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Forest Journalism for a Sustainable Future

Federal spending bill includes long-awaited wildfire funding fix

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Firefighters watch the approach of last fall’s Thomas Fire in Ventura, California, Los Padres National Forest. Photo: U.S. Forest Service

The $1.3 trillion spending bill headed for a vote in Congress this week includes a bipartisan measure creating a disaster fund to help fight the wildfires that have swept Western states in recent years.

Fundamentally changing how the U.S. Forest Service and other agencies pay for wildland firefighting, the bill would set aside more than $20 billion over 10 years in an emergency fund that could be tapped when firefighting budgets are depleted.

In the past, the Forest Service has been forced to raid non-fire accounts to pay for firefighting costs, thereby depleting funds needed for timber management, prescribed burning and other fire-prevention work. [Read more…]

Still the provocateur: Jerry Franklin says Northwest forests need more logging

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In 1991, at the request of Congress, Jerry Franklin and three other leading forest scientists spent six weeks writing a sweeping plan to protect federal old growth across western Washington and Oregon, as well as northern California. Now he wants to revise the Northwest Forest Plan. Photo: University of Washington News

Editor’s note: As summer’s wildfires reluctantly release their hold on the landscape, the debate over the future of Western forests is vigorous this fall. That conversation includes a reassessment of the Northwest Forest Plan and the re-emergence of one of its chief authors. Science magazine writer Warren Cornwall recently spent some time with University of Washington ecologist Jerry Franklin and has this fascinating report. You’ll find that the passage of time has made Franklin no less the provocateur.

WESTERN OREGON — Jerry Franklin has spent much of his life in the company of giants. From his childhood in the woods of Washington state to a scientific career that catapulted him to international prominence, the towering trees of the U.S. Pacific Northwest have shaped his world. In the 1980s, the forest ecologist became a hero to many conservationists thanks to research that helped lead to a controversial 1994 plan protecting millions of hectares of old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest from logging.

But one morning this past summer, Franklin stood on a dirt road in southwest Oregon gazing at a logged hillside that was the antithesis of a lush, old-growth forest. The chainsaws had left stumps, piles of tangled limbs, and a smattering of standing trees, along with bushes and grass. “The scene of the crime,” he declared, with a hint of irony.

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