Tom Gookin: Would you rather log a forest or watch it burn?

To have an intense conflagration you need all components of the fire triangle: air, ignition and fuel. Mother Nature controls the air and some of the ignition (lightning strikes). The rest of ignition is man-caused – careless smokers, power mowers, downed power lines, catalytic converters, etc.

Fuel is the one component we can control. Every logging truck leaving the timber site carries 50,000 pounds of heavy fuel. Every cow grazing the forest removes 30 pounds of flash fuels per day, or 3,150 pounds per grazing season. Since the typical grazing permit is for 300 cows, that’s 945,000 pounds of fuel in a season.

Fifty years ago, all trees capable of falling on power lines were removed. No trees were allowed to grow under power lines and most lines had vehicle access – creating the best firebreaks around.

Now trees are pruned around lines and unbalanced. Intense fires are caused by environmental negligence. Take a course in Benefit Analysis. You can save one owl by stopping timber sale, but you’ll burn up 100 owls by not thinning the forests. Stop water being drafted from streams to save one frog, but boil 100 frogs when the fire gets away.

Only man can prevent conflagrations – so log it and graze it. Or watch it burn.

This story was originally published November 29, 2017 at 9:19 AM with the headline "Tom Gookin: Would you rather log a forest or watch it burn?."