August 10, 2026 • 19 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yes, you had to chase from one public policy think
tank to another after I read a column by him.
Jason Hayes newly of the Heritage Foundation, formerly of the
Macinaw Center for Public Policy. He is the Senior Research
Fellow for Energy in the Environment, and he is also
a guy who knows a bit about forests, as he
(00:20):
spent some time in his past as a forester in
British Columbia. Jason Hayes, first of all, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Oh thanks for having me on.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Oh no, I'm glad you could make it.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I was just up in British Columbia going to Alaska
looking at their forests, asking about beetlekill and all kinds
of stuff going on up there, so it was a
lot of fun. I want to ask you about your column,
and I put it on Today's blog, how bad policy
fuels wildfires because here in Colorado, I think that we
are a great example of poorly managed forests and now
(00:54):
we have multiple forest fires happening right now. We're completely
enveloped in smoke, like we've been all summer long here
in Colorado, not the first summer well as of late
that we have had this experience. How much of this is,
as we're told by our overlords here in Colorado, the
result of mother Nature out of control. These are difficult
(01:16):
to reach areas, hard to contain these fires. It's global warming,
it's everything but their fault. How much of this is
policy and how much of it is that?
Speaker 4 (01:26):
Yeah, a lot of it is policy. But one thing
people can always remember is that we've had forest fires
for as long as we've had forests, so it's not
unusual to have fires, especially during later in the season August, September,
that kind of thing. But what we should be doing
(01:48):
is actively managing our forests. And it's especially notable in
federal forests where we've had a mindset over the past
fifty sixty seventy years, that a growing mindset that people
are bad for the natural environment, that we really shouldn't
be there. We should put fences around large areas of
(02:11):
forest and just kind of keep people up because people
just wreck stuff. But at the same time, what we've
done is when a forest fire starts, we all remember smoky.
They're telling us, you know, we can only you can
prevent forest fires. We go in and we actively manage
those fires. So we don't manage the forests, but we
(02:33):
do manage the fires, and what happens over time is
the forests continue to grow, and then you get what's
called fuel loading, where trees and fine fuels, shrubs, grasses,
all that kind of thing build up, and then when
a fire starts, especially in a dry, hot year, then
you have real problems.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
It's difficult to put them out.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Well to your point about fire being an important part
of the ecosystem, there are certain pine trees in Florida,
and I'm sure they grow other places, but I grew
up in Florida, so I know about them then that
do not release seeds until there is a fire, So
obviously it is a part of the natural cycle. What
part of this you just laid out that we've stopped
the fires, but we're not managing that dense you know,
(03:19):
fire fuel that is in the forest. How what should
we be doing differently?
Speaker 4 (03:24):
We should stop being afraid to cut down a tree.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with using our natural resources. That's
one of the reasons, I mean, the Good Lord gave
them to us, or one of the key portions of
having forests is because if we don't use them, if
(03:46):
we don't actively manage them. Then something that you said
at the start of the call is correct. Nature will
manage it for us, and we won't always like the
nature's prescriptions or the decisions that nature makes it in
starting big fires or as you said, like in PC
(04:07):
large areas of beetlekill and that sort of stuff, there's
if we're not using that wood, then nature will use
it for us. And so that's basically if we get
in there, we're not afraid to occasionally cut down a
tree or manage in the way of doing things like
spacing and thinning. Those will actually help because we can
(04:28):
start to reduce that heavy fuel loading and when a
fire starts, because you won't be able to stop all
the fires, but when a fire does start, it's much
easier to control, or you could even just let it
burn because it's.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Not going to be as bad, not as intense.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
So let me ask you specifically about beetlekill, because this
is a huge problem for us here in Colorado. I
several years ago, was driving from the Denver metro area
over to Saratoga, Wyoming and drove past Medicine Bow National Forest. Jason,
it is just stand of dead trees after stand of
dead trees after stand of dead trees, thousands and thousands
(05:07):
of acres of dead trees. What do you do now
in order to prevent because I think any I mean
a lightning strike is going to create a massive, massive fire.
What did you do in that situation to better manage
that situation when you already have so many dead trees.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Yeah, since you can't go back and manage it yesterday,
what you should do is manage that stuff today. Especially
with beetlekill or fire damage timber, you have to get
to it pretty quickly because it starts to dry up.
