Forest Watch Co-authors Peer-reviewed Article on Forest and Fire Management

Both the online seminar and the article appear to be very interesting and timely. If you are interested in either one, read this post.

by ForestWatch on MARCH 16, 2022  in FIRE, LAND MANAGEMENT

Register for March 30 Webinar featuring panel discussion with article co-authors.

ForestWatch’s Conservation Director, Bryant Baker, recently co-authored a peer-reviewed scientific paper about forest and fire management in the western U.S. that is being published in the April issue of the journal, Biological Conservation. The full article is now publicly available online.

The paper, Have western USA fire suppression and megafire active management approaches become a contemporary Sisyphus?, was led by renowned forest and fire ecologist Dr. Dominick DellaSala, Chief Scientist at Wild Heritage, who just today testified about current forest management policies before the House Oversight Subcommittee on the Environment. Other co-authors include Dr. Chad Hanson at John Muir Project, Dr. William Baker at University of Wyoming (no relation to Bryant), and Luke Ruediger at Klamath Forest Alliance.

There is ongoing scientific debate about current forest management and fire suppression practices. This new paper adds to a growing body of evidence that questions the widespread use of intensive commercial thinning and other fuel reduction activities, especially as strategies to protect communities from large weather- and climate-driven wildfires. The authors note in the article:

Treating wildfires using bottom-up fuels reduction approaches when top-down extreme climate factors are increasingly overriding such efforts…could push ecosystems beyond resilience thresholds…at the further expense of biodiversity and the climate.

For the rest of this article see Forest Watch link here: https://lpfw.org/forestwatch-co-authors-peer-reviewed-article-on-forest-and-fire-management/