Latest / HEATED / The myth of “forest management”

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The myth of “forest management” · HEATED

0:01
SPEAKER_01: This is an LA Times Studios podcast.
0:05
[music]
0:10
SPEAKER_00: This past summer, it was impossible to escape the news about it.
0:15
SPEAKER_01: Fires seemed to be burning everywhere, from Canada to France to Indonesia.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: Here in the United States, disasters were just as prevalent.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: Skies turned orange in parts of New York City,
0:26
SPEAKER_00: and smoke blew from eastern Ontario as far west as Chicago.
0:30
SPEAKER_01: It was a real-life wake-up call about the impacts of climate change.
0:34
SPEAKER_01: But the main thing I kept hearing from officials wasn't about global warming
0:38
SPEAKER_01: or increased carbon in the atmosphere.
0:41
SPEAKER_01: It was instead this.
0:43
SPEAKER_03: One of the things that's contributing to forest fires is a lack of cutting,
0:47
SPEAKER_03: is a lack of pre-commercial thinning,
0:49
SPEAKER_03: a lack of cleaning out the forest and the forest floor.
0:53
SPEAKER_00: This week, we're doing a special collaboration between Boiling Point and Heated.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: Together,
0:58
SPEAKER_00: we'll break down assumptions about fire management,
1:00
SPEAKER_00: hear from experts and aim to find common ground on how to tackle one of
1:04
SPEAKER_00: the biggest challenges facing humanity in a warming world.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: I'm Miranda Green.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: And I'm Emily Atkins.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: So Miranda,
1:18
SPEAKER_01: as you know,
1:19
SPEAKER_01: I've been working on a series for my podcast,
1:21
SPEAKER_01: Heated, trying to debunk some common bad ideas about climate change.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I've heard about it.
1:29
SPEAKER_01: And one of the myths that I really wanted to tackle was that,
1:32
SPEAKER_01: quote unquote,
1:34
SPEAKER_01: forest management can solve all of our increasingly horrible wildfire problems.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a pretty interesting way of getting at it.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean, whenever there's a destructive,
1:45
SPEAKER_00: horrible fire,
1:46
SPEAKER_00: we do tend to hear the same explanation,
1:48
SPEAKER_00: that forests have been overgrown,
1:50
SPEAKER_00: that we don't do enough to clear the brush and remove trees.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: We just don't manage them well enough.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: But why do you think that's a myth?
1:58
SPEAKER_01: Well, I think it's a myth that forest management is all that needs to happen.
2:02
SPEAKER_01: Like, it's the only thing that needs to happen.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: And I also think that for some politicians,
2:08
SPEAKER_01: especially Republican politicians,
2:10
SPEAKER_01: treating forest management like this catch-all solution is really just an excuse not
2:16
SPEAKER_01: to talk about climate change.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I get where you're going with this.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: It's almost like they're making it too simple.
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SPEAKER_00: They're describing what we need to do to keep fires from burning in the future
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SPEAKER_00: without acknowledging the root of the problem, which is climate change.
2:31
SPEAKER_01: Right,
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SPEAKER_01: and I've talked to so many scientists over many years about how we can't solve
2:35
SPEAKER_01: the wildfire crisis without tackling the reason it's getting worse every year.
2:41
SPEAKER_01: So I thought because of that that this was going to be a pretty straightforward episode.
2:45
SPEAKER_01: Like, I'd just explain that, yes,
2:47
SPEAKER_01: of course,
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SPEAKER_01: taking better care of the forests can play a big role in lessening wildfire risks,
2:52
SPEAKER_01: but this can't solve all our problems by itself.
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SPEAKER_01: We also have to be tackling climate change.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: That sounds simple enough.
2:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
3:00
SPEAKER_01: But actually, I ran into a lot of trouble and that's not how it went.
3:05
SPEAKER_01: As soon as I started digging into it,
3:08
SPEAKER_01: I realized that,
3:09
SPEAKER_01: oh my God, these questions are so much more complicated than I assumed.
3:14
SPEAKER_01: Like, what even is forest management?
3:17
SPEAKER_01: When politicians are talking about that, what do they mean?
3:19
SPEAKER_01: And it just sent me into such a weird and controversial rabbit hole about how
3:25
SPEAKER_01: to actually manage forests.
3:29
SPEAKER_00: I can understand that.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: I mean, out here in California,
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SPEAKER_00: I've been covering wildfires and it's a complicated and contentious issue.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: It seems like everyone has a different opinion about what needs to be done,
3:40
SPEAKER_00: what should have been done,
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SPEAKER_00: what we should be doing now to prepare for the next big fire.
3:45
SPEAKER_00: So I can get why that one led you down some paths you weren't expecting.
3:51
SPEAKER_01: Well, and that's why I was so happy when you reached out to me about doing
3:54
SPEAKER_01: a crossover episode because I really needed a research partner on this question.
4:00
SPEAKER_00: Well, I was happy to help.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: Even just out here, we've had awful fires and they're getting bigger.
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SPEAKER_00: Nine out of 10 of the largest fires in California's history all occurred since 2017.
4:11
SPEAKER_01: Cheese.
4:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: I know that internationally this summer,
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SPEAKER_01: fires burned in France,
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SPEAKER_01: Spain, Belgium, Northwest Territories, British Columbia, and Canada.
4:21
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Indonesia is fighting its worst wildfire in a decade right now.
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SPEAKER_01: So essentially,
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SPEAKER_01: we know this is going to continue year over year,
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SPEAKER_01: and people are stumped about what to do about it.
4:31
SPEAKER_01: So I really wanted to speak to some experts, and we did.
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SPEAKER_00: So what were some of the main takeaways you had from these experts you spoke to?
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SPEAKER_01: So I found out that there are three big talking points when it comes
4:44
SPEAKER_01: to wildfire management that people feel very strongly about.
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SPEAKER_01: They are,
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SPEAKER_01: number one,
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SPEAKER_01: we have to be raking the forest, thinning the forest, and logging the forest.
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SPEAKER_01: Number two, we have to stop all wildfires immediately when they start.
5:03
SPEAKER_01: And number three, we need to be using more prescribed burns, so intentional burns.
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SPEAKER_00: So you and I decided to divvy this up.
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SPEAKER_00: We each talked to an ecologist and a scientist who had some different perspectives.
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SPEAKER_00: And what we came away with is that it's going to take a lot
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SPEAKER_00: to really protect forests and communities in this rapidly warming world.
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SPEAKER_00: Climate will impact every corner of the world,
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SPEAKER_00: and any conversation leaving that out is not telling the full story.
