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RESOURCES

Files and links supporting healthy forests
 

Prescribed burning and thinning methods can actually cause deforestation in environments suffering under severe drought conditions, where burned and clearcut forests are unlikely to regrow. Prescribed burns also adversely affect biodiversity. Forestry practices are based on agriculture (thinning to increase growth and improve timber yield) and are thus fundamentally in conflict with natural selection. Read below for more information and to see our sources  —

Protecting Homes Against Wildfire

May 5, 2021

February 17, 2019 

Research has demonstrated that wildfire severity is greatest in forests that are “actively managed” which is a euphemism for logging.

December 2014

A risk analyst revisits the assessment and acceptability of risk after losing his house to a US Forest Service intentional "backburn."

The dominant current approaches to wildfire policy promoted by the Forest Service— wildlands fire suppression and forest alteration through extensive tree-cutting—are failing to keep the public safe, with record losses of lives and homes during wildfires.

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In contrast, an approach of “working from the home outward,” focusing on fire-safety home retrofits and the zone immediately around houses and communities, offers the most effective and cost-efficient tools for increasing public safety during wildfires.

Most wildfire-related government funding subsidizes forest alteration and fire suppression rather than home-outward actions, even in “all of the above” approaches to fire policy. Less than 4% of California’s 2021 fire-related budget is for “community hardening.”

September 11, 2019

This story from the LA Times graphically documents the failure of fuel breaks in California to protect homes and lives from climate driven fires. Fuel breaks create a false sense of security and encourage development in fire-unsafe areas. See link below. The La Cueva fuel break is a local example. 

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Clearing and burning forests over vast acreage to reduce "fuels" is also ineffective in reducing the risk of wildfire. The Forest Service spent more than $3 billion over a 20-year period across the West to reduce fuels on 7.3 million acres yet only 24,000 acres encountered a fire when "fuels" were lowest. That is, less than 1 percent of these treated areas experience a wildlife in any given year. Since fuels are reduced for only 10 to 15 years "most treatments have little influence on wildfire." 

January 12, 2018

The Right Way to Create Defensible Space: Recommendations from CAL FIRE (now mandatory in California)

Zone 1: 30 feet of lean, clean, and green

  1. Remove all dead plants, grass, and weeds.

  2. Remove dead or dry leaves and pine needles from your yard, roof, and rain gutters.

  3. Keep tree branches 10 feet away from your chimney and other trees.

Zone 2: 30–100 feet of reduced fuel

   4. Cut or mow annual grass down to a maximum height of 4 inches.

   5. Create horizontal spacing between shrubs and trees.

   6. Create vertical spacing between grass, shrubs, and trees.

February 17, 2019 

Research has demonstrated that wildfire severity is greatest in forests that are “actively managed” which is a euphemism for logging.

July 21, 2018 

Reporter Stephanie Joyce spoke with Jack Cohen, a retired Research Physical Scientist; Mark Finney, a Research Scientist with the U.S. Forest Service; and Shawna Legarza, the National Director of Fire and Aviation Management for the Forest Service. Jack Cohen: “The bottom line is that we can do something. It just doesn’t have anything to do with controlling the wildfire.” 

July 21, 2018 

"Analyses of [these] fires indicate that home ignitions depend on the characteristics of a structure and its immediate surroundings. Howard et al. (1973) observed 86 percent survival for homes with nonflammable roofs and a clearance of 10 meters or more."

April 12, 2019 

The new codes require homes be built with, among other things, interior sprinklers, fire resistant roofs and sidings, decks and patios made of non-flammable materials, and heat-resistant windows. Homes built after these codes went into effect have stood a much better chance of going undamaged.

December 2014

A risk analyst revisits the assessment and acceptability of risk after losing his house to a US Forest Service intentional "backburn."

Tree density, Forest "Management," and The Case Against "Thinning" and Burning

Earth Island Journal, March 2022

Prescribed fire, which isn't the same as cultural burning, is inefficient for public safety and ecological restoration. "To create effective fire policies, we need to face these facts — Prescribed fire increases fire and smoke. Prescribed fire is inefficient for public safety compared to home retrofits. Prescribed fire is inefficient for ecological restoration compared to managed wildfire. Prescribed fire can be harmful. And prescribed fire and cultural burning are not the same."