I mean, we've all had our wood pile in our
backyard what we use for our fireplace or you know,
(05:46):
our fire pit. And when you leave dead wood sitting
or standing in a forest, what happens is dries out,
and that dead standing timber is extremely dangerou especially during
a dry, hot year. So the next thing is you
deal with that, those those big areas of dead standing timber.
(06:10):
But you also come in and you deal with the
stuff you can when when you're managing for us, you
can go out. You can see, oh, here's an area
that's starting to be impacted by bark, beetles or something
like that, because you can look at the trees and
see the frast tubes and that where the beetles bore
into the side of the tree, you can see when
an infestation is starting.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
And what you can do is go in and.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
Manage that area before the timber dies, and then you
can have the wood that's actually useful for dimensional lumber
or peeler lugs for OSB or plywater or that kind
of thing. But managing it proactively and getting in there
and dealing with these issues before they arise is a
(06:56):
much better and much less expensive, and much less.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Harmful way of managing our forests.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
Reactive has not served us as well as proactive good.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Well, is there a use for dead trees that have
been standing dead for some time? I mean, because my
thinking is, and you know, I just spit all this
stuff all the time, because I don't really know that
much about forest management. Well, you know those those helicopters
that have the dangling grinder things that they just go
and they just grind what's left to the ground. Would
that be more productive than just leaving them standing there?
(07:30):
Or is there any usage where you could send in
laggers or you could send in people to harvest that
wood for any purpose after it's been standing for years like.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
That, probably not for years.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
Once it's dried and checked, then it's not any good
for things like dimensional number or it's much less good.
You're not going to get a good quality timber. So
you try to get it while the trees are still,
you know, alive or just recently.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Killed by bugs or fire or whatever. But yeah, you can.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
If you go in and you harvest those kind of
standing dead trees, you might be able to use them
for mulch or something like that, But then how much
mulch do you need? And the other part of it
is too Helicopters are extremely expensive. It's much less expensive
to do that sort of thing with. You can do
(08:24):
it with ground equipment. Those spinning drums that you're talking
about most of the time, you could do that with
ground equipment. It's much less expensive.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
We just have so many areas that appear from where
I am looking from far away, they're not really accessible.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
There's no roads, there's no you know.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
What I mean.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
That's part of the problem as well.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
What is when we're talking about national forests, does that
fall under the responsibility of the National Forest Service and
if so, is the National Forest Service remotely funded properly
to do the kind of national fire management that it
sounds like we've needed to do for some.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Time, So yes, it is.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
It's all part of the USDA, which is the us
for Service is an office within the agency of Department
of Agriculture and other areas. Also some areas are Department
of Interior, like Bureau of Land Management, especially in the
Western States, will be some of that, but it will
(09:26):
be in a lot of these areas federal agencies. Again,
especially in the Western States, it'll be federal agencies. So
as far as funding goes, there are ways to do this.
So while the Feds may not have enough people or funding,
there are things like the Good Neighbor Authority that allowed
(09:47):
the federal government to sign cooperative agreements with the states.
So I'm pretty sure even like Colorado has signed Good
Neighbor Authority agreements.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
What that does is it.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
Allows the states, which are much closer to the action,
they know the area better than the federal managers. They
can basically go out and contract with private contractors to
do some of the work. Also, as part of the
GNA or Good Neighbor Authority agreements, what happens is when
they do that work.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
The private contractors obviously.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
They can make money doing that, they can hire people
and produce jobs, but the states get to keep some
of the money that's involved with managing it, the royalties
for timber and that kind of thing, so it actually
works to pay for the work that's getting done. But
again you have to be willing to go in and
actually cut down a tree and sell some of the wood.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
So we've terrified ourselves. We're scared to.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
Death of the notion that somebody might cut down a
tree and use it, because again we have this mindset
that people are bad for the environments and logging of
any sort or any sort of forced active force man activity.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Is going to harm the forests. But that's not the case.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
The forests are quite resilient, and the management that you
do in those sorts of situations is actually much less
harmful than some of these big thirty fifty one hundred
thousand acre burns that you see.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
I just just go.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
In and when they're so hot they can actually sterilize
the soil.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
They kill almost.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
Everything, these really hot burns, and it would have been
much better for the forest, for the wildlife in there,
for the water quality, for air quality, if the forest
had been managed proactively beforehand.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Are you less likely to have to deal with because
now we just had one hundred thousand acre fire here
in Colorado, and now we're having armonsoon season, so we
have to worry about flash flooding and in the burn
scar and things of that nature. Is it a better
management practice to go in with you know, loggers cutting
down those dead trees leading the stumps in the ground.
