Re: Five years after the Rim Fire

Does a Fire-Ravaged Forest Need Human Help to Recover?

Rising temperatures and more frequent forest fires have reignited a longstanding debate among foresters, ecologists, and conservationists: Is logging and other human intervention needed to regenerate severely burned woodlands, or should these charred lands be left to revive on their own?

By Ed Struzik • June 14, 2018

… “Since the Rim Fire burned, we’ve had this steady stream of people insisting that this was one of the most catastrophic and devastating fires in California history,” says Hanson. “They claimed that nothing would grow back, that the owl and deer populations could not be sustained. They, and others, are using it as an excuse to accelerate the clear-cutting of snag forests.”

The Rim Fire has become the latest front in a long-running debate over how best to help forests regenerate after major fires, which are becoming more frequent in places like the western United States as climate change boosts temperatures and causes worsening droughts. Some scientists contend that in an era of more widespread and intense wildfires, forests now need human help to bounce back, especially when blazes sweep through the same area within a decade or two. The Rim Fire, according to U.S. Forest Service ecologist Jay Miller, “nuked” much of the landscape, necessitating a program of logging and replanting.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/does-a-fire-ravaged-forest-need-human-help-to-recover

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US Forest Service Rim Fire recovery and reforestation projects

… In August 2016, Stanislaus Forest supervisor Jeanne M. Higgins signed a Record of Decision approving the Rim Fire Reforestation Project.[65] This plan allows 13,000 acres of logging (thinning) and 6,000 acres of herbicide (glyphosate) spraying to kill native and non-native plants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rim_Fire

Heard the same thing about some areas in Yellowstone after the 1988 fire. Each time we go to Yellowstone, we take a picture in the same exact spot we took a picture after the fire and that spot has recovered nicely without human intervention. Let nature take it's course or else diversity will be lost.

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parklover
Heard the same thing about some areas in Yellowstone after the 1988 fire. Each time we go to Yellowstone, we take a picture in the same exact spot we took a picture after the fire and that spot has recovered nicely without human intervention. Let nature take it's course or else diversity will be lost.

I've hiked thru areas of the Rim Fire in Yosemite... and it's coming back ...

Some places there are a HUGE number of little trees.

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chick-on

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parklover
Heard the same thing about some areas in Yellowstone after the 1988 fire. Each time we go to Yellowstone, we take a picture in the same exact spot we took a picture after the fire and that spot has recovered nicely without human intervention. Let nature take it's course or else diversity will be lost.

I've hiked thru areas of the Rim Fire in Yosemite... and it's coming back ...

Some places there are a HUGE number of little trees.

That is great to hear.

Makes me think of those post-oil spill shoreline pictures. The ones people tried to clean up with chemicals look trashed, and the ones where no clean up occured look fine.