The use of prescribed fire — intentionally setting fires in forests and other ecosystems under planned circumstances — has received increased attention in California and elsewhere in recent years. On the one hand, it is good that there is growing recognition that fire is a natural and necessary part of forests and other ecosystems. On the other hand, current advocacy for large-scale prescribed fire across vast areas is often built on outdated assumptions and overstated claims, while downplaying problems stemming from how prescribed fire is actually being implemented. This factsheet identifies five key sets of myths regarding prescribed fire and shows how they can lead to misguided policies and missed opportunities to better accomplish public safety and ecological restoration goals in a more cost-effective manner.

January 27, 2019

An excellent recently published primer, well documented with scientific sources

Geos Institute, September 2018

Policies should be examined that discourage continued residential growth in ecosystems that evolved with fire. The most effective way to protect existing homes is to ensure that they are as insusceptible to burning as possible (e.g., fire resistant building materials, spark arresting vents and rain-gutter guards) and to create defensible space within a 100-foot radius of a structure.

Wildland fire policy should fund defensible space, home retrofitting measures and ensure ample personnel are available to discourage and prevent human-caused wildfire ignitions. Ultimately, in order to stabilize and ideally slow global temperature rise, which will increasingly affect how wildfires burn in the future, we also need a comprehensive response to climate change that is based on clean renewable energy and storing more carbon in ecosystems. Public lands were established for the public good and include most of the nation’s remaining examples of intact ecosystems that provide clean water for millions of Americans, essential wildlife habitat, recreation and economic benefits to rural communities, as well as sequestering vast quantities of carbon.

September 2018

One of the favorite responses of some politicians to devastating wildfires is to call for increased logging on public lands. Their reasoning is that having fewer trees will prevent large fires. The fact is that logging does not eliminate forest fires. . . . For these reasons, we urge you to reject misplaced logging proposals that will damage our environment, hinder climate mitigation goals, and will fail to protect communities from wildfire.

Thinning Is Ineffective in Extreme Fire Weather – Thinning is most often proposed to reduce fire risk and lower fire intensity. When fire weather is not extreme, thinning-from-below of small diameter trees followed by prescribed fire, and in some cases prescribed fire alone, can reduce fire severity in certain forest types for a limited period of time. However, as the climate changes, most of our fires will occur during extreme fire-weather (high winds and temperatures, low humidity, low vegetation moisture). These fires, like the ones burning in the West this summer, will affect large landscapes, regardless of thinning, and, in some cases, burn hundreds or thousands of acres in just a few days. Thinning large trees, including overstory trees in a stand, can increase the rate of fire spread by opening up the forest to increased wind velocity, damage soils, introduce invasive species that increase flammable understory vegetation, and impact wildlife habitat.

November 20, 2018

“This is a home ignition problem much more than a wildland management problem,” one fire ecologist said.

January 31, 2018

The U.S. Forest Service recently proposed a sweeping effort to identify aspects of environmental analysis and public participation to be “reduced” or “eliminated” regarding commercial logging projects in our national forests, with initial public comments due Friday. The Trump administration is attempting to spin this as an effort to promote “increased efficiency” for the expansion of forest “restoration,” but these are just euphemisms for more destructive logging.

In 2017 the Trump administration endorsed the Resilient Federal Forests Act, an extreme bill that would dramatically curtail environmental analysis and restrict public participation to increase logging of old forests and post-fire clear-cutting in our national forests. The bill passed the House of Representatives in the fall but stalled in the Senate. This new regulatory proposal is simply an effort to implement the same pro-logging agenda without going through Congress.

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The proposal targets an astonishing “80 million acres of National Forest System land” for commercial logging — much of it comprising old-growth forests and remote roadless areas — based on the claim that logging and clear-cutting of these areas is needed, ostensibly to save them from fire and native bark beetles. Not so. . .

April 3, 2018

There is a huge difference between the Industrial Forestry worldview and an ecological perspective. Many people assume that foresters understand forest ecosystems, but what you learn in forestry school is how to produce wood fiber to sell to the wood products industry. I know because I attended a forestry school as an undergraduate in college.  Assuming that foresters understand forest ecosystems is like assuming that a realtor who sells houses understands how to construct a building because they peddle homes. . .

