Logging after a forest fire?

Wildfire is a natural occurrence in forests throughout the West, and many plants have adapted over the eons to fire. In fact, some can't thrive without it. Lodgepole pine, for example, needs fire; the heat opens its serotinous cones and releases seeds for germination.

Logging after fire has been referred to as "common sense." Yet a growing number of studies today show the opposite: post-fire logging does nothing to restore the landscape, in fact it harms lands and forests. Post-fire logging:

• speeds erosion
• compacts the soil, leaving soils nutrient poor
• inhibits regeneration
• leads to accumulation of fine fuels like branches and slash that provide tinder for new flames
• kills naturally regenerating seedlings through the direct disturbance of logging machinery, as well as by taking out standing dead trees that provide shade and cover for young trees. Natural fires often burn in a patchy fashion, leaving green trees behind. These larger green trees can also be harmed in the logging process.
• removes the recently dead large trees, which, standing or on the ground, provide critical cover and habitat for recovering wildlife and plantlife

A growing trend

Today, post-fire logging of the big trees that remain after a fire is a growing trend in the West, thanks to increasingly vociferous proposals pushed by the Bush Administration. The Walden bill is an example, proposed legislation that promotes post-disturbance logging throughout the country. Post-disturbance logging is often called “salvage” logging.  Even the word "salvage'" suggests that burned or dead trees are useful only as lumber.

Dead trees are wildlife habitat

For many decades following fire, trees, both dead and alive, have powerful, irreplaceable value as wildlife habitat. Standing, broken-topped live or dead trees in burned forests provide homes and food (insects) for a myriad of birds and other wildlife. They are the foundation of healthy, functioning, future forests.

We're working hard to bring the message home: Let the old trees stand, dead or alive, for wildlife habitat and recovering forests.