| Thinning techniques could make forests less flammable |
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| Written by Greenwire | |
| Thursday, 31 July 2008 | |
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By partnering with the logging industry to explore new management
practices, forest supervisors in Arizona hope to reduce the risks of
mammoth blazes that are ravaging the American West this summer.
Small blazes are used to clear the forest understory, but a century of fire suppression has allowed a tangle of small trees to turn the woods into a timberbox. To replace the work previously done by cyclical fires, the U.S. Forest Service's White Mountain Stewardship Project is paying loggers to harvest understory growth -- which is too thin to use as timber -- in order to turn it into wood-stove pellets, paneling and other consumer products. The program hopes to strike a compromise between environmentalists, who frequently oppose logging, and the timber industry, which says that logging prohibitions are increasing the severity of forest fires. A billboard in Herber, a town where 400 homes were destroyed by fires in 2002, provides a reminder of the debate that still simmers. It reads: "Thank you, environMENTALists for making the 2002 fire season all it could be" (Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times, July 31). -- PR
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| Last Updated ( Thursday, 31 July 2008 ) |
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