July 2013

In a first of its kind research, the USGS has determined that the prescribed burns used extensively for 30 years in central and coastal California had 0% effectiveness in preventing wildfires. 

California's ecosystems are different than southeastern U.S., however, consider that Californians and our environment were subjected to an intensive 30 years of "prescribed" burning. The principles of ineffectiveness apply in the east as well, and there is no comprehensive research such as this one to evaluate the claims of the industry. Here is the USGS presentation. In addition to the lack of effectiveness in fire prevention this study found that even this native fire adapted plant community suffered from the prescribed burning regime.

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1. It is accepted among experts that prescribed burns and previous wildfires do not stop catastrophic fires in times of global warming and drought when they are most likely to occur.

nytimes.com/2012/09/18/science/earth/forest-survey-questions-effect-of-prescribed-burns & 

missoulian.com/news/local/years-ago-canyon-creek-blaze-in-bob-changed-fire-knowledge

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2. How much forest burning is required? The industry knows but does not discuss the fact with the public that prescribed burning theory requires burning the same site 2 to 3 times to achieve the state of reduced duff, leaves small diameter trees and lower story shrubs to suit their theories. When you realize that the lower story and other “fuel” will return to the same or greater levels within 9 years (USFS study) you will realize that the same area will have to burn repeatedly on an forever basis. Rhododendrons and laurel are exceptional tenacious and will grow back with twice the foliage when cut back to ground level.

 

3. The randomness of wildfire - Wildfire occurs randomly, at any given point 2-3% of the forest may be subjected to prescribed burning, chances are very low that an area will possibly be in a state in which it will reduce the effects of wildfire.

 

4. Prescribed burns can cause their own catastrophic fires - One recent example is the escaped prescribed burn in the Croatan National Forest in which the USFS planned to burn 1,500 acres, and instead created a catastrophic 21,000 acre 6 week wildfire: http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/11222775/

June 11, 2018

This past winter, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) began preparing two Environmental Impact Statements to review the environmental consequences of creating a region-wide series of “fuel breaks” that will add thousands of miles of new linear pathways across the Great Basin portion of Nevada, Idaho, Oregon and Utah.  The goal of fuel breaks is to reduce large wildfires in sagebrush habitat.  Unfortunately, the creation of a massive network of linear pathways in the sagebrush steppe likely will not preclude large fires and will have serious impacts on sagebrush ecosystems. Indeed, the BLM has admitted as much in a recent report where it concluded; “Despite the extensive use of fuel breaks in sagebrush landscapes, especially since the 1990s, the IRFMS-ASP points out that “no specific research within the sagebrush ecosystem has been conducted to evaluate their effectiveness” . . ..

Dr. Baker, the United States' foremost Fire Ecologist, makes the case that, "the best approach is not to try to change or control fire but to learn to live with it." [He] explains how scientists reconstruct the history of fire in landscapes; elaborates on the particulars of fire under the historical range of variability in the Rockies; and considers the role of Euro-Americans in creating the landscapes and fire situations of today. In the end, the author argues that the most effective action is to rapidly limit and redesign people-nature interfaces to withstand fire, which he believes can be done in ways that are immediately beneficial to both nature and communities.

Peter Wohlleben, Greystone Books, 2016

"The character of forest fires in North America has been changed by naturally increasing drought conditions and the human practice of fire suppression, and forests that would once have survived, or even thrived, in the face of fire are now threatened by its destructive force." 64

October 7, 2016

"Even when you make a thinning and just cutting one of the other trees and leave, for example, 50-percent of the trees untouched, this social network is destroyed. When you do it like this, you makes a tree changing from a social being to single. Those trees suffer. They don't get very old. For example, a Beech may grow as old as 400 years and when you make a thinning in such a forest, this Beech will die at around 200 years, nearly half the age which is natural."

Once A Forest Logo

Prescribed Burns: 20 Myths and Facts

September 12, 2017

“Our research shows that reducing fuels isn’t going to reduce severity much...Even if you reduce fuels, you are still going to have severe fires” because of extreme weather."

February 18, 2011

 "Prescribed burning . . . may do more harm than good."

Simonin et al. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 143 (2007) 266–276, 2007:

"Thinning" increases overall evaporation in semi-arid ponderosa pine forests of the southwestern US.  An important article because the Forest Service claims that its extreme "thinning," aka clearcutting, somehow increases moisture in forests.  Not so, says science.   

