Cities burning to the ground. Homes destroyed. Lives destroyed and lost. Millions homeless. That’s just a sampling of possible headlines if America’s forests are not thinned.
Conservationists have been too successful in their campaign to preserve America’s forests. The campaign is a very noble one indeed, but it has put America at risk for excessively large wildfires.
Before the progressive movement in the early twentieth century spurred this conservation movement, natural wildfires occurred very frequently. The benefit of these small, natural wildfires was that it cleared out the underbrush and small trees on the ground floor of the forest. Doing this prevented too much underbrush from accumulating and overrunning the forest.
How do forest fires benefit the forest you may ask? Small forest fires prevent the underbrush from accumulating excessively. Excessive underbrush leads to larger forest fires. Forest fires which produce the horrifying headlines sampled in the first paragraph.
The progressive conservationist movement had a very noble goal in the beginning, but it has exceeded its goal. While some people may think that to be a good thing, it has its downside. A downside that is very risky.
What used to be a small fire started by a lightning strike in a remote area of the forest now has the potential to grow into a massive, destructive fire. It does this by having an excess of fuel to from the heavy underbrush that has been allowed to accumulate.
There are two solutions to this problem. The first one is simple, let it burn. It sounds risky, but if you can control the fire, let it burn. It will revitalize the forest and create new life. The second solution is more complicated. Let loggers come in and destroy parts of the forest. This will not only prevent massive fires in the future, but it will boost the economy as money will be brought in from loggers and an increase in tree-related products. The controversial aspects are who will be allowed to log certain areas and how much will they be allowed to log. Also, the forest will not recover as quickly from complete destruction by loggers as it would by a fire destroying it. Money is wasted pointlessly on fighting these huge fires