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SPEAKER_00: But we found,
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SPEAKER_00: according to these experts that we spoke to,
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SPEAKER_00: that there are some techniques and strategies that we can be using
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SPEAKER_00: to make this better.
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SPEAKER_01: And we're going to talk about that more after the break.
6:17
SPEAKER_01: All right, so,
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SPEAKER_01: Miranda,
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SPEAKER_01: the whole reason I wanted to get into this subject is that we've been hearing
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SPEAKER_01: so much lately about the different kinds of fire management.
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SPEAKER_03: The relationship between forest management and the wildfire crisis is clear.
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SPEAKER_01: Practices like prescribed burning,
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SPEAKER_01: selective thinning,
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SPEAKER_01: and maintaining strategic fuel breaks have also proven effective
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SPEAKER_01: in lowering wildfire risk.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I know President Trump has been focused on cleaning up the forest floors
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SPEAKER_00: and getting those fuels off the ground.
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SPEAKER_01: So, okay, Miranda, when you hear all of that, what sounds legitimate and what doesn't?
6:54
SPEAKER_00: Well,
6:55
SPEAKER_00: I have to admit that every time I hear about the idea of raking the forest floors
7:01
SPEAKER_00: and raking leaves as a fire prevention tactic, I'm pretty skeptical.
7:05
SPEAKER_01: Yes, and this is something that President Trump says a lot.
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SPEAKER_00: But we don't have forest fires because
7:11
SPEAKER_03: we clean the floor,
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SPEAKER_03: we sweep the floor of leaves of dead debris.
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SPEAKER_01: So I spoke to Chad T. Hansen.
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SPEAKER_01: He's the director and principal ecologist at the John Muir Project,
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SPEAKER_01: which is a forest conservation group.
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SPEAKER_02: I've been a fire scientist for over 20 years.
7:30
SPEAKER_01: And he agreed.
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SPEAKER_01: The idea of sweeping every acre of forest is indeed ridiculous.
7:37
SPEAKER_02: No one's going to go rake up, you know...
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SPEAKER_02: Hundreds of millions of acres of forest.
7:42
SPEAKER_02: And you shouldn't do that.
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SPEAKER_02: It would be idiotic to try to do that and try to stop fire in the forest.
7:48
SPEAKER_02: First of all, it wouldn't work.
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SPEAKER_02: You can't do that.
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SPEAKER_02: That material,
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SPEAKER_02: the dry leaves,
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SPEAKER_02: the dead pine needles,
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SPEAKER_02: the twigs on the forest floor,
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SPEAKER_02: that material will reaccumulate within two or three years.
8:03
SPEAKER_02: So what are you going to do?
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SPEAKER_02: You're going to rake every acre of the forest every two years?
8:08
SPEAKER_01: Now, Chad did make one important distinction immediately around people's homes.
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SPEAKER_02: You know, in the 30 feet, 60 feet around the homes, you actually do want to do that.
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SPEAKER_02: You want to rake up the dry leaves and the twigs and remove the dry grasses because
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SPEAKER_02: that can carry flames to the house.
8:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've heard similar things in my reporting and I spoke to an expert too.
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SPEAKER_00: His name is Hugh Safford and he's a retired former ecologist from the US Forest Service.
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SPEAKER_00: And he runs a fire ecology lab at UC Davis.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: And he pretty much agreed on that point about raking.
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SPEAKER_03: Tree and grass litter,
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SPEAKER_03: et cetera, around your home is one of the most important things you can do.
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SPEAKER_03: Now,
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SPEAKER_03: in terms of like being able to scale that up to do like entire national forests,
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SPEAKER_03: that's not quite as practical.
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SPEAKER_01: Okay, so raking the forest, not really a practical, scalable thing.
9:03
SPEAKER_01: But what about this term I hear all the time, thinning, thinning the forest?
9:09
SPEAKER_01: How does that sound to you as a solution?
9:12
SPEAKER_00: Thinning sounds a bit more reasonable to me.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean, as I understand it,
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SPEAKER_00: it's selectively removing some of the vegetation that can carry a fire.
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SPEAKER_00: These are kind of the smaller trees and the branches and the brush that grows
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SPEAKER_00: between larger trees and forests and terrain.
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SPEAKER_00: So I get the idea of wanting to thin out forests to be able to get rid of some of that kindling.
9:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it sounds like a bit more reasonable.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean,
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SPEAKER_00: logically,
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SPEAKER_00: when you think about it,
9:38
SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: when you're making a fire,
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SPEAKER_00: you're using some of this stuff to kind of start a fire yourself when you're camping
9:43
SPEAKER_00: or something.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: So the idea of getting rid of that fuel so that bigger trees don't burn makes sense
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SPEAKER_00: from, you know, a basic perspective.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: And when I talked to Hugh,
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SPEAKER_00: he actually pointed to a fire that burns near Lake Tahoe called the Calder Fire back
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SPEAKER_00: in 2021 as an example of where thinning actually worked.
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SPEAKER_03: They didn't have a single structure burned down when this massive fire burned
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SPEAKER_03: through Lake Tahoe,
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SPEAKER_03: which was due largely to mechanical and hand thinning that had been done.
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SPEAKER_03: There were some places in the landscape where they had piled fuels
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SPEAKER_03: that had been created by the hand thinning and they had not disposed of them by
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SPEAKER_03: the time the fire hit the landscape.
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SPEAKER_03: And in those places, the fire burned just as severely as if they had not even done any work.
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SPEAKER_03: So that's an issue.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: But here's the important thing.
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SPEAKER_00: Hugh said that even though thinning does work,
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SPEAKER_00: it's not really something you can do on the large scale.
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SPEAKER_00: It's really something that is more beneficial around homes or in immediate areas
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SPEAKER_00: where humans live.
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SPEAKER_00: And it's not something that you can really expect forest service workers
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SPEAKER_00: or firefighters to do at forest at large.
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SPEAKER_03: Hand and mechanical thinning is a really, really important part of the mix.
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SPEAKER_03: And where it's mostly important,
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SPEAKER_03: Miranda,
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SPEAKER_03: is within a relatively small radius of human habitation, right, around structures.
11:00
SPEAKER_01: That makes total sense.
11:20
SPEAKER_01: But I will say what's interesting about this is that Chad Hansen,
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SPEAKER_01: the expert I spoke to,
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SPEAKER_01: he actually gave me a very different picture of what he thinks projects
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SPEAKER_01: that are labeled thinning actually look like.
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SPEAKER_02: Most people, they hear thinning, they think pruning shears, right?