Are you let likely to have to deal with mud
(12:01):
slides with the dead.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Roots in the ground?
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Or you know what I'm asking, like, what would be
a better strategy here?
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Is burning it down better or worse?
Speaker 1 (12:10):
It sounds like it's worse in the grand scheme of
things for the reasons you just outlined, But what about
that sort of recovery that happens after a fire very slowly,
but it does kind of happen.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
That's the kind of thing where as a forester, you'd
want to walk the ground before you started making broad
prescriptions and saying, oh, this is always better here, or
you'd want to see things like how how how many
trees there are per ache? Or how thick is the soil,
like is it real thin layers over top of rocky outcrops?
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Those kind of things you want to check.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
Also, are there the are there shrub species coming back
in after the beatles killed those those trees? You know,
when the when the crown of a tree die as
you want to, the sun will come in and start
to shine on some of this, so there may be
shrubs that are holding the soil together.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Again, as a.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Forester or a scientist, you'd want to walk the area
and say, here's what's best for this specific area. Says
one thing to remember all of these sorts of questions.
A lot of the time the best solutions are site specific.
So when you get like broad sort of sweeping prescriptions
(13:32):
from groups they say, well, you know, you need to
stop clear cutting or you need to stop doing something,
It's like, well, not necessarily. Maybe if the ecology of
the species that's being managed, Like you talked about some
pine trees in the south, also pine trees all throughout
the Mountain West, jack pine, lodgepole pine, they have those
(13:54):
same kind of cones that you were talking about. It's
called serotinous cones. They only open when the exposed to heat,
such as in a fire. Those kind of trees, that
species of trees actually evolved or was designed to grow
under those conditions large stand clearing fires, and then the
(14:16):
seeds the cones open and the seeds spread, and then
you get a rush of growth from new trees. So
some trees that actually works pretty well, you could go
in and you could cut, and you could clear everything.
Some other trees you want different harvesting systems. But yeah,
you're going to want to walk the ground to see
what's best solution.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
So there's definitely not a one size fits all solution
to forest management. But you just brought up clear cutting,
and that is whenever you talk about, hey, we're going
to have some you know, some logging and there. It
doesn't matter if they're going in and they're marking the
specific trees that they're going to take immediately, the opposition
is you're going to clear cut everything. The reality is
(14:58):
much different. Tell me about some other some other ways
that forests can be managed without clear cutting large amounts
of trees down. They always show a picture from the
Brazilian Amazon. By the way, this is the thing they're
going to do. Look what happened to the Amazon. It's
going to happen here, right.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
Yeah, well, again very different ecology and in the Amazon
than there is here. But in Colorado. Yeah, there are
some areas where it may make sense to do clearcuts.
Now some people will bristle at that notion. It doesn't
have to be you know, several thousand acres. It could
be a small cut, it could be fifty one hundred
(15:40):
and two hundred acres.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Again, you're going to want.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
To walk the ground and see what it looks like.
And then you can also design your cutting systems, as
I did when I was working as a forester in
British Columbia in the world Boreal forest. We used to
design things like leaf strips around rivers or streams. You
could leave certain areas around, you know, native heritage sites
(16:05):
or any sort of sensitive area if there's a wet
depression or a wetland or something like that. Or you
can design all of this into your cutting pyramids and
you can say, look, this is a value we want
to retain or protect, and you can just design your
cut to do that thing, whatever it is you want
to achieve. So yeah, that again broad prescriptions coming from Denver,
(16:32):
or for even worse, from Washington, d c when people
haven't been out there looking at what's actually on the ground.
Those broad prescriptions from people who haven't been out there
and haven't seen the ground generally get it wrong.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Well, Jason, I was just cruising Alaska and or you know,
cruising the Inside Passage in Alaska, and you can see
on these these hillsides next to the Inside Passage where
there have been obviously massive mud slides that have taken
out all of the tall sproofs there. But you can
also see the new plant life that is taken hold
(17:09):
in those landslide or mudslide scars, or you know, or
snowslide scars. It's to me take the environmentalists up there,
like this is truly what nature does when given the chance.
Because nobody's gonna put out a fire, nobody's going to
find stop a mud slide. This is how it's supposed
to work. So what can what can the average citizen
do to encourage.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Better forest management?
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Because I'll tell you right now, in Colorado this the
the level of concern about forest management outside of those
directly in the forestry area is almost zero. Our politicians
don't pay attention to it, they don't talk to it.
