The MAGA plan to stop forest fires: Remove the forest | Project 2025 plans to increase commercial logging to fight wildfires. Ecologists and fire experts say this will make fires worse.
The amount of destruction logging causes here in Oregon is sickening. Just came back from the coast and where hundreds of acres of beautiful trees stood is now a desolate scar.
I get that we have an addiction to wood products, but there has to be a better way. All you see are patches of land that look like Calvin's head when Hobbes cuts his hair, and monoculture "reforestation" efforts that ignore the amount of nutrition and fungal/floral/animal diversity that have been removed/destroyed. It just sucks. It reminds me of Costa Rica. I just hope we can choose, like much of Costa Rica, to try and embrace conservation and make an industry around that instead.
Can't speak to where that wood is going, but the addiction to profiting from the "green" wood pellets to fuel power plants worldwide is why a lot is being taken. And the ironic part is that wood pellet burning contributes more net carbon emissions into the air than the coal it replaced. But it's "renewable". Except it takes time to regrow trees, and we don't have time anymore.
Also from Oregon and unless I'm mistaken we're one of the better states at atleast trying to be more renewable about it. I thought I remember learning as a kid we had laws about having to plant multiple trees for every tree you chop down. Not sure if those are still around or how strong they are but I feel like we at least treat the environment better than a lot of other states.
Logging is needed as long as its done the right way. Clear cutting is rarely the right way. More thinning is needed in much of the federal lands in the west, or prescribed burning. If not, forest fires will continue to get worse.