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SPEAKER_02: They think,
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SPEAKER_02: you know,
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SPEAKER_02: people out there in their Forest Service uniforms,
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SPEAKER_02: you know, pruning, you know, lower branches and some seedlings and saplings.
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SPEAKER_02: A thinning project is an industrial logging project.
11:48
SPEAKER_02: You're talking about heavy machinery.
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SPEAKER_02: You're talking about feller bunchers and bulldozers and big chainsaws.
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SPEAKER_02: You're talking about killing and removing upwards of 70 or 80% of the trees in
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SPEAKER_02: a given stand, including many mature and old growth trees.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's really interesting.
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SPEAKER_00: So Chad essentially says that there's no real distinction between thinning and logging.
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SPEAKER_00: He thinks of them as one and the same.
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SPEAKER_01: He thinks that it's a branding issue.
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SPEAKER_01: So he thinks that a lot of logging projects are actually greenwashed as thinning.
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SPEAKER_01: And he actually claims that more than 95%
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SPEAKER_01: of thinning projects are actually just commercial logging projects.
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SPEAKER_00: Is that true?
12:28
SPEAKER_01: Well, I could not find evidence supporting that specific number,
12:32
SPEAKER_01: but I do think his point is that it's a branding thing.
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SPEAKER_01: Politicians often talk about thinning as this gentle thing and as if it always means
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SPEAKER_01: the same thing, but it doesn't.
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SPEAKER_01: It can mean pruning with shears or it can also mean industrial logging of the forest.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think I understand where he's coming from because you
12:52
SPEAKER_00: and I have also been confused by this.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes,
12:55
SPEAKER_00: politicians or even just scientists don't do a really good job
12:58
SPEAKER_00: of explaining exactly what they mean when they talk about this stuff.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: One person's thinning could be another person's logging.
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SPEAKER_00: What I understand is from the Trump administration,
13:10
SPEAKER_00: when they mean logging, though, they mean big force management.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: They mean cutting down giant redwoods or the types of trees that you can make furniture out of.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: And those are the solutions that the Trump administration really has been pushing
13:22
SPEAKER_00: for wildfires right now.
13:24
SPEAKER_01: Yes, that's correct.
13:25
SPEAKER_01: So in March of last year,
13:27
SPEAKER_01: Trump signed an executive order and it was called Immediate Expansion
13:31
SPEAKER_01: of American Timber Production.
13:34
SPEAKER_01: And it ordered agencies to expand timber harvest 25 percent over the next four to five years.
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SPEAKER_01: The next month,
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SPEAKER_01: he issued another executive order called Empowering Common Sense Wildfire Prevention
13:49
SPEAKER_01: and Response that framed logging and thinning as the fix
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SPEAKER_01: for catastrophic wildfires fueled by, quote, dense trees and undergrowth.
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SPEAKER_01: Essentially,
14:00
SPEAKER_01: the school of thought in the Trump administration is
14:02
SPEAKER_01: that logging will reduce excessive vegetation that fuels catastrophic wildfires and
14:07
SPEAKER_01: And there are over 80 million acres of national forests that are at risk
14:11
SPEAKER_01: of severe wildfire and need active forest management, a.k.a.
14:16
SPEAKER_01: logging.
14:18
SPEAKER_03: And we're going to clean the forest.
14:19
SPEAKER_03: We're going to start cleaning them.
14:20
SPEAKER_03: We're going to get rid of dead wood and we're going to have a whole new system.
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SPEAKER_03: And it's called forest management.
14:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay, but we are seeing something else happen, on the other hand, coming out of Congress.
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SPEAKER_00: There's a bipartisan bill that's making its way through called
14:35
SPEAKER_00: the Fix Our Forest Act,
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SPEAKER_00: and it's being built around expanded thinning and logging as
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SPEAKER_00: a wildfire mitigation tool.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: Which has been cynically masquerading as a community wildfire protection measure.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: And I have to be honest, Emily, it's got really mixed support.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: We have the logging industry that is backing this.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: And we have environmental groups like the Nature Conservancy backing it too.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: But then we also have groups like those that I think are aligned with Chad,
15:24
SPEAKER_00: like the Sierra Club,
15:26
SPEAKER_00: that say this is a no-go, that these trees shouldn't be touched.
15:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I think we're now starting to get to the point where your experts' views
15:34
SPEAKER_01: and my experts' views start to drastically diverge.
15:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because while Hugh isn't exactly a fan of Trump's,
15:43
SPEAKER_00: he does agree with the basic premise behind the kind of forest management
15:46
SPEAKER_00: that he is proposing.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: And he actually believes that thinning and logging are important fire prevention tools.
15:53
SPEAKER_03: I do want to be on record as saying that Now,
15:55
SPEAKER_03: I know that a lot of people out there think that nothing
15:57
SPEAKER_03: but ridiculous stuff comes out of the White House these days,
15:59
SPEAKER_03: but that was one of the least ridiculous things that Donald Trump has ever said
16:03
SPEAKER_03: between you and me.
16:04
SPEAKER_03: It actually demonstrated an understanding of cause and effect.
16:07
SPEAKER_03: Maybe not,
16:08
SPEAKER_03: maybe he just reparted somebody,
16:09
SPEAKER_03: but someone in that office seems to know a little bit about a cause and effect,
16:13
SPEAKER_03: which is that fuel drives fire.
16:16
SPEAKER_03: And if you can remove fuel on the surface of the forest,
16:19
SPEAKER_03: you can have a pretty important impact on the way that a fire is going to operate.
16:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's probably the most common position that I hear among wildfire scientists.
16:31
SPEAKER_01: But Chad and other scientists like him reject that premise entirely.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: That's interesting.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: Why would removing trees make a fire spread faster?
16:42
SPEAKER_00: I'll let Chad explain.
16:44
SPEAKER_02: What most of the science now is telling us,
16:47
SPEAKER_02: the biggest studies,
16:48
SPEAKER_02: the ones that involve dozens of fires,
16:50
SPEAKER_02: hundreds of wildfires,
16:51
SPEAKER_02: thousands,
16:52
SPEAKER_02: what the great majority of those studies are telling us is
16:55
SPEAKER_02: that denser forests actually tend to burn at lower intensities,
17:00
SPEAKER_02: not higher intensities than wildfires.
17:02
SPEAKER_02: And that seems counterintuitive to a lot of people because if you have more trees
17:06
SPEAKER_02: and more biomass in the forest, you think, well, there's more fuel to burn.
17:10
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't work that way.
17:12
SPEAKER_02: A denser forest, yeah, it has more trees.
17:15
SPEAKER_02: But what it has, because it has more trees, is more canopy cover.
17:20
SPEAKER_02: When you have more canopy cover, you have more cooling shade.