Van Wagtendonk et al.  Fire Ecology Volume 8, Issue 1, 2012

Previously burned forests burn with higher severity.

June, 2016

Chad Hanson, The Los Angeles Times

"Ignorance and shameless economic opportunism will destroy our forest ecosystems if we are not careful."

Bond et al. The Open Forest Science Journal, 2009, 2, 41-47

Removal of dead trees does not reduce future fire severity, this study concludes.

Reprinted in Southwestern Magazine 2:12-13

A beloved forefather of contemporary environmentalism argues vehemently against prescribed burning, then called "light burning."  He points out that forests cannot thrive under "light burning" because 1. it destroys the seedlings necessary for regeneration, 2. it reduces the vitality of the forage, 3. it destroys the humus in the soil necessary for rapid tree growth, 4. by inflicting burn scars, it abnormally increases rot and increases resin that intensifies subsequent fires, and 5. it increases the destructive effects of wood-boring insects.  All of these observations from 1920 have now been borne out by scientific study! 

Forest Science, Vol. 45, No. 1, February 1999.  Ganey et al. 1999

Endangered Mexican spotted owls need closed canopy forests to breed and survive.  These forests are becoming increasingly rare with forest "management," suggesting that such forests warrant special protection, which may conflict with efforts to "restore more open conditions in ponderosa pine forests," aka burning and clearcutting.

Humans and Global Warming — Not "Overgrown" Forests — are the Cause of Forest Fires

August 20, 2018

"Days of abnormally high temperatures have contributed to the intensity of fires, by making vegetation drier and more likely to ignite. This has coincided with an increase in the number of fires started by humans, too. . .In California, almost 95 percent of fires are started by people"

June 21, 2017

The timber industry and the U.S. Forest Service aggressively market the idea that reducing fuels through logging/thinning programs will result in a significant decrease in acreage burned, firefighting costs and the number of high-severity fires.  However, it is climate/weather, not fuels, that drive all large wildfires.

June 21, 2017

Human-caused warming has increased the area burned by wildfire in the Western United States, according to the report, “particularly by drying forests and making them more susceptible to burning.”

February 7, 2017

The latest research shows that nationwide, humans cause more than 8 in 10 [wildfires]— 84 percent. . .Fire ecologist Melissa Forder says about 60 percent of fires in national parks are caused by humans: "intentionally set fires, buildings burning and spreading into the forest, smoking, equipment malfunctions and campfires."

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America February 21, 2017

Assessments and scientific basis for management options. UC Davis: Centers for Water and Wildland Resources, 1996

Public dialog and ongoing research have focused on increasing wildfire risk because of climate warming, overlooking the direct role that people play in igniting wildfires and increasing fire activity. Our analysis of two decades of government agency wildfire records highlights the fundamental role of human ignitions.

Public dialog and ongoing research have focused on increasing wildfire risk because of climate warming, overlooking the direct role that people play in igniting wildfires and increasing fire activity. Our analysis of two decades of government agency wildfire records highlights the fundamental role of human ignitions.

Human-started wildfires accounted for 84% of all wildfires, tripled the length of the fire season, dominated an area seven times greater than that affected by lightning fires, and were responsible for nearly half of all area burned.   [And this study does not even take into account all of the human-ignited prescribed burns.!]

The Role of Forests in Mitigating Global Warming

November 2014

A new 3-minute video from NASA allows us to witness in brilliant color how trees scrub Earth's atmosphere clean of carbon pollutants.

The Independent, February 2019

Massive restoration of world’s forests would cancel out a decade of CO2 emissions, analysis suggests.

September 2008

Old growth forests are carbon sinks. They remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The sequestered carbon dioxide is stored in live woody tissues and slowly decomposing organic matter in litter and soil. Old-growth forests therefore serve as a global carbon dioxide sink, but they are not protected by international treaties . . .

Campbell et al., Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 10(2):83-90 · March 2012

These scientists found "little credible evidence," yet the Forest Service still uses this justification for igniting and clearing forests 17 years later. 

