With global warming afflicting the world with all its possible burns, it is also expected to increase the size and numbers of wildfires annually, which is already considerably manifested in many regions. And, this in turn, is sure to increase the annual cost of fighting them — already running around $1 billion.
Logging off the wildfire-damaged trees and replacing them with new ones has been a common practice for decades to balance the greenery lost to the nature’s fury. But, a recent study comes to contradict this conventional practice.
To the surprise of the practitioners, the study says that this practice can actually worsen future fires! – If not ever, it is so, at least for a decade or two, i.e. the period when young trees create a volatile fuel source.
The lead author of the study, Jonathan R. Thompson, a doctoral candidate at Oregon State said,
It was the conventional wisdom that salvage logging and planting could reduce the risk of high-severity fires. Our data suggest otherwise.
A staff scientist for The Wilderness Society, Greg Aplet said,
There is no fuel reduction benefit. There is no ecological benefit to salvage logging.
With the long-standing practice of salvage logging on national forests brought under question, the authorities of the concerned regions need to look into the practice for a pragmatic reconsideration.
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