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Wouldn't it be better to practice proper forestry and harvest the timber, rather than let it burn and release hundreds of kilotons more CO2 and pollutants into the atmosphere?

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Stephen Pyne, an environmental historian who studies fire, emphasized that logging would not keep wildfires at bay. “Logging takes the big trunks and leaves the small stuff because there’s no market for it,” he said. “Fire burns the little and leaves the big.”

Great quote, but that's just not true. I suggest you research modern logging practices.

Since you're the expert (contesting the named expert cited in the article), why don't you point us in the right direction? Googling "modern logging practices" brings up Wikipedia, some industry websites, and a variety of random articles.

Not the parent, but what I've recently seen in Northern California is all underbrush and low branches gone. They were specifically prepping the area to manage fire. Quincy area.

This would equate to forest management practices, not logging. They likely chipped or burned the underbrush and low branches after removing them from the forest, which wouldn't be a profitable business practice.

True, it was forest management, not just commercial logging.

I wonder if there is a way to find a market for this smaller stuff? Or grow something harvestable in place.

Other than making sure forest fires pose minimal risks to man-made infrastructure, what is 'practicing proper forestry'? These forests existed for millions of years before humans started managing them.

Mostly making forests friendlier to humans. In their natural state the forests were perpetually burning and a lot of plants depended on those burns. But when you build million dollar houses in the middle of the pretty forest that likes to burn every 5 years...

The blame here seems to be squarely on the system that allows expensive houses to be built in places that naturally need to burn every now and again.

In large parts of north america, for thousands of years, humans intentionally set fires to manage the landscape. It isn't actually super clear what the "natural state of the forests" really looks like.

One of the goals stated in the article of proper forest management is returning of nutrients from the burned trees to the ground. That wouldn't be accomplished by harvesting the timber.

Besides which, sustainable fires (i.e. ones which don't, in the long run, substantially change forest coverage or makeup) are by definition carbon neutral.

>Besides which, sustainable fires (i.e. ones which don't, in the long run, substantially change forest coverage or makeup) are by definition carbon neutral.

Not when the rate of fires exceeds the rate of regrowth due to climate change.

The burnt forest will regrow, absorbing that CO2 back out of the atmosphere.

Yeah, that's kind of the definition of "non-sustainable."

It's natural for forests to burn from time to time. Preventing such is actually much worse in the long run.

The current frequency of major fires due to climate change is not natural, and we have to compensate.

I don't think climate change is the dominating variable here, like the article describes, the devastating fires are a product of our encroachment into forests and aggressive firefighting practices. If you have some references though, I'd be very interested in learning more.

Doing that is part of the problem, as pointed out in the article.

We harvest from those forests currently — the problem is we harvest the big healthy trees because their wood is the most desirable. They're also the most resistant to burning.

The smaller, shade-tolerant trees that we leave behind are both less commercially valuable and more vulnerable to fire.

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