From the abstract: "It has been suggested that thinning trees and other fuel-reduction practices aimed at reducing the probability of high-severity forest fire are consistent with efforts to keep carbon (C) sequestered in terrestrial pools, and that such practices should therefore be rewarded rather than penalized in C-accounting schemes. By evaluating how fuel treatments, wildfire, and their interactions affect forest stocks across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, we conclude that this is extremely unlikely. Our review reveals high losses associated with fuel treatment, only modest differences in the combustive losses associated with high-severity fire and the low-severity fire that fuel treatment is meant to encourage, and a low likelihood that treated forests will be exposed to fire. Although fuel-reduction treatments may be necessary to restore historical functionality to fire suppressed ecosystems, we found little credible evidence that such efforts have the added benefit of increasing terrestrial stocks."

April 15, 2019

Logging has been shown to reduce the genetic diversity of our forests, thus reducing the “resilience” of forest ecosystems.

Inaccuracies in Forest Service Reconstructions of Fire History

The Forest Service and entities that profit from clearcutting and prescribed burning would have us believe that low severity fires were historically more common, and that high severity fires were rare, even though the methods used to draw these conclusions have been thoroughly discredited. They use these erroneous claims to justify burning and logging as "forest restoration."  

July 23, 2013

One of the cornerstones of current forest policy is the assumption that western forests are outside of their “normal” density and appearance or what is termed “historic variability” due a hundred years of mismanagement that included logging of old growth, fire suppression, and livestock grazing. This idea has been used to justify logging public lands to “restore” forests to their pre-management era appearance and resiliency. Due to this past mismanagement we are told that forests are “overgrown,” and ready to burn.

. . . .whether the current forest stand condition is that far from conditions that have occurred infrequently in the past is a matter of increasing debate.  This is especially important because public land management agencies feel the pressure to DO something beyond waiting for nature to do what it always does to “restore” forest conditions. . .

Journal of Biogeography 34(2):251 - 269, February 2007

The frequent, low-severity fire model used to justify prescribed burns is based in inaccurate science.  

Here's why.

April 26, 2019.

 ". . . western plant communities including Douglas fir, aspen, true firs, sagebrush, and juniper to name a few, were historically dominated by episodic high severity blazes. . . . Ironically the proposed solution, more logging and thinning, increases carbon discharges far more than wildfire, contributing to greater climate warming, which in turn spawns more blazes. 

The best way to reduce carbon emissions is to keep it in the forest by precluding logging/thinning.  Furthermore, many studies find that “fuel reductions” aka thinning/logging do not appreciably reduce large fires. Instead, thinning or logging increases fire spread. 

August 2006

Fire is a primary natural disturbance in most forests of western North America and has shaped their plant and animal communities for millions of years. . . However, many western forests have experienced shifts in wildfire regimes and forest structure following a century or more of resource use and management, with some past and present management activities lacking a scientific basis. Changes in wildfire and fuel management policies are needed to address social and environmental problems that have arisen as a result of these activities. Incorporation of current scientific knowledge into revised policies and practices is essential to insure that the productivity, biological diversity, and ecological values of western forests are sustained. . . .

USA Miller et al., Ecological Applications Vol. 22, No. 1, 2012

Fire size and acreage burned increased throughout the 20th century (when supposedly all fires were being suppressed)

Jonathan J. Rhodes and William L. Baker, The Open Forest Science Journal, 2008, I, 1-7

"Fuel treatments," i.e., prescribed burns are damaging and ineffective.  Fuel treatment effectiveness and non-treatment risks can be estimated from the probability of fire occurrence. Using extensive fire records for western US Forest Service lands, we estimate fuel treatments have a mean probability of 2.0-7.9% of encountering moderate- or high-severity fire during an assumed 20-year period of reduced fuels

February, 2012

New research shows that western dry forests were not uniform, open forests, as commonly thought, before widespread logging and grazing, but included both dense and open forests, as well as large high-intensity fires previously considered rare in these forests. The study used detailed analysis of records from land surveys, conducted in the late-1800s, to reconstruct forest structure over very large dry-forest landscapes, often dominated by ponderosa pine forests.   Previous studies were hampered by the limitations inherent in tree-ring reconstructions from small, isolated field plots that may be unrepresentative of larger landscapes.  The study. . . does not support the idea that frequent low-intensity fires historically prevented high-intensity fires in dry forests. ​

