The Importance of Logging and Fire Prevention

There is an ongoing discussion about whether logging areas helps prevent wildfires or not. There is evidence that shows it going either way on if it is an effective way to help prevent wildfires or even if it helps slow them down when they do help. The argument that it does help has a good starting argument due to reducing the amount of fuel for a fire will help with preventing them. Bill Oliver, retired forest service official says “The actual stuff that needs to be cleared out of the woods are the brush and small diameter trees that provide kindling for today's mega fires. . . It's the big trees that make the money. This has long been an impediment to joint public-private forest restoration and wildfire mitigation efforts. But there are signs this is changing. ” But there is also that when an area is logged the regulations for what can and can't be cut down. It allows the trees to have better spacing between each other which allows healthier growth and also when a fire comes through keeps it from jumping from tree to tree so quickly

Another benefit from logging is the logging roads to allow a better response to wildfires on mountains due to the fact that fire trucks have the ability to get there instead of having to hike in or fight it completely from the air. Plus you can allow people to responsibly drive through and hike or anything and charge a little bit to allow more money for researching more ways to prevent fires and promote healthy forests through ways other than logging. Another way to reduce the the logging roads and slash piles is to do prescribed burns of certain areas so that all the easily burnt small debris are already gone so that the chances of a huge fire are much less likely as written in a memo by the department of the interior secretary Ryan Zinke. . He says that politicians need to start thinking in the ecological cycles vs thinking in there political cycles. When a burn is planned to happen it doesn't get out of control and burn down trees and all kind of stuff that shouldn't be burnt but instead just burn the debris on the ground that will cause a catastrophic fire. When you claim that logging causes too much pollution, just compare it to what kind if pollution happens when there is a large forest fire and then you have to bring in all of the necessary equipment to help fight the fire then you are having the pollution from the fire and the trucks and other heavy equipment. If they were allowed to log responsibility in the first place then the need to put people and wildlife in unneeded danger.

The US Forest Service states that 190 million acres of forest are at risk for catastrophic fires and 60 million of those are at national parks. This is all due to federal mismanagement of forests. An alternative view is that logging and clearcutting are both bad for the environmentenviroment regardless of what people think the benefitsbenifits are. We still need wood from logging, but some people think that we should cut way back on what is logged when they look at what they see are benefits vs what is a negative of logging and that there is a small chance of a forest fire to happen naturally vs happening from some accident occurring during the logging process. People say that some areas should notshouldnt be touched by humans because the biodiversity of animals is affected by the logging and that its not natural. Would the environment be better if people have never messed with them and just allow nature to take its course?

I think that there should be regulations, but not that many, on how logging shouldshoould be done in the future. The problem is not letting logging happen at all and that it creates huge danger areas for fires and surroundingsurronding houses and it provides work for loggers if they are allowed to log, even if it was in limited amounts only on really overgrown areas.