Large fires are controlled more by weather than fuels. Thinning a forest will not appreciably change the occurrence of large fires because it can't change climactic cycles that bring high winds and drought. With few exceptions, we should allow Nature to determine the appropriate fire intensity, acreage burned and timing of fire events. We should permit fires to burn unregulated over most of the natural landscape. We should also reduce conflicts with wildfire by zoning or otherwise restricting house construction in fire-prone locations.
Fires are essential to most forest and grassland ecosystems.
In finding scapegoats for the Los Alamos fire, all the blame has been heaped on a few bureaucrats while government policies that ignore ecology in favor of commercial exploitation of public lands get off Scot free. Today national forests provide less than 3 percent of our wood needs and less than 1 percent of our red meat but the exploitation continues thanks to billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies. A bipartisan bill in Congress, the National Forest Protection and Restoration Act, would end commercial logging on national forests and redirect federal subsidies to forest restoration and productive jobs for rural residents. Without raising taxes, this bill begins to undo a century of exploitation. Passing this legislation would be a fitting tribune to those who lost their homes in Los Alamos and create a legacy we could be proud to leave to our children.