The Increasing Scale of Forest Service Burns and the Forest Service Plan to Destroy 95% of Trees on Public Lands 

ARTICLE FROM THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN, JULY 2, 2012, quoting Bill Armstrong, fuel specialist for the Santa Fe National Forest: “We have more [trees] than we know what to do with, and they are the cause of many of the problems we face. We’re going to do everything we can to get rid of about 95 percent of them.” santafenewmexican.com

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PAGE FROM THE CITY OF SANTA FE'S WEBSITE, stating the plan "to restore tree density to natural fire regime levels (reduced from >1,000 trees per acre to 20-50 trees per acre). From 1000 trees to 50 trees is a 95% reduction. santafenm.gov

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STATEMENT FOR THE 200,000-ACRE JEMEZ MOUNTAINS PROJECT, page 25, "Tree densities have increased 10-fold, from an average of 15-56 trees per acre to 500 trees per acre." From 500 trees to 15-56 trees is about a 95% reduction.  forestservic.akamai.pdf

Health Risks of Prescribed Burns

Fire helicopter fighting large fire

The Forest Service starts almost all prescribed burns via "aerial ignition"--and does not like to talk about what "aerial ignition" really means. They tell us that the incendiary devices are Delayed Aerial Ignition Devices (DAIDs) dropped from helicopters. The Forest Service's failure to analyze the effects violates Code of Federal Regulation § 1501.2(b), requiring each agency to identify environmental effects in adequate detail, and C.F.R. § 1508.8: Read More: Once A Forest Fact Sheet

January 2015

Potassium permanganate and antifreeze are the primary active ingredients in the styrofoam "ping pong" spheres delivered by aerial firebombing and hand-held launchers to ignite prescribed burns and backburns.  The spheres are delivered directly onto trees, soil, wildlife, streams, rivers, reservoirs, and lakes in the process of prescribed burn ignitions.  The scale of the burns is often hundreds or thousands of acres, and these toxic materials are released into the air upon ignition, making smoke from prescribed burns much more toxic than smoke from a forest fire, which is itself highly toxic.

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Excerpts: 

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1. EYE CONTACT Potassium Permanganate is damaging to eye tissue on contact. It may cause severe burns that result in damage to the eye.

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2. SKIN CONTACT Contact of solutions at room temperature may be irritating to the skin, leaving brown stains. Concentrated solutions at elevated temperature and crystals are damaging to the skin.

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3. INHALATION Acute inhalation toxicity data are not available. However, airborne concentrations of potassium permanganate in the form of dust or mist may cause damage to the respiratory tract.

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4. INGESTION Potassium permanganate, if swallowed, may cause severe burns to mucous membranes of the mouth, throat, esophagus, and stomach. Section 3 Hazardous Ingredients MATERIAL OR COMPONENT CAS NO. EINECS % HAZARD DATA Potassium Permanganate 7722-64-7 231-760-3 >97.5% PEL/C 5 mg Mn per cubic meter of air TLV-TWA 0.2 mg Mn per cubic meter of air RISK PHRASES: 8 Contact with combustibles may case fire. 22 Harmful if swallowed. 

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Very toxic to aquatic organisms, may cause long-term effects in the aquatic environment.

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SAFETY PHRASES: 60 This material and its container must be disposed of as hazardous waste. 61 Avoid releases to the environment. . . . Section 5 Fire Fighting Measures NEPA* HAZARD SIGNS Health Hazard 1 = Materials which under fire conditions would give off irritating combustion products. (less than 1 hour exposure) . . . Avoid inhalation and contact with eyes and skin. . .

 

ENVIRONMENTAL PRECAUTIONS: Do not flush into sanitary sewer system or surface water. If accidental release into the environment occurs, inform the responsible authorities. Keep the product away from drains, sewers, surface and ground water and soil. :008 2009-08-28 Annotation: combustible, organic, or easily oxidizable materials including antifreeze and hydraulic fluid. Section 8 Exposure Controls and Personal Protection

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RESPIRATORY PROTECTION: where overexposure to dust may occur, the use of an approved NIOSHMSHA dust respirator or an air supplied respirator is advised. . . . When involved in a fire, potassium permanganate may liberate corrosive fumes. . . . The product may be absorbed into the body by inhalation. Major effects of exposure: respiratory disorder. . .