17:24
SPEAKER_02: When you have more cooling shade, then there's less sunlight in the understory.
17:27
SPEAKER_02: And the most combustible vegetation,
17:29
SPEAKER_02: grasses,
17:31
SPEAKER_02: little seedlings, twigs,
17:34
SPEAKER_02: the shrubs,
17:36
SPEAKER_02: the understory vegetation,
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SPEAKER_02: there's less of it because all that vegetation needs almost 100% sunlight
17:42
SPEAKER_02: to survive.
17:43
SPEAKER_02: When it gets shaded out, it dies back and it disappears.
17:45
SPEAKER_02: The lower limbs on the trees die back.
17:49
SPEAKER_02: And it's more difficult to have a more intense fire
17:54
SPEAKER_01: Is he right about that?
17:56
SPEAKER_01: Well,
17:57
SPEAKER_01: I will say that there is real evidence for his claim that some denser forests burn
18:02
SPEAKER_01: at lower intensities in wildfires.
18:05
SPEAKER_01: Several large studies have found that older protected
18:09
SPEAKER_01: and closed canopy forests can burn less severely than younger,
18:14
SPEAKER_01: more open or intensely managed forests.
18:19
SPEAKER_01: Now, I couldn't find any evidence that denser forests always burn less severely or
18:24
SPEAKER_01: that removing trees never helps.
18:27
SPEAKER_01: And importantly, Chad did clarify that not all dense forests burn less severely.
18:32
SPEAKER_01: But from what I could see looking at the evidence,
18:35
SPEAKER_01: it seemed to really depend heavily on the type of forest and the type of,
18:41
SPEAKER_01: quote unquote, management that is happening in the forest.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that makes sense.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's essentially what he was telling me too.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: He told me that the cooling effect that Chad described can absolutely happen
18:53
SPEAKER_00: in wetter forests,
18:54
SPEAKER_00: like what we see in the Pacific Northwest,
18:56
SPEAKER_00: but that Chad was applying his position a little bit too broadly.
19:01
SPEAKER_03: Not in most California forests.
19:02
SPEAKER_03: In wet forests, absolutely.
19:04
SPEAKER_03: Paper after paper after paper,
19:06
SPEAKER_03: science out of my lab,
19:07
SPEAKER_03: out of many other labs,
19:08
SPEAKER_03: shows that under severe wildfire conditions where we can't stop wildfires,
19:13
SPEAKER_03: The places that burn hottest are the North Slopes with the densest vegetation.
19:17
SPEAKER_03: There's just a stack of papers that show that.
19:20
SPEAKER_03: Really, in the scientific community,
19:21
SPEAKER_03: the real scientific community,
19:23
SPEAKER_03: there's no debate about the fact that one has to reduce fuel in a lot
19:26
SPEAKER_03: of these Western landscapes.
19:28
SPEAKER_01: All right.
19:29
SPEAKER_01: But what was the deal with the whole real scientific community thing then?
19:35
SPEAKER_01: Why was he throwing such shade?
19:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, Shade's a really good way of putting it, Emily.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't subtle about it.
19:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean, look,
19:44
SPEAKER_00: it looks like Chad's views are pretty controversial amongst
19:47
SPEAKER_00: the wildfire scientist community.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: I found this article in the Sacramento Bee from 2021 that said
19:52
SPEAKER_00: at least 111 scientists have co-authored 41 scientific papers that rebut Hansen's
20:00
SPEAKER_00: and his colleagues' findings that forests need to be essentially left alone and
20:04
SPEAKER_00: that we shouldn't be removing material from them.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: And one person I spoke to recently who works in fire management policy responded off
20:12
SPEAKER_00: the cuff when I mentioned Hans' name.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: And he told me, quote unquote, F that guy.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: So he's made some enemies in the fire science space.
20:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
20:23
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I will admit that I do know about this,
20:27
SPEAKER_01: but I did not know about it before I interviewed Chad.
20:31
SPEAKER_01: It actually came up in fact checking.
20:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
20:34
SPEAKER_01: And I saw this,
20:36
SPEAKER_01: that there was a lot of scientific opposition to his claims and that it seemed
20:41
SPEAKER_01: to be pretty heated.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there were some juicy quotes in that article, too,
20:47
SPEAKER_00: with one scientist describing Hansen's assessment as,
20:50
SPEAKER_00: quote, unquote, self-serving garbage.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: And another scientist comparing Hansen and his allies to early climate change deniers.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: And Hugh actually compared them to flat earthers.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: That was a term he called them.
21:04
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't think it's fair to compare him to a climate denier.
21:09
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's actively publishing in peer-reviewed journals making these arguments.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: I think what maybe is so testy amongst these two groups is that they're all trying
21:22
SPEAKER_00: to fix the same problem, right?
21:23
SPEAKER_00: I don't think anyone wants to be seeing these catastrophic fires occur.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: But they all have different opinions on how to fix them and also how What to protect, right?
21:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I can imagine why it would get so intense because both
21:38
SPEAKER_01: of these groups are essentially trying to save the forest,
21:41
SPEAKER_01: save people, like you said, right?
21:42
SPEAKER_01: So if they think that another group of scientists or environmentalists or ecologists
21:47
SPEAKER_01: or whoever are standing in the way of that, I can imagine getting pretty angry.
21:53
SPEAKER_01: I mean, going back to what I said earlier,
21:56
SPEAKER_01: I do think that, like, He is actively publishing in peer-reviewed journals.
22:02
SPEAKER_01: I don't think that that means that that automatically makes him right,
22:05
SPEAKER_01: but it does make his claims worth examining.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: And what we're unearthing here is a scientific debate that we don't ever really hear
22:14
SPEAKER_01: in the mainstream political discussion.
22:16
SPEAKER_01: So I do think it's worth talking about in the context of we're hearing
22:20
SPEAKER_01: a political discussion that has largely said logging is the answer,
22:24
SPEAKER_01: and that is not what's happening in the scientific community.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, does Chad know how others feel about his research?
22:32
SPEAKER_00: Did you ask him about the criticism?
22:34
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he has an explanation for why all these scientists disagree with him,
22:41
SPEAKER_01: and it's pretty spicy.
22:43
SPEAKER_01: He says that a lot of the science that supports logging and thinning is funded by
22:50
SPEAKER_01: the Forest Service,
22:52
SPEAKER_01: which he sees as financially entangled with the logging industry.
22:57
SPEAKER_01: Basically,
22:59
SPEAKER_01: because the Forest Service sells timber from public lands to private companies and
23:05
SPEAKER_01: then some of that revenue comes back to the Forest Service,
23:09
SPEAKER_01: Chad thinks that that is creating a financial incentive
23:13
SPEAKER_01: to promote cutting down trees.
