ecosystems. [emphasis added]
My white paper was based on the best conservation science available at the time. In 2010 my belief in thinning caused me to testify, along with John Shelk of Ochoco (aka Malheur) Lumber Company, in support of legislation developed by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and cosponsored by Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR). The proposed “Oregon Eastside Forests Restoration, Old Growth Protection, and Jobs Act of 2009” would have been a serious net gain for the conservation of federal forests in eastern Oregon. It would also have been a supply lifeline to the local mills throughout the east side. Unfortunately, not all of Big Timber was on board. At that time, Big Timber held less economic and political power than at its peak in 1990, but its power was still quite considerable. Today, it’s far less so.
Figure 2. Senator Ron Wyden’s bill S.2895, 111th Congress. It would have been a net gain for conservation while also aiding the timber industry, but not enough of Big Timber could see the light. Source: Congress.gov.
First there were the mills in eastern Oregon that would have benefited from a larger and more secure supply of timber, but these operators opposed the bill anyway. More problematic was the vast majority of the timber industry in Oregon that is based west of the Cascade Crest. These mills feared that a congressional grand bargain for Oregon eastside forests would harm their efforts to have everyone believe that the Oregon and California Lands Act of 1937—which applied to approximately two million acres in western Oregon administered by the Bureau of Land Management—was in fact not a combination 11th Commandment and 28th Amendment but merely a congressional statute that could be amended or repealed.
The upshot was that the grand bargain for Oregon eastside forests did not become law. Nonetheless, elements of this grand bargain were generally implemented by the Forest Service. Operating under the Eastside Screens, the agency was no longer logging old-growth trees but instead was putting up timber sales that thinned the forest with an eye to preventing the relic big trees from succumbing to insects or disease exacerbated by thickening forests caused by fire exclusion. The mills that had retooled for smaller logs were getting their timber supply and without significant controversy or delay.
Figure 3. Pile burning on the Deschutes National Forest, Oregon. Under pile burns is often scorched earth, and the small fuels across the site are left untreated. Source: USDA Forest Service.
Forest Service Reversion to Bad Habits
Yet, the longer the time since the implementation of the Eastside Screens in 1995, the more the Forest Service was drifting into cutting very large trees. The mills did not complain. In fact, in 2022 the Forest Service abandoned the Eastside Screens in favor of a far less protective regime to “conserve” old-growth forests and trees. Fortunately, the nefarious replacement was found to be illegal by a federal court judge in 2024. While the Forest Service is licking its wounds, the agency hasn’t seen the light.
Since the Forest Service has lost its social license to log old-growth forests to supply mills with logs, it has invented many a creative “reason” that old-growth trees should be turned into large logs. The Forest Service says it must log the mature and old-growth forest to save it. From fire, from insects, from disease, from windstorms, and from climate change—and actually from any kind of change including that of natural ecological succession.
To whatever question or challenge the Forest Service faces, its answer is logging. When your only tool is a chainsaw, every tree looks like a standing log.
The Forest Service continues to log in the name of “forest health,” “resiliency,” “fuels reduction,” or any other “reason” to such a degree that it is now shipping logs from California, where none of the local mills want them, to a mill in Wyoming near the Black Hills National Forest. The Forest Service has so overcut/raped the Black Hills National Forest that the local mills have no choice but to accept the essentially free logs (your tax dollars at work) from national forests in California.
Shifts in the Policy Equation and Conservation Science
The political/policy equation has shifted. The Forest Service is full-on crazing again to log old-growth forests and trees—albeit in the name of “saving” them. Big Timber can no longer be relied upon to live on smaller ecologically surplus logs. As the timber industry has shrunk in eastern Oregon, the bureaucratic business model of selling or giving away logs to Big Timber in exchange for taking smaller logs and also doing restoration work such as culvert and/or road improvement or removal is no longer working as it did.
Most important, the conservation science on reducing wildfire severity has shifted. The general concern is that many frequent-fire-type forests are overgrown or far more densely stocked than was the case before natural fire cycles were interrupted. This overgrowth is due to
• high-grade logging (logging out the most fire-resistant old-growth trees in the stand),
• fire exclusion (disrupting the relatively frequent but low-severity fire cycle by suppressing fires), and
• livestock grazing (eliminating fine fuels—aka “grass”—that carry beneficial fire).
Frequent-fire-type forests burn, as the name suggests, frequently, but characteristically at low to mixed intensities. While stand-replacing fires can occur in frequent-fire-type forests, they are far from the norm. The thinking was (for me) and still is (for many) that such forests need to be thinned first, with “fuel loads” being reduced by logging and removal of wood to the mill, before fire can safely be reintroduced.
The problem is that ecologically disrupted frequent-fire forests are far more subject to “uncharacteristic” fire—that is, stand-replacing fire. While stand-replacing fire did occur naturally, it was not characteristic of the forest type.
Figure 4. Prescribed burns often kill younger, smaller trees, but not often larger, older trees. Source: USDA Forest Service.
Next week in Part 2, I will suggest that the Forest Service eschew thinning and embrace fire.