They pretend like this is just how things are going
to be and there's nothing we can do about it.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Yeah, well, people should definitely at least get educated, get involved,
talk to whether it's your elected officials or whatever. You
should be doing that because out of those forests, anywhere
where there's.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
A slope, and there's one or two slopes.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
In the state of Colorado up the side of a mountain,
the water that comes off of that is almost assuredly
supplying the water that you will drink or use for
your you know, in your home. Any of those sorts
of watersheds, if they are not managed properly and they
burn and you have an intense burn, then you can
start having things like you're saying, the mud slides and
(18:30):
that kind of thing, So that could directly impact your life,
in addition to other ways like you're saying, also the
smoke and the particulate and all that sort of stuff
that you're breathing in right now, or being evacuated if
the fire gets too close to your house. All of
those kind of things impact people directly where they live.
(18:54):
And it doesn't only have to be in fire season,
because again, like you said, if there's a slide.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
As dead timber. Once those routes start.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
To decay, they're not holding the soil together anymore. So
in a wet spring you could have a bad mud
slot or something like that. So if people don't encourage
their state agencies to manage those forests properly, or in
the case of federal lands and federal agencies, then yeah,
(19:22):
you could be facing those problems going forward.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Jason Hayes, a Senior Research Fellow of Energy and Environment
at the Heritage Foundation, Thank you so much for making
time for us. This is a problem that's not going
to go away anytime soon. I just figured we'd get
some better information then you're getting here in Colorado.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
I appreciate your time today.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Yeah, thanks for having me on anytime.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
All right, Thanks Jason, We will be back.
Yes, you had to chase from one public policy think
tank to another after I read a column by him.
Jason Hayes newly of the Heritage Foundation, formerly of the
Macinaw Center for Public Policy. He is the Senior Research
Fellow for Energy in the Environment, and he is also
a guy who knows a bit about forests, as he
(00:20):
spent some time in his past as a forester in
British Columbia. Jason Hayes, first of all, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Oh thanks for having me on.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Oh no, I'm glad you could make it.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
I was just up in British Columbia going to Alaska
looking at their forests, asking about beetlekill and all kinds
of stuff going on up there, so it was a
lot of fun. I want to ask you about your column,
and I put it on Today's blog, how bad policy
fuels wildfires because here in Colorado, I think that we
are a great example of poorly managed forests and now
(00:54):
we have multiple forest fires happening right now. We're completely
enveloped in smoke, like we've been all summer long here
in Colorado, not the first summer well as of late
that we have had this experience. How much of this is,
as we're told by our overlords here in Colorado, the
result of mother Nature out of control. These are difficult
(01:16):
to reach areas, hard to contain these fires. It's global warming,
it's everything but their fault. How much of this is
policy and how much of it is that?
Speaker 4 (01:26):
Yeah, a lot of it is policy. But one thing
people can always remember is that we've had forest fires
for as long as we've had forests, so it's not
unusual to have fires, especially during later in the season August, September,
that kind of thing. But what we should be doing
(01:48):
is actively managing our forests. And it's especially notable in
federal forests where we've had a mindset over the past
fifty sixty seventy years, that a growing mindset that people
are bad for the natural environment, that we really shouldn't
be there. We should put fences around large areas of
(02:11):
forest and just kind of keep people up because people
just wreck stuff. But at the same time, what we've
done is when a forest fire starts, we all remember smoky.
They're telling us, you know, we can only you can
prevent forest fires. We go in and we actively manage
those fires. So we don't manage the forests, but we
(02:33):
do manage the fires, and what happens over time is
the forests continue to grow, and then you get what's
called fuel loading, where trees and fine fuels, shrubs, grasses,
all that kind of thing build up, and then when
a fire starts, especially in a dry, hot year, then
you have real problems.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
It's difficult to put them out.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Well to your point about fire being an important part
of the ecosystem, there are certain pine trees in Florida,
and I'm sure they grow other places, but I grew
up in Florida, so I know about them then that
do not release seeds until there is a fire, So
obviously it is a part of the natural cycle. What
part of this you just laid out that we've stopped
the fires, but we're not managing that dense you know,
(03:19):
fire fuel that is in the forest. How what should
we be doing differently?