23:16
SPEAKER_02: For folks who don't know,
23:16
SPEAKER_02: the United States Forest Service is part of the logging industry and has been for
23:20
SPEAKER_02: a long time.
23:22
SPEAKER_02: The number one thing they do in terms of Land management is sell public trees
23:26
SPEAKER_02: to private logging companies and keep the revenue for their budget.
23:29
SPEAKER_02: So they are very much in the industry.
23:32
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's a pretty interesting perspective.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: I assume you ran a fact check on that?
23:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:37
SPEAKER_01: So the Forest Service does sell public timber and it does retain some of the revenue.
23:43
SPEAKER_01: I couldn't substantiate that it's the agency's number one activity.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: In 2025, the Forest Service timber sales were worth about $153 million.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: But its entire budget is $9 billion.
23:55
SPEAKER_01: So it is like a small amount.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: It's not very big in the grand scheme of things.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: No.
24:06
SPEAKER_01: And I did put that to Chad.
24:09
SPEAKER_01: I was like, it's not that big of a percentage.
24:11
SPEAKER_01: And he said that his bigger concern is actually congressional funding.
24:16
SPEAKER_01: So he believes that...
24:19
SPEAKER_01: When the Forest Service promotes logging as wildfire prevention,
24:22
SPEAKER_01: that is what helps the agency secure billions from Congress because Congress,
24:28
SPEAKER_01: many members of Congress have allies in the logging industry.
24:30
SPEAKER_01: So there's a few claims there.
24:33
SPEAKER_01: And the financial incentive totally may exist,
24:34
SPEAKER_01: but I couldn't prove that it has distorted the science.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: OK, well, that is definitely something that he would probably take some umbrage with.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: I think his perspective actually is that
24:46
SPEAKER_00: the Forest Service does not have enough funding from the federal government,
24:49
SPEAKER_00: both from the Trump administration and from the money it makes off
24:54
SPEAKER_00: of these commercial sales or specifically coming from Congress
24:57
SPEAKER_00: and what Congress has appropriated.
24:58
SPEAKER_03: Their claims that the federal government and
25:01
SPEAKER_03: the Forest Service are basically evildoers and they're in the pockets
25:04
SPEAKER_03: of that's bullshit.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean,
25:06
SPEAKER_00: Hugh's argument is that there essentially has to be some sort of economic benefit to
25:10
SPEAKER_00: the activity of logging or the Forest Service wouldn't essentially be able
25:14
SPEAKER_00: to do what it does, which is log to prevent fires.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: You know,
25:19
SPEAKER_00: they have to contract out their work and oftentimes work with private sawmills
25:23
SPEAKER_00: because the U.S. no longer owns any of its own sawmills.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: And if they cut down these trees and leave them there,
25:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, then it's just perfect kindling for any sort of forest fires.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: So he essentially makes the argument that logging isn't even as functional
25:36
SPEAKER_00: as it used to be and that it needs more financial support,
25:40
SPEAKER_00: whether it's making the money itself by selling these trees or
25:44
SPEAKER_00: from congressional funding.
25:46
SPEAKER_03: Like if you think,
25:46
SPEAKER_03: for example,
25:47
SPEAKER_03: let's just do the numbers in the Western U.S.,
25:50
SPEAKER_03: You'll see different estimates,
25:51
SPEAKER_03: but the estimates are along the lines of tens of millions of acres of forest
25:56
SPEAKER_03: that require some level of fuel reduction if we want to let them be able
25:59
SPEAKER_03: to safely burn and survive where climate is taking us.
26:02
SPEAKER_03: Well, it costs in most parts of the Western US between $500 and $4,000 an acre to do that work.
26:09
SPEAKER_03: Okay, multiply 10 million by 4,000.
26:13
SPEAKER_03: Do you think Congress is going to drop billions and billions and billions
26:16
SPEAKER_03: and billions on the Western US just to get rid of fuels?
26:19
SPEAKER_03: And remember, Fuels regrow.
26:21
SPEAKER_03: So you can never stop that investment.
26:23
SPEAKER_03: It will go on for the rest of time.
26:25
SPEAKER_03: They're not willing to do that work.
26:27
SPEAKER_01: Right.
26:27
SPEAKER_01: So the claim is essentially like, no,
26:30
SPEAKER_01: the science shows that logging helps and it's good that
26:34
SPEAKER_01: the Forest Service makes money off of it because
26:36
SPEAKER_01: then it just it helps us hire more people to do it.
26:39
SPEAKER_01: It helps bring more funding to the agency.
26:43
SPEAKER_01: It's a good circle.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: But what I will say is that Hugh is a realist,
26:48
SPEAKER_00: and he did acknowledge to me that we are only human.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: And because the U.S.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: Forest Service is so much smaller these days than it has been in the past because
26:57
SPEAKER_00: of budget cuts, so much of the work it does is with federal contractors.
27:03
SPEAKER_00: And he doesn't deny that as soon as you contract out something,
27:06
SPEAKER_00: you can lose control of the quality of that contract.
27:10
SPEAKER_03: Well, what I can tell you is I have certainly seen projects
27:13
SPEAKER_03: where contractors took bigger trees than they were permitted to take.
27:16
SPEAKER_03: Definitely.
27:17
SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
27:18
SPEAKER_03: Definitely seen that.
27:20
SPEAKER_03: But, I mean, you know, I don't know what to say about that.
27:23
SPEAKER_03: That happens a lot.
27:25
SPEAKER_01: And I think in the forest conservation community specifically,
27:29
SPEAKER_01: seeing contractors take bigger,
27:31
SPEAKER_01: older trees than they were supposed to in the name
27:33
SPEAKER_01: of wildfire management is probably pretty enraging.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: Of course.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that is the worst case scenario.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: But when you're in the forest, no one's really paying attention to you.
27:45
SPEAKER_00: Right.
27:45
SPEAKER_00: And that's something he says sometimes does happen.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: But when it comes to what the Trump administration is proposing,
27:50
SPEAKER_00: which is a dramatic increase in logging to benefit the country economically.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think fire prevention is maybe an aside here.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: He really does make it seem like it's an economic issue.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: Hughes says that that just doesn't really seem like something that's feasible
28:05
SPEAKER_00: in his perspective.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: You know,
28:06
SPEAKER_00: Trump is trying to open up large parcels of forests that have never been logged
28:11
SPEAKER_00: before, especially in Alaska.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: These forests don't have roads.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: Even if the Forest Service or their contractors were able to get there,
28:20
SPEAKER_00: how are they going to get those logs out?
