The Forest Service’s Misguided Approach to Wildfires

These snag forests support more mushrooms, bees, wildflowers, many bird species, small mammals, and even fish (when the logs fall into creeks) than so-called “healthy” forests.

Fifth, while it is accurate to say that all the forest types in central Oregon periodically burned, what is not said is that most of the plant communities in the region only burned at long fire rotations of many decades to hundreds of years. They are not “unhealthy,” nor do they require “fuel reductions.” This includes sagebrush, juniper, spruce-fir, aspen, and all other plant types. The only exception are dry forests of ponderosa pine; however, even in these forests, occasional high-severity blazes occur, so they are not “unnatural.”