Today is National Eclipse Day, and thanks to the Milli, Nena Spring, and Whitewater fires, I’m likely to be viewing it through a lens of smoke. So this has me thinking about wildfires and wondering if it is true, as some claim, that environmentalists are ultimately responsible for the increase in acres burned in the last decade or so.
Partly due to pressure from environmentalists, federal land timber sales declined by about 80 percent in the 1990s. Meanwhile, the ten-year rolling average of the number of acres burned grew from about 3 million acres in the 1980s and 1990s to 6.5 million acres in the 2000s and (so far) 2010s. Is this a coincidence or did the cessation in timber cutting lead to the growth in wildfires?
Those who blame environmentalists argue that timber cutting and related activities allowed forest managers to minimize fuel loads in the forests. When those activities stopped, the fuel loads grew and fires became hotter, larger, and harder to control. Continue reading