28:22
SPEAKER_00: How are they going to be able to do any sort of logging in a capacity
28:25
SPEAKER_00: that is either economically beneficial or beneficial to fire management?
28:31
SPEAKER_00: And so he says that he believes that more logging and prescribed burning needs
28:35
SPEAKER_00: to happen,
28:36
SPEAKER_00: but these kind of broad swing pushes that we're seeing from
28:39
SPEAKER_00: the Trump administration just aren't going to cut it.
28:41
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I think one of the big things that we've learned is that forest management,
28:45
SPEAKER_01: this amalgamous term that we hear all the time, it is not one thing.
28:50
SPEAKER_01: It could mean raking, it can mean thinning, it can mean logging on a big scale.
28:56
SPEAKER_01: And none of these strategies work in every forest for every fire.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, there's no one-size-fits-all strategy here.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: And in fact,
29:07
SPEAKER_00: there's debate about whether they even work at all,
29:10
SPEAKER_00: which is wild because you never hear that in the political discussion about some
29:14
SPEAKER_00: of these strategies just not really being effective.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: And as we've learned, that scientific debate is super spicy.
29:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would love to report more on it, but we do have to move on.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: Everything that we've discussed so far is about what happens before a fire begins.
29:33
SPEAKER_00: Right.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: What happens once one actually starts?
29:36
SPEAKER_00: Do we put it out or do we let it burn?
29:40
SPEAKER_01: And I'm happy to report that on that question,
29:42
SPEAKER_01: it seems like our two experts might have some common ground.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: More after the break.
30:12
SPEAKER_01: The Smokey the Bear mantra has only become more and more part of the Forest Service
30:18
SPEAKER_01: and the national strategy of fighting wildfires since then.
30:24
SPEAKER_01: So here's an interesting statistic.
30:26
SPEAKER_01: In 1995, wildfire, like firefighting work accounted for 16% of the agency's budget.
30:34
SPEAKER_01: By 2015, it consumed more than half.
30:40
SPEAKER_01: And over that same period, the Forest Service more than doubled its firefighting staff.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: It had roughly 5,700 firefighting employees in 1995 and more than 12,000
30:55
SPEAKER_01: And it cut the workforce devoted to everything else by nearly 40%.
31:02
SPEAKER_01: And I believe that when Trump imposed budget cuts on the Forest Service,
31:08
SPEAKER_01: firefighters were exempted.
31:11
SPEAKER_01: So it's just an example of how important wildland firefighting and just firefighting
31:17
SPEAKER_01: in general is to our current political wildfire prevention strategy.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: And as you mentioned, Emily, that's something we've been seeing since the 40s.
31:27
SPEAKER_00: And Hugh had something to say about that legacy.
31:31
SPEAKER_03: Smokey the Bear was one of the more successful of the public relations campaigns on
31:36
SPEAKER_03: the planet, but Smokey went way too far.
31:39
SPEAKER_03: Smokey didn't help people understand how fire was actually an important ecological process.
31:45
SPEAKER_03: Smokey helped people think that they needed to stop fire under all conditions.
31:49
SPEAKER_03: And we continue to do that.
31:50
SPEAKER_03: And it is one of the main creators of the problem that we're facing right now.
31:54
SPEAKER_01: So why did you say that putting out fire is one of the main reasons that we have big fires now?
32:02
SPEAKER_00: I think the main point there is that by putting out all these fires
32:05
SPEAKER_00: without letting them naturally burn,
32:07
SPEAKER_00: we've gotten ourselves to this place where we have really dense forests with trees
32:12
SPEAKER_00: that haven't seen fire in decades.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: And that's not good because when we do have fires, those trees burn for a very long time.
32:22
SPEAKER_00: If those fires had been allowed to burn a little bit longer,
32:26
SPEAKER_00: they would have naturally thinned out the forest on their own.
32:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's so interesting because Chad,
32:32
SPEAKER_01: the expert I spoke with,
32:33
SPEAKER_01: Chad Hansen,
32:34
SPEAKER_01: he does agree that we are putting way too much resources into firefighting,
32:42
SPEAKER_01: particularly in like the wildlands and deep forests.
32:46
SPEAKER_01: But it's not because of that buildup of material.
32:48
SPEAKER_01: He has a completely different reason.
32:51
SPEAKER_02: And high-intensity fire,
32:52
SPEAKER_02: these patches where the flames reach the tops of the trees and kill most of all
32:57
SPEAKER_02: the trees.
32:58
SPEAKER_02: People think that's got to be bad.
33:01
SPEAKER_02: But the reality is that's always been a part of forests, many plant and animal species.
33:06
SPEAKER_02: Completely depend on that for their survival to reproduce.
33:09
SPEAKER_02: Different tree species have to have high intensity fire.
33:12
SPEAKER_02: It kills the entire stand.
33:13
SPEAKER_02: And that's how they reproduce.
33:15
SPEAKER_02: And they reproduce in spectacular fashion.
33:17
SPEAKER_02: Lots of species do that.
33:19
SPEAKER_02: Lots of animal species depend on stands of fire-killed trees.
33:24
SPEAKER_01: So Chad likes to talk about these areas of burned trees
33:27
SPEAKER_01: that he calls snag forest habitat because they're filled with snags.
33:32
SPEAKER_01: Snags are standing dead trees.
33:35
SPEAKER_01: And while that might look jarring,
33:38
SPEAKER_01: Chad says that those snag forests support this entire chain of life.
33:44
SPEAKER_01: For example,
33:45
SPEAKER_01: after a fire,
33:46
SPEAKER_01: wood-boring beetles fly towards the burned area and they lay their eggs beneath
33:51
SPEAKER_01: the charred bark.
33:53
SPEAKER_01: Their larva then becomes food for woodpeckers,
33:58
SPEAKER_01: which then excavate cavities in the softened dead trees,
34:03
SPEAKER_01: which then become homes for other animals.
34:07
SPEAKER_01: And he says the forests can regrow on their own, that it's part of the life cycle.
34:14
SPEAKER_02: It's funny because people,
34:15
SPEAKER_02: you know,
34:15
SPEAKER_02: they see these scenes of fire,
34:18
SPEAKER_02: you know,
34:18
SPEAKER_02: it's always on the TV news, you know, it's like the hundred foot flames, right?
34:21
SPEAKER_02: And the fire kilt stands and they'll go in there and then take the footage after
34:25
SPEAKER_02: the fire is burned and you've got charred ground and blackened
34:29
SPEAKER_02: And people think that's the way it's going to look forever and nothing's going
34:32
SPEAKER_02: to regenerate, but nothing could be further from the truth.
