FCAT talk to be on forestry management

Village News/Courtesy photo

Chad Hanson, Ph.D., will speak on fire and forestry issues for the FCAT Zoom meeting.

FALLBROOK – Fallbrook Climate Action Team will present a virtual talk with Chad Hanson, Ph.D., managing director of the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute in Big Bear City, Tuesday, July 30, at 6:30 p.m. on Zoom.

Hanson is an environmentalist from the University of California Davis and a published author featured in news stories on fire and forestry issues. He spent decades pursuing lawsuits against the U.S. Forest Service over plans to cut down trees to reduce fire dangers. His efforts have sometimes prompted delays in thinning projects and forced the government to leave more of the woods untouched.

Climate change is making the forests hotter and drier – at the same time they're getting increasingly populated with humans. That change has sharpened the debate over how best to manage California's woods. And with another 2.4 million acres burning in California in 2021, on top of 4 million in 2020, many other environmental organizations have embraced thinning as a means of saving America's forests.

Hanson said his critics are beholden to the Forest Service, which funds some of their research, and they're upset that his work brings to light information that exposes the agency's shortcomings.

"We're producing objective, highly credible, really inconvenient data with regard to the Forest Service's logging program," he said.

California is home to 33 million acres of forestland. When settlers arrived, they extinguished native peoples' practice of setting fires. And then, in the early 1900s, the newly formed Forest Service implemented a hardline policy bent on putting out all wildfires as quickly as possible to protect the timber that loggers were sending to the mills.

Each year, between state, federal and local agencies, about 500,000 acres of forest is treated with some combination of logging, chipping small trees and brush and burning.

FCAT presents monthly, except December, presentations about climate change and mitigation, usually on the last Tuesday of the month on Zoom. To receive the Zoom link, sign up for the group's e-blast at http://fallbrookclimateactionteam.org.

Submitted by Fallbrook Climate Action Team.