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MEDICAL CONDITIONS GENERALLY AGGRAVATED BY EXPOSURE Potassium permanganate solution will cause further irritation of tissue, open wounds, burns or mucous membranes. . . . .

 

ENTRY TO THE ENVIRONMENT . . .  . AQUATIC TOXICITY The toxicity data for potassium permanganate is given below: Rainbow trout, 96 hour LC50: 1.8 mg/L Bluegill sunfish, 96 hour LC50: 2.3 mg/L Milk fish (Chanos Chanos)/ 96 hour. . . . Very toxic to aquatic organisms, may cause long-term effects in the aquatic environment.

 

SAFETY PHRASES: 60 This material and its container must be disposed of as hazardous waste. 61 Avoid releases to the environment. 

Environmental Health Policy Institute, April 2013

An important study, in light of the fact that very little research has been done on the health effects of prescribed burns.  Whether due to wildfires or “[prescribed] burns,” fires result in increased release of particulate matter (PM) that has a negative impact on human health.  In addition, fires release greenhouse gases that make for a vicious cycle of rising temperatures and increasing wildfires. This problem is particularly severe in the Southwest, which is experiencing warming conditions greater than anywhere in the United States except Alaska.

Potassium permanganate is used to ignite prescribed burns and backfires, via aerial (helicopter) firebombing and handheld or boat-mounted launchers by the US Forest Service and its privatized burn contractors.  Polymer spheres resembling ping-pong balls containing small amounts of permanganate are injected with ethylene glycol and they spontaneously ignite seconds later.  This fact sheet provides toxicity data of manganese dioxide, the waste product of potassium permanganate.

Environmental Science & Technology, 2005

"Prescribed burning is widely used (e.g., in Georgia >1 million acres annually) for various reasons, including controlling vegetation, enhancing biotic productivity and diversity, controlling disease and insects, reducing fuel accumulation, and habitat management for endangered species in the United States, and especially in the southeast (10). Therefore, it is important to investigate emissions from prescribed burning in order to understand its impact on air quality."

Forest Service use of Toxic Herbicides to "Restore" Forests

Jan. 11, 2006

A coalition of environmentalists is appealing a government plan that would use herbicides to kill weeds in the Santa Fe and Carson national forests.

September 2014

One of many Forest Service guides to the regular planned use of toxic pesticides on a landscape scale.   ". . . Continuous aggressive management measures are needed . . . Herbicide spraying will reduce leafy spurge populations, but followup spot spraying should always be anticipated for a minimum of several years . . ."

The Fire Industrial Complex

Burning, clearcutting, firefighting, and profit. Follow the money.

Santa Fe New Mexican, July 25, 2015

Follow the money!  Prescribed burning is about lucrative private contracts, not forest health or human safety.  By Arthur Firstenberg, Fire Industrial Complex researcher and member of Once A Forest.

Al Jazeera America, October 24, 2013

A look inside the lucrative private contracting that drives the "Fire Industrial Complex." 

John Coté, SFGate, July 27, 2008

"We call it the fire industrial complex," said Timothy Ingalsbee, a former U.S. Forest Service firefighter and now executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, a nonprofit in Eugene, Ore., dedicated to environmentally sound fire management. "It's big business, and business is booming.  Critics say contracting out traditionally public functions - a practice that in the Iraq war has led to privately organized security details and troop support services - shifts accountability, can be more expensive and erodes people's confidence in government."

What's worrying about private firefighters is that there are growing portions of the economy that are banking on, gambling on, that there are going to be more and more natural disasters," said Naomi Klein, author of the book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

Prescribed Burns Out of Control

Michael Janofsky, The New York Times, May 19, 2000

"With a scathing indictment of the federal response to fires that have now burned nearly 80 square miles of northern New Mexico and more than 400 housing units, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said today that the government was wholly to blame and would do whatever possible to compensate victims."

Bill Gabbert, Wildfire Today, May 10, 2010

On May 10, 2000, a fire that began as a prescribed fire in Bandalier National Monument burned into Los Alamos, New Mexico.  The towns of Los Alamos and White Rock were in the fire’s path and more than 18,000 residents were evacuated. By the end of the day on May 10, the fire had burned 18,000 acres, destroyed 235 homes, and damaged many other structures. The fire also spread towards the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and although fires spotted onto the facility’s lands, all major structures were secured and no releases of radiation occurred.