34:35
SPEAKER_02: Come in a year after the fire, the first spring, come in two years, five years.
34:39
SPEAKER_02: If it hasn't been logged,
34:41
SPEAKER_02: it's going to be one of the most amazing places you've ever seen,
34:43
SPEAKER_02: especially if you like birds,
34:45
SPEAKER_02: you know, come in in the morning, early in the morning in May or June.
34:48
SPEAKER_02: Oh my God, it's incredible.
34:50
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
34:50
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's a really compelling argument, but it doesn't seem to cover the whole story.
34:55
SPEAKER_00: Like what Chad says about the way forests burn,
34:58
SPEAKER_00: many scientists,
34:59
SPEAKER_00: they say he's right that forests can come back and
35:02
SPEAKER_00: then obviously fire is somewhat good for forests,
35:05
SPEAKER_00: but that doesn't always work across the board in every single place.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: You know, for in California, that doesn't work that way, at least according to Hugh.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: He says you have to consider whether the landscape can handle the kind of wildfires
35:18
SPEAKER_00: that we're seeing today.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: And keep in mind,
35:21
SPEAKER_00: the wildfires that we are seeing today are not the same as
35:23
SPEAKER_00: the wildfires we saw 10 years ago.
35:26
SPEAKER_03: What the science is showing is that ecosystems are not recovering from this kind
35:31
SPEAKER_03: of really,
35:32
SPEAKER_03: really severe burning, particularly when it happens multiple times within a decade.
35:37
SPEAKER_03: The capacity of the forest to regenerate via,
35:40
SPEAKER_03: when we're talking about conifer dominated forests in this case,
35:44
SPEAKER_03: hardwoods,
35:45
SPEAKER_03: broadleaf species like oaks and maples and madrone,
35:47
SPEAKER_03: et cetera, they largely re-sprout.
35:49
SPEAKER_03: And so you can knock them back and damage them permanently
35:54
SPEAKER_03: if you burn them too often, but they'll re-sprout, at least in the short term.
35:58
SPEAKER_03: And whereas conifers in California generally don't,
36:00
SPEAKER_03: and I'm not counting redwood and a couple of other species.
36:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this is just another area of deep scientific debate in the giant sequoias
36:12
SPEAKER_01: because Chad actually very vehemently argues
36:15
SPEAKER_01: that high-intensity fire can produce extraordinary regeneration in
36:20
SPEAKER_01: the sequoia groves.
36:22
SPEAKER_02: The reality is that's the only place where the giant sequoias are vigorously regenerating.
36:28
SPEAKER_02: We just did a study in one of the biggest high-intensity fire patches
36:32
SPEAKER_02: in Redwood Mountain Grove in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park.
36:36
SPEAKER_02: It's one of the key places that the public's being told that the fire burned too hot
36:41
SPEAKER_02: and the forest can't regenerate.
36:43
SPEAKER_02: And these big crown fire areas We found an average of 8,000 giant sequoia seedlings
36:49
SPEAKER_02: and saplings per acre at four years post-fire in these areas where
36:54
SPEAKER_02: the public is being told that there's little or none.
36:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think that makes sense,
36:59
SPEAKER_00: you know,
36:59
SPEAKER_00: but other scientists have found much weaker regeneration
37:02
SPEAKER_00: in some severely burned groves.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: So the disagreement isn't really over whether sequoias need fire.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: It's really whether today's most severe fires are creating the next generation
37:14
SPEAKER_00: And allowing those trees to grow back,
37:16
SPEAKER_00: or if they're killing mature trees faster,
37:18
SPEAKER_00: then the forest can replace them,
37:21
SPEAKER_00: which means that,
37:22
SPEAKER_00: you know,
37:22
SPEAKER_00: will we see giant sequoias like this again in our lifetime,
37:26
SPEAKER_00: in our children's lifetime?
37:27
SPEAKER_00: That's the ultimate question.
37:29
SPEAKER_00: And with climate change, it makes it even harder for these species to return.
37:34
SPEAKER_03: Some of the poster children of that are in California, Yosemite.
37:38
SPEAKER_03: Sequoia and Kings Canyon and the wilderness areas on the Sequoia
37:43
SPEAKER_03: and Inyo National Forest in particular, the southern end of the Sierra Nevada.
37:47
SPEAKER_03: They are very proactive and they allow naturally ignited,
37:50
SPEAKER_03: you know, lightning ignited fires to burn under certain conditions.
37:53
SPEAKER_03: They have a really clear rubric that they go through to determine whether they ought
37:56
SPEAKER_03: to let it burn and whether it's likely to have more beneficial outcome
37:59
SPEAKER_03: than negative outcome.
38:00
SPEAKER_03: So that happens.
38:01
SPEAKER_03: And it happens in other places in the Western US as well.
38:05
SPEAKER_03: But we've known at this point for 60 plus years that the lack of fire in a lot
38:11
SPEAKER_03: of Western ecosystems was an ecological disaster waiting to happen.
38:14
SPEAKER_03: And it's happening right now.
38:17
SPEAKER_00: All right, Emily.
38:19
SPEAKER_00: What are our experts' perspectives on prescribed burns?
38:22
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
38:23
SPEAKER_01: So prescribed burns are when you intentionally set a fire and And you don't wait
38:30
SPEAKER_01: for one to ignite naturally or you don't wait for someone else to ignite it
38:35
SPEAKER_01: and get out of control.
38:36
SPEAKER_01: You sort of manage the forest by using burning.
38:39
SPEAKER_01: This is a common indigenous forest management practice.
38:43
SPEAKER_01: I will say that Chad is more of a fan of prescribed burning than he is
38:48
SPEAKER_01: for any other forest management activity.
38:52
SPEAKER_01: He said that it does work in a limited sense.
38:56
SPEAKER_01: Prescribed fire will reduce subsequent wildfire severity for a short period of time.
39:00
SPEAKER_01: He said the longest effect,
39:02
SPEAKER_01: he said he believes the longest effect of prescribed burning lasts roughly three
39:07
SPEAKER_01: to four years and disappears by about six or seven years,
39:10
SPEAKER_01: but that it can be effective.
39:14
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's really interesting.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: So Hugh calls and characterizes prescribed burns as smaller,
39:20
SPEAKER_00: carefully timed burns that clear undergrowth.
39:23
SPEAKER_00: They support plants and soils that can make later wildfires less destructive.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: And this is something that, you know, we've seen indigenous communities use throughout history.
39:33
SPEAKER_00: And in more recent times,
39:36
SPEAKER_00: a lot of those tribes and tribal lands are allowed now to do more prescribed burn.
