No, the Forest Industry Is Not Touting Clearcutting as a Wildfire Mitigation Tactic
Public awareness has come a long way, but we can't relax yet.
Wildfire season has arrived in North America. With drought conditions persisting across many parts of North America, both Natural Resources Canada and the US National Interagency Fire Center are predicting an above-average fire season for 2025. Tragically, there were two wildfire deaths in Manitoba this week.
It is shaping up to be a busy season for firefighters. It will also be a lively season for debate about wildfire mitigation activities.
What Wildfire Mitigation Entails
Most readers of Sustainable Forests will be familiar with forest wildfire science and mitigation strategies. Wildfire is a natural part of many forest ecosystems. However, since the early 20th century, North Americans have actively prevented and suppressed wildfires. This has enabled more forests to grow to a harvestable age. Unfortunately, the absence of periodic low- and moderate-intensity fires has also resulted in forest landscapes becoming more at risk of large, severe wildfires.
The solution to reducing this risk lies in reducing the amount of combustible material in the forest and restoring forest structures so that fire cannot spread so readily between trees.
Activities include a combination of the following1:
The manual removal of combustible understory materials, such as dead brush. These removed materials may be piled and left, piled and burned, or chipped onsite.
The reduction of combustible materials through prescribed burns: low-intensity, carefully controlled fires set intentionally at a time of year when there is very low risk of the fire escaping.
Stand thinning: the removal of some of the tree stems so that fire cannot spread as easily from tree to tree. This is done with small logging equipment.
Landscape fire management: a holistic approach to managing landscapes over time so that they have a mosaic of forested and non-forested ecosystems, some with a greater risk of burning, and some with a lower risk. For example, wetlands, roads, electrical transmission corridors, and hardwood stands can act as fuel breaks on the landscape, reducing fire growth potential.
Wildfire mitigation thinning in British Columbia. Photo courtesy of Sig Kemmler, Integrated Operations Group
What Wildfire Mitigation Does Not Entail
To summarize, while wildfire mitigation involves active work in the forest, often with heavy machinery, it is not the same as “logging.” Stand thinning typically removes logs that are too small to be used in sawmills. It also often uses smaller, specialized equipment.
However, many conservation groups still perceive, and publicly portray, wildfire mitigation activities as “logging lite.” For example:
“…the forestry industry frequently asserts that clearcutting old forests across the landscape will mitigate fire risk...” (CPAWS Northern Alberta blog)
“…forestry industry lobbyists… want the public’s blessing to take more trees from healthy forests, not simply manage forest fuel.” (Conservationists Julee Boan and Rachel Plotkin in a Hill Times Op-ed, August 2024)
How is it that the conservation community hears the forest industry saying “clearcutting mitigates fire risk” when we hear ourselves saying something different? I can hazard a few guesses.
Clearings, Clearcuts, and Confusion
When it comes to forestry definitions, there is plenty of room for misunderstanding.
The Miriam-Webster dictionary defines a clearcut as “the removal of all the trees in an area of forest.” It does not state how big the area must be. If one cuts down 100 trees to build a road, does that count as a clearcut? How about 1,000 trees to build a fireguard? What if the trees are cut by a logging company and the logs are sent to a sawmill?
In Alberta, the Community Fireguard Program helps forest-adjacent communities build fireguards, strips of land surrounding the community in which fuel sources, including trees, have been removed. Given the catastrophic wildfires that hit the communities of Slave Lake in 2011, Fort McMurray in 2016, and Jasper in 2024, many communities have signed up.
Some of these communities, including Banff and Lake Louise, are in national parks. These fireguards have attracted international media attention, both negative and positive.
There has also been media attention about rumoured wildfire mitigation projects linked to actual logging plans. Following its campaign against logging near the popular Moose Mountain and Bragg Creek trail network, the outdoor recreation group GROW Kananaskis began campaigning against the Community Hazardous Fuel Reduction Program (CHFR) and a rumoured 5km buffer zone around Bragg Creek. These hot-button issues prompted letters to the editor (both for and against), a community campaign, and questions to the Premier. (A careful internet search for the CHFR program produced a broken link.2)
Although logging plans must address wildfire abatement, logging isn’t actually being promoted as a wildfire mitigation strategy. However, when the Premier is recorded saying, “…we have to remove some of that fuel, whether it’s through prescribed burns, back-burning, or harvesting.” (Radio CHED, May 18, 2024) it is easy to see how the general public can confuse fire mitigation (prescribed burns), fire suppression (back-burning) and logging.