Speaker 4 (03:24):
We should stop being afraid to cut down a tree.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with using our natural resources. That's
one of the reasons, I mean, the Good Lord gave
them to us, or one of the key portions of
having forests is because if we don't use them, if
(03:46):
we don't actively manage them. Then something that you said
at the start of the call is correct. Nature will
manage it for us, and we won't always like the
nature's prescriptions or the decisions that nature makes it in
starting big fires or as you said, like in PC
(04:07):
large areas of beetlekill and that sort of stuff, there's
if we're not using that wood, then nature will use
it for us. And so that's basically if we get
in there, we're not afraid to occasionally cut down a
tree or manage in the way of doing things like
spacing and thinning. Those will actually help because we can
(04:28):
start to reduce that heavy fuel loading and when a
fire starts, because you won't be able to stop all
the fires, but when a fire does start, it's much
easier to control, or you could even just let it
burn because it's.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Not going to be as bad, not as intense.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
So let me ask you specifically about beetlekill, because this
is a huge problem for us here in Colorado. I
several years ago, was driving from the Denver metro area
over to Saratoga, Wyoming and drove past Medicine Bow National Forest. Jason,
it is just stand of dead trees after stand of
dead trees after stand of dead trees, thousands and thousands
(05:07):
of acres of dead trees. What do you do now
in order to prevent because I think any I mean
a lightning strike is going to create a massive, massive fire.
What did you do in that situation to better manage
that situation when you already have so many dead trees.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
Yeah, since you can't go back and manage it yesterday,
what you should do is manage that stuff today. Especially
with beetlekill or fire damage timber, you have to get
to it pretty quickly because it starts to dry up.
I mean, we've all had our wood pile in our
backyard what we use for our fireplace or you know,
(05:46):
our fire pit. And when you leave dead wood sitting
or standing in a forest, what happens is dries out,
and that dead standing timber is extremely dangerou especially during
a dry, hot year. So the next thing is you
deal with that, those those big areas of dead standing timber.
(06:10):
But you also come in and you deal with the
stuff you can when when you're managing for us, you
can go out. You can see, oh, here's an area
that's starting to be impacted by bark, beetles or something
like that, because you can look at the trees and
see the frast tubes and that where the beetles bore
into the side of the tree, you can see when
an infestation is starting.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
And what you can do is go in and.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
Manage that area before the timber dies, and then you
can have the wood that's actually useful for dimensional lumber
or peeler lugs for OSB or plywater or that kind
of thing. But managing it proactively and getting in there
and dealing with these issues before they arise is a
(06:56):
much better and much less expensive, and much less.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Harmful way of managing our forests.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
Reactive has not served us as well as proactive good.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Well, is there a use for dead trees that have
been standing dead for some time? I mean, because my
thinking is, and you know, I just spit all this
stuff all the time, because I don't really know that
much about forest management. Well, you know those those helicopters
that have the dangling grinder things that they just go
and they just grind what's left to the ground. Would
that be more productive than just leaving them standing there?
(07:30):
Or is there any usage where you could send in
laggers or you could send in people to harvest that
wood for any purpose after it's been standing for years like.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
That, probably not for years.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
Once it's dried and checked, then it's not any good
for things like dimensional number or it's much less good.
You're not going to get a good quality timber. So
you try to get it while the trees are still,
you know, alive or just recently.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Killed by bugs or fire or whatever. But yeah, you can.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
If you go in and you harvest those kind of
standing dead trees, you might be able to use them
for mulch or something like that, But then how much
mulch do you need? And the other part of it
is too Helicopters are extremely expensive. It's much less expensive
to do that sort of thing with. You can do
(08:24):
it with ground equipment. Those spinning drums that you're talking
about most of the time, you could do that with
ground equipment. It's much less expensive.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
We just have so many areas that appear from where
I am looking from far away, they're not really accessible.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
There's no roads, there's no you know.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
What I mean.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
That's part of the problem as well.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
What is when we're talking about national forests, does that
fall under the responsibility of the National Forest Service and
if so, is the National Forest Service remotely funded properly
to do the kind of national fire management that it
sounds like we've needed to do for some.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Time, So yes, it is.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
It's all part of the USDA, which is the us
for Service is an office within the agency of Department
of Agriculture and other areas. Also some areas are Department
of Interior, like Bureau of Land Management, especially in the
Western States, will be some of that, but it will
(09:26):
be in a lot of these areas federal agencies. Again,
especially in the Western States, it'll be federal agencies. So
as far as funding goes, there are ways to do this.