39:41
SPEAKER_00: They've been advocating for it,
39:42
SPEAKER_00: especially in California,
39:43
SPEAKER_00: and now they're finally getting the rights to be able to do that on some
39:45
SPEAKER_00: of their tribal lands.
39:47
SPEAKER_00: But there are still some pretty restrictive burning policies out there.
39:51
SPEAKER_00: That are limited in a lot of places and a lack of resources to be able
39:55
SPEAKER_00: to do these prescribed burns in the way that they should.
39:58
SPEAKER_00: And a lack of resources to be able to do these prescribed burns in the way
40:02
SPEAKER_00: that they're the most effective.
40:05
SPEAKER_03: Prescribed fire is, I have to be clear, in the U.S., it's a very niche thing.
40:10
SPEAKER_03: It gets used a lot in the Southeast and in the Midwest, mostly on private properties.
40:15
SPEAKER_03: There's a culture there.
40:16
SPEAKER_03: People have been using it forever.
40:17
SPEAKER_03: The ecosystems are very productive.
40:19
SPEAKER_03: They grow fuels very quickly.
40:21
SPEAKER_03: In order to protect structures,
40:22
SPEAKER_03: to protect ecosystems,
40:23
SPEAKER_03: to reduce fuels for habitat for certain wildlife,
40:26
SPEAKER_03: for the right kinds of plants under the right conditions.
40:29
SPEAKER_03: People burn all the time.
40:32
SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting because, like,
40:33
SPEAKER_01: I don't think I hear very much from,
40:36
SPEAKER_01: let's say,
40:37
SPEAKER_01: the Trump administration about prescribed burns being
40:40
SPEAKER_01: a good forest management strategy.
40:42
SPEAKER_01: Like, I think so far,
40:44
SPEAKER_01: if we're looking at the issue of forest management and the different strategies
40:50
SPEAKER_01: so far, we see the most agreement about this one being a good one, right?
40:56
SPEAKER_01: So, but I don't feel like I hear that a lot in our political discourse.
41:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Emily.
41:01
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I definitely think that when we're talking about the messaging coming out of
41:06
SPEAKER_00: the White House,
41:07
SPEAKER_00: we are really hearing logging as the only firefighting scenario,
41:12
SPEAKER_00: the only firefighting tool.
41:14
SPEAKER_00: And we're definitely not hearing stopping burning fossil fuels as a suggestion
41:18
SPEAKER_00: for fixing fires either.
41:20
SPEAKER_00: But I will say from Congress, we are seeing some action.
41:23
SPEAKER_00: You know,
41:23
SPEAKER_00: that bipartisan bill that we mentioned earlier,
41:25
SPEAKER_00: the Fix Our Forest Act,
41:27
SPEAKER_00: One of the things it intends to do is to change Clean Air Act calculations so
41:31
SPEAKER_00: that it can include more prescribed burns so that that can be a tool
41:35
SPEAKER_00: that can be used across the country as a way to protect,
41:40
SPEAKER_00: as a way to prevent forest fires.
41:42
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's interesting.
41:43
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know that.
41:46
SPEAKER_01: I know that there's so much debate over those bills,
41:49
SPEAKER_01: but it's, I guess, maybe heartening to see some
41:56
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
41:57
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this issue is so contentious.
42:00
SPEAKER_01: I do think it is interesting how one of the biggest solutions to protecting
42:07
SPEAKER_01: the forest is cutting down part of the forest.
42:12
SPEAKER_00: Or one of the best ways to fight a fire is by starting a fire.
42:17
SPEAKER_01: Right.
42:18
SPEAKER_01: There's a...
42:20
SPEAKER_01: It's very counterintuitive stuff.
42:24
SPEAKER_01: And the fact that I think overall what I've realized in this episode is that
42:29
SPEAKER_01: the fact that our political discussion often flattens these issues
42:36
SPEAKER_01: into just clear cut issues
42:42
SPEAKER_01: is one of the worst things we can do for actually trying
42:45
SPEAKER_01: to solve the problem.
42:47
SPEAKER_00: Well, I want to say thank you for pulling me into this mess,
42:50
SPEAKER_00: Emily, because now I'm thinking about fires in a way I've never thought of before.
42:54
SPEAKER_00: But it's forced me to really weigh the pros and cons of a lot of these tools.
42:58
SPEAKER_00: And I think I'm going to be thinking about the policies that I'm seeing coming out
43:02
SPEAKER_00: of California, coming out of Congress much differently than I did before.
43:06
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think I'm still going to be skeptical of forest raking.
43:11
SPEAKER_00: But I might not be as skeptical of logging as I used to be,
43:13
SPEAKER_00: or I might not be as skeptical of prescribed burns and the idea that
43:17
SPEAKER_00: when I see smoke, it's maybe a good thing.
43:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think ultimately the myth that I tried to debunk turned out to be bigger
43:28
SPEAKER_01: than I expected or assumed.
43:31
SPEAKER_01: You know, I expected it to be that forest management is solution.
43:35
SPEAKER_01: I expected the myth to be forest management is the solution to wildfires.
43:40
SPEAKER_01: And I still think that that is a myth.
43:43
SPEAKER_01: Like, obviously, forest management is not the one solution to wildfires.
43:48
SPEAKER_01: But the other myth is that forest management is sort
43:51
SPEAKER_01: of one universally effective solution or one universally designed thing.
43:58
SPEAKER_01: Or that forest management can compensate for a warming climate and communities
44:03
SPEAKER_01: that remain in wildfires path.
44:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean,
44:06
SPEAKER_00: I think you went down a rabbit hole and you came back out
44:10
SPEAKER_00: and you realized like many things that the life is complicated
44:14
SPEAKER_00: and multiple things can be true at once.
44:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and part of me wants to go back down into the rabbit hole.
44:21
SPEAKER_01: But I'll say breathing up here for a little while.
44:23
SPEAKER_00: Well, on that note, Emily, thank you so much for this collaboration.
44:27
SPEAKER_00: It was so great joining you on heated.
44:29
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
44:30
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for diving into this with me.
44:33
SPEAKER_01: It was really helpful.
44:35
SPEAKER_01: And thanks for having me on Boiling Point.
44:44
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44:47
SPEAKER_00: It really does help us and our team.
44:49
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44:53
SPEAKER_00: you can follow me on Instagram at Randy underscore Green or on YouTube at Miranda C.
45:00
SPEAKER_00: Green.
45:04
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to Boiling Point.
45:06
SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Miranda Green.
45:09
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45:13
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45:16
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45:19
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45:22
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45:51
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45:55
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