On and on it goes….

“A bare-knuckled trio goes after the Forest Service…Since 1989, they have filed close to 100 lawsuits, with roughly an 80 percent success record. Their lawsuits and appeals have forced the U.S. Forest Service to rewrite every forest plan in the Southwest…Paul Fink, forester for the Forest Service, says the agency ‘didn't do anything for 18 months' in 1996 and 1997 because of litigation and appeals.” High Country News  March 30, 1998

“Lawsuits stall forest thinning” East Valley Tribune April 27, 2003

“Environmental groups have sued to stop pre-commercial thinning work on the Flathead National Forest.” - The Daily Inter-Lake June 8, 2012

“Anti-logging lawsuits hurt fight against forest fires, officials say” Sacramento Bee May 14, 2015

“California land managers hope to speed up forest-thinning projects to slow wildfires. Environmentalists are questioning the strategy…‘The state is taking the wrong approach’, said Sierra Club California director Kathryn Phillips and California Chaparral Institute director Richard Halsey. ‘This focus on dead trees and forests is just insanity. That’s not where people are dying,’ said Halsey.” -  Associated Press January 29, 2019

Between 1989 and 2008, 1,125 lawsuits were filed challenging the US Forest Service land management decisions. The Forest Service won around half these cases and either lost or settled the rest. Almost 80% of the lawsuits were initiated by environmental groups seeking to protect National Forests. Litigants generally challenged the Forest Service plans for “vegetative management”, such as debris removal and thinning forests through logging and controlled burns. The median time to case deposition was a year and a half.

Problem is, that vegetation needs to be managed. A century of fire suppression and misguided forest policy has greatly increased the chance of mega-fires, especially in the western states. Encouraged by the Forest Service and environmentalists, as well as to maintain a profitable business over the long term, logging companies used to plant way too many saplings in logged areas, resulting in forests that are much denser now than they were 100 years ago, forest that burn much hotter than they used to. In 2015, a team from UC Berkeley and the Forest Service found the number of trees per acre had doubled or tripled in some places. To make matters worse, drought has killed off millions of trees that are falling to the ground, creating a kind of bonfire pit waiting to ignite.*

Going forward, western states need to greatly increase controlled burns to reduce the risk of mega-fires. But controlled burns can only be done a few months a year, when conditions are dry enough for vegetation to burn, but not so dry as to risk a runaway blaze. The forests must also be thinned by mechanical means, especially logging to remove excess or dead trees. Yes, logging companies care more about profits than protecting wildlife. So what?

And, yes, controlled burns and mechanical thinning carry their own risks** to wildlife and ecosystems. But risks can be minimized and managed by careful planning, ideally in consultation with environmentalists, provided the they can get over their issue with capitalism.

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* “In my opinion, the fuel conditions of the wildlands and domestic vegetation and the way we build is still 80 percent of the problem.” Scott Stephens, UC Berkeley professor of wildland fire sciences, quoted in California Magazine Spring 2019

** “It’s important to note that, like any timber harvest, there can be other effects of salvage cutting that need to be avoided or minimized. These include compacting soil, contributing to erosion and excessive disturbance, introducing invasive weeds, maintaining stream and water quality, and preserving wildlife habitat. Salvage cutting needs to be carefully planned to avoid or minimize negative impacts.” - Forestry & Natural Resources Extension Program, Oregon State University May 2018.

References:

Amanda M.A. Miner, Robert W. Malmsheimer, Denise M. Keele, Twenty Years of Forest Service Land Management Litigation, Journal of Forestry, Volume 112, Issue 1, January 2014, Pages 32–40, https://doi.org/10.5849/jof.12-094

Denise M Keele, Robert W Malmsheimer, Time Spent in Federal Court: U.S. Forest Service Land Management Litigation 1989–2008, Forest Science, Volume 64, Issue 2, April 2018, Pages 170–190, https://doi.org/10.1093/forsci/fxx005