Steven Goddard, March 4, 2011

"After the fire stopped, the government had to quickly build huge dams (ahead of the summer monsoons) to stop the spread of shallow buried WWII nuclear waste into the Rio Grande"

C. A. Kolden, July 2005

Master's thesis on escaped prescribed burns (they rose from zero per year in 1970 to 900 per year in 2002 in California and Nevada alone)

WIldfire Today June 12, 2018

The Trail Mountain Fire burned 2,637 acres in central Utah.

Rapid City Journal, April 14, 2015

Wind Cave Prescribed Burn Gets Out of Control

WIND CAVE NATIONAL PARK | "A prescribed burn escaped from its planned fire boundaries, 'got into a long line of trees and there was no way to get it under control.' ...according to a previous news release, 1,199 acres were burned."

US News/NBC News, March 28, 2012

CONIFER, Colo. -- Colorado will likely suspend prescribed burns like the one blamed for the deadly wildfire near Denver, Gov. John Hickenlooper said Wednesday as video of one family’s harrowing escape from flames emerged.

The Cerro Grande Fire was the largest, most destructive wildfire that New Mexico has ever known. The fire swept across 47,000 forested acres in Bandelier National Monument, the Santa Fe National Forest, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos County, and the Santa Clara and San Ildefonso Indian Reservations, causing about $ 1 billion in property damage. Over 280 homes were destroyed or damaged and 40 Laboratory structures burned.

The Dog Head Fire

The Dog Head Fire burned more than 18,000 acres and twelve homes on the historic Chilili Land Grant in New Mexico, USA, June - July 2016. The US Forest Service was slow to admit that its contractors started the fire with sparks from a masticator deforestation machine and that it then ordered workers not to suppress the fire

Edgewood News July 25, 2015

The Forest Service started the Dog Head Fire, through its fuel reduction policy and land management.

Albuquerque Journal, July 1, 2016

Brush clearing effort triggered devastating Dog Head Fire

CHILILI – U.S. Forest Service officials on Friday confirmed Journal reports that the cause of the Dog Head Fire in the Manzano Mountains was tied to a federally funded wildland brush and wood clearing effort designed to prevent exactly that kind of wildfire.

Once A Forest Editorials

Opinion pieces written by Once A Forest members.

You can write one too! Submitting a letter to the editor of opinion piece to your local newspaper is a great way to get involved with our effort and reach out to the public in support of healthy forests.

MORE WAYS TO PARTICIPATE

Sam Hitt, Santa Fe New Mexican February 7, 2018

Dorothy Holasek, Albuquerque Journal, July 5, 2017

Cate Moses, Ph.D., Santa Fe New Mexican, Oct. 22, 2015

Arthur Firstenberg, Santa Fe New Mexican, July 25, 2015

Follow the money! Prescribed burning is about lucrative private contracts, not forest health or human safety.  By Arthur Firstenberg, Fire Industrial Complex researcher and member of Once A Forest.

Jan Boyer, Once a Forest Co-Founder, Albuquerque Journal, Nov. 6, 2011

The Forest Service has burned 35000 acres in New Mexico so far this year. They plan to burn 2900.  Burning forests in New Mexico releases DDE, DDT, and mercury.

Related Local & National Organizations

Editorials
Santa Fe Forest Coalition Logo

Santa Fe Forest Coalition

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A citizen coalition united in calling for a comprehensive environmental impact study prior to any tree cutting and burning on forested public lands above Santa Fe.

Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics logo

Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics

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Think the Forest Service is serving the interests of forests and making ethical, rather than political decisions?

Think again.  

The Forest Advocate Logo

The Forest Advocate

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The Forest Advocate publishes news and resources for the protection of the Santa Fe National Forest and all southwestern forests.

Prescribedburns.com logo

PrescribedBurns.com

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Arizona Citizen activist website.  "The U.S. Forest Service has convinced some people that prescribed burns and managed wildfires are safe methods of maintaining forest health when they are actually two of the deadliest acts known to mankind."

Tree Hugger Santa Fe Logo

Tree Hugger Santa Fe​

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Tree Hugger Santa Fe is a group of people living in harmony with the forest in the unique, determined landscape of the desert highlands of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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