Chaparral Wisdom
To celebrate the magic and beauty of Nature & the chaparral
The Creek Fire: Made Worse by Past Forest Service Actions
The fire that is the biggest current threat to lives and homes right now is the Creek Fire on the Sierra National Forest. It is currently 135,000 acres.
The Creek Fire very rapidly raced through two earlier fires (French fire of 2014, and Aspen fire of 2013) that had been heavily post-fire logged by the US Forest Service, followed by planting tree plantations. They removed nearly all of the large snags in most of the higher-intensity fire patches under the guise of “fuel reduction,” claiming that this would curb future fires (see map).
We, along with the John Muir Project, sent the Forest Service numerous scientific studies showing that the logging would not stop fires and would likely make them burn faster and with more severity, such that the logging would likely increase, not decrease, risk to people. The Forest Service ignored the science and we filed suit with the John Muir Project to try to stop these post-fire logging projects, back in 2013 and 2014, but the federal judges deferred to the Forest Service.
Just days ago, the Creek fire started in the Big Creek canyon and soon reached previously post-fire logged areas, including the post-fire logged area in the French fire of 2014, after which it raced over 12 miles north in a matter of a few hours on Saturday (similar to the Camp fire of 2018, racing rapidly through heavily logged areas in the first six hours before devastating Paradise), trapping over 200 people at Mammoth Pool Reservoir. The people were rescued by a daring National Guard helicopter operation, but it was a close call and there were dozens of injuries.
The Creek fire is now burning quickly through a large commercial thinning project area (Bald Mountain project) just east of Shaver Lake and dozens of additional hikers are reportedly trapped. The Forest Service has been told repeatedly that thinning would not stop a wildland fire and that thinning often makes fires spread faster, but they have continued to ignore the science. Numerous homes have burned down because of a preference for logging and habitat clearance over the implementation of real solutions like those in Senator Harris’ Wildfire Defense Act bill which focuses on home protection.
Overall this fire season in California, the great majority of the acreage burning is not in forests — it is in non-native grasslands, oak woodlands, and chaparral. Of the portion that is in forests, the fires that are spreading the fastest are in areas that the Forest Service and private corporations have heavily logged in recent years and decades (both post-fire logging and thinning) under the guise of “fuel reduction,” and the fires are mostly lower-intensity in unlogged areas (see research citations below).
Some logging interests continue to try to claim that the fires are spreading mostly because of dead trees and “overgrown” forests, but it’s the opposite. The overwhelming weight of science is clear that forests with more dead trees generally burn at equal or lower intensities relative to forests with few or no snags. Denser forests with the highest levels of environmental protection from logging burn at the lowest intensities. Fire behavior is driven mainly by weather and climate, not forest or snag density.
Information provided by:
John Muir Project
To learn more about how to to protect your home from wildfire, please see our webpage here.
The Facts About Logging and Forest Fires
“Areas intensively managed burned in the highest intensities. Areas protected in national parks and wilderness areas burned in lower intensities. Plantations burn hotter in a fire than native forests do. We know this from numerous studies based on peer-reviewed science.”*
– Dominick DellaSala
From: Exploring Solutions to Reduce Risks of Catastrophic Wildfire and Improve Resilience of National Forests. Congressional testimony by Dr. Dominick DellaSala, Sept. 27, 2017.
* The research cited above analyzed 1,500 fires in 11 Western states over four decades – an overwhelming convergence of evidence. Some of those studies include the following:
1. Odion et al. 2004. Fire severity patterns and forest management in the Klamath National Forest, northwest California, USA. Cons. Biol. 18:927-936.
2. Zald, H., and C. Dunn. 2018. Severe fire weather and intensive forest management increase fire severity in a multi-ownership landscape. Ecol. Applic. 4:1068-1080.
3. Bradley, C.M., et al. 2016. Does increased forest protection correspond to higher fire severity in frequent-fire forests of the western United States? Ecosphere 7:1-13.
217 scientists sign letter opposing logging as a response to wildfires (we are signatories).
Chaparral Wisdom 
Can you tell me what ever became of Senator Harris’ Wildfire Defense Act bill?
McConnell hasn’t allowed it to even get a committee hearing since it was introduced last year.
Here’s the current status:
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/s2882
Here’s the summary of the bill:
https://www.harris.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/HARRIS%20-%20Wildfire%20Defense%20Act%20-%201%20pager.pdf#:~:text=S.%20Senator%20Kamala%20D.%20Harris%20%28D-CA%29%20is%20introducing,This%20responsibility%20should%20not%20fall%20on%20any%20one
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Your comment has been deleted because unlike social media platforms, we do not allow character assassination. If you would like to contribute to our discussion in an intelligent way, please do so. Otherwise, leave it on Facebook.
You guys say logging/thinning makes the fire spread faster and increases wildfire risk, but then your cited source mainly talks about the ecological risks.
You outright say ‘logging… would likely make them burn hotter and faster,’ where is the source for this? Lots of talk about the importance of natural post-fire recovery and the impacts that has, which I do not doubt, but if you are going to make a claim like logging makes fires burn hotter and faster then I would like to see where that data comes from.
Thanks for your note. We need to clarify “logging” in our post and provide the papers to support what we are saying. We’ll jump on that right away.
Basically, we are referring to the traditional plantation forestry model where areas are heavily logged, then planted with tree plantations. Also in logged areas alone, wind is able to flow, increasing the rate of spread and allowing embers to move unimpeded.
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