Wildfire fears, facts & falsehoods — of giant sequoias.
Numerous government agencies today are exploiting the public’s fear of wildfire to win millions of dollars in funding for “vegetation management” and other “wildfire resilience” actions to, in effect, suppress wildfires.
Even many environmental groups similarly exploit the public’s fear of wildfire to sell their own remedies for the exaggerated perils of wildfire, including Native American forest management practices such as “cultural burns” and “tending the land.”
These and many more actions utilizing chainsaws, herbicides, masticating machines and torches ignore the reality that giant sequoia forests have thrived without human interference of any kind for literally millions of years. These ancient trees have evolved so adapted to not just wildfires but specifically severe wildfires that they NEED them to thrive.
But even this scientific and common sense reality is ignored by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), U.S. Geological Service (USGS), and groups like the Save The Redwoods League to justify human interference in the name of “saving” or “protecting” trees which humans have only harmed (mostly for lumber and land use) for hundreds of years, especially with European colonization and industrialization.
Below is the central fallacy, the false claim made here by even the not-for-profit Save the Redwoods League, in a short excerpt from their website:
Below, in italics, is the oft-repeated false narrative:
CAUTION: FALSEHOODS: Decades of climate warming and forest fire suppression policies are exacerbating fire intensity. Droughts make fire more likely to ignite and spread through vast landscapes of forest that, in many cases, have not burned for decades due to fire exclusion and therefore carry high fuel loads of small trees and understory vegetation that burn hot once lit. In contrast to the “cool” and moderate fires that sustain the redwood forest, hot and intense fires are more likely to destroy forests and kill even the biggest, most resilient redwoods and giant sequoias. – THESE ARE FALSEHOODS
And there you have the (bogus) justification for cutting and burning into these ancient groves of old-growth giant sequoias, no longer protected from mankind’s mind, hands, fears — and destructive machines. Even our own protective demarkation as National Parks (e.g., at Kings Canyon National Park and Sequoia National Park) is ignored to pursue the latest forest “management” — which is just the latest wrinkle on our old practice of wildfire suppression.
Why are these proposed “management” treatments destructive? Because the reality is that high-intensity wildfire is a beneficial force in forests, including in giant sequoias groves. As it has been for millions of years.
VIDEO short (2.5 min.) by Ph.D. ecologist Chad Hanson
25 years of on-the-ground, in-the-Sierras-forests research has taught Hanson much more than the government agencies (or the timber industry) knows about these trees. Critically, unlike them, he does not profit from multi-million dollar forest management industry contracts — which they do.
Dive Deeper
• LISTEN to Dr. Chad Hanson on this Public Lands Podcast (episode #24): “The Great Big Giant Sequoias Scam” – https://ourpubliclandspodcast.substack.com/p/24-the-great-big-giant-sequoia-scam
• READ MORE, including about Dr. Chad Hanson’s research and conclusions, on TreeSpirit’s wildfire page.
• READ MORE of Dr. Chad Hanson’s research on his John Muir Project website: https://johnmuirproject.org/scientific-research/giant-sequoias-thrive-in-recent-wildfires/