More Mixed Messaging
Although Alberta politics can be polarized, it is nothing compared to the current politics south of the border. Consider the following press release from the United States Department of Agriculture:
In brief, on April 4, the US Agriculture Secretary, Brooke Rollins, issued a Secretarial Memo titled “Increasing Timber Production and Designating an Emergency Situation on National Forest System Lands.” Secretary Rollins is quoted as saying,
“I am proud to follow the bold leadership of President Trump by empowering forest managers to reduce constraints and minimize the risks of fire, insects, and disease so we can strengthen American timber industry and further enrich our forests with the resources they need to thrive.”
In other words, the goal (according to the press release) is to increase timber production by reducing constraints on logging and reducing the risks of wildfire, insects, and disease. Logging enhancement and risk reduction are sold as two parts of the whole.
The actual memo places most of its emphasis on risk reduction. However, the memo calls not only for activities to mitigate wildfire risk but also for activities to improve forest health, such as salvage logging and reforestation. Since the area experiencing declining forest health (78.8 million acres) is greater than the area at high or very high risk of wildfire (66.9 million acres), the overall result of the memo could indeed be more logging.
When official government policies lump wildfire mitigation activities, salvage logging, and “strengthening the American timber industry” together in one sentence, it is no wonder the conservation community is hearing “wildfire mitigation = logging.”
But we can’t get too smug in Canada, either. The “logging renews the forest” argument exists here, too. For example, the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC)’s website comments,
“When we monitor our forests’ health and manage them through carefully planned harvesting and replanting, we can remove the overgrowth, decay and debris that accelerates natural disturbances, protecting our forests against the impacts of climate change and renewing their capacity to capture carbon for another generation.”
Taken out of context, that could be interpreted as a call for clearcut logging in old growth forests. (Taken in context, it is a call for monitoring forest health and prioritizing dead or dying trees for logging. Access FPAC’s wildfire mitigation strategy here.)
We Can’t Control Wildfire, But We Can Control Our Messaging
Wildfire mitigation activities such as stand thinning and prescribed fire have an important place on the landscape. So does logging. But the two are not the same. One is done to reduce wildfire risk, the other to produce wood and paper for human use.
It can be frustrating to read commentary that suggests the forest industry is using wildfire mitigation as an excuse for more logging. It’s even more frustrating to read government policies that DO appear to be using wildfire and forest health “emergencies” as a reason for more logging – they make the whole North American industry look bad.
Unfortunately, just as we cannot control wildfire, the forest industry cannot control how stakeholders, politicians, and the media view and portray wildfire mitigation. However, we can be mindful of how our messaging is interpreted by others, and act to correct misinformation.
For more information, see Wildfire Management in BC
Alberta-based readers, can you fill me in on this program? Does it still exist?
Thanks Alice this is an important conversation as the current debate is getting more heated and risks putting at risk important wildfire mitigations. My experience is that some pro forestry stakeholders are oversimplifying the message and are actively saying that logging is the solution to the wildfire crisis. More environmentally focussed stakeholders then react with equally over simplified narratives that logging makes wildfire worse (which it sometimes does!). The evidence based forest management community should emphasize your point that logging is not the same as fuel management, and then go further by articulating how existing forest practices could change to promote wildfire resilience. A good place to start is to improve post harvest hazard abatement in B.C. that allows elevated fine fuels to remain and are leaving clear cuts very vulnerable to wildfire. Broadcast burning is one way to reduce those surface fuels but there are other less risky methods. Lead with these necessary changes! Second, the forest management community should articulate models of how we can conserve old forests in a way that is compatible with wildfire resilience. It’s not an “either/or” question. New models like situating conservation values in wildfire refugia and having dynamic reserves should be front and centre in the conversation.