So while the Feds may not have enough people or funding,
there are things like the Good Neighbor Authority that allowed
(09:47):
the federal government to sign cooperative agreements with the states.
So I'm pretty sure even like Colorado has signed Good
Neighbor Authority agreements.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
What that does is it.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
Allows the states, which are much closer to the action,
they know the area better than the federal managers. They
can basically go out and contract with private contractors to
do some of the work. Also, as part of the
GNA or Good Neighbor Authority agreements, what happens is when
they do that work.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
The private contractors obviously.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
They can make money doing that, they can hire people
and produce jobs, but the states get to keep some
of the money that's involved with managing it, the royalties
for timber and that kind of thing, so it actually
works to pay for the work that's getting done. But
again you have to be willing to go in and
actually cut down a tree and sell some of the wood.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
So we've terrified ourselves. We're scared to.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
Death of the notion that somebody might cut down a
tree and use it, because again we have this mindset
that people are bad for the environments and logging of
any sort or any sort of forced active force man activity.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Is going to harm the forests. But that's not the case.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
The forests are quite resilient, and the management that you
do in those sorts of situations is actually much less
harmful than some of these big thirty fifty one hundred
thousand acre burns that you see.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
I just just go.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
In and when they're so hot they can actually sterilize
the soil.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
They kill almost.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
Everything, these really hot burns, and it would have been
much better for the forest, for the wildlife in there,
for the water quality, for air quality, if the forest
had been managed proactively beforehand.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Are you less likely to have to deal with because
now we just had one hundred thousand acre fire here
in Colorado, and now we're having armonsoon season, so we
have to worry about flash flooding and in the burn
scar and things of that nature. Is it a better
management practice to go in with you know, loggers cutting
down those dead trees leading the stumps in the ground.
Are you let likely to have to deal with mud
(12:01):
slides with the dead.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Roots in the ground?
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Or you know what I'm asking, like, what would be
a better strategy here?
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Is burning it down better or worse?
Speaker 1 (12:10):
It sounds like it's worse in the grand scheme of
things for the reasons you just outlined, But what about
that sort of recovery that happens after a fire very slowly,
but it does kind of happen.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
That's the kind of thing where as a forester, you'd
want to walk the ground before you started making broad
prescriptions and saying, oh, this is always better here, or
you'd want to see things like how how how many
trees there are per ache? Or how thick is the soil,
like is it real thin layers over top of rocky outcrops?
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Those kind of things you want to check.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
Also, are there the are there shrub species coming back
in after the beatles killed those those trees? You know,
when the when the crown of a tree die as
you want to, the sun will come in and start
to shine on some of this, so there may be
shrubs that are holding the soil together.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Again, as a.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Forester or a scientist, you'd want to walk the area
and say, here's what's best for this specific area. Says
one thing to remember all of these sorts of questions.
A lot of the time the best solutions are site specific.
So when you get like broad sort of sweeping prescriptions
(13:32):
from groups they say, well, you know, you need to
stop clear cutting or you need to stop doing something,
It's like, well, not necessarily. Maybe if the ecology of
the species that's being managed, Like you talked about some
pine trees in the south, also pine trees all throughout
the Mountain West, jack pine, lodgepole pine, they have those
(13:54):
same kind of cones that you were talking about. It's
called serotinous cones. They only open when the exposed to heat,
such as in a fire. Those kind of trees, that
species of trees actually evolved or was designed to grow
under those conditions large stand clearing fires, and then the
(14:16):
seeds the cones open and the seeds spread, and then
you get a rush of growth from new trees. So
some trees that actually works pretty well, you could go
in and you could cut, and you could clear everything.
Some other trees you want different harvesting systems. But yeah,
you're going to want to walk the ground to see
what's best solution.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
So there's definitely not a one size fits all solution
to forest management. But you just brought up clear cutting,
and that is whenever you talk about, hey, we're going
to have some you know, some logging and there. It
doesn't matter if they're going in and they're marking the
specific trees that they're going to take immediately, the opposition
is you're going to clear cut everything. The reality is
(14:58):
much different. Tell me about some other some other ways
that forests can be managed without clear cutting large amounts
of trees down. They always show a picture from the
Brazilian Amazon. By the way, this is the thing they're
going to do. Look what happened to the Amazon. It's
going to happen here, right.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
Yeah, well, again very different ecology and in the Amazon
than there is here. But in Colorado. Yeah, there are
some areas where it may make sense to do clearcuts.
Now some people will bristle at that notion. It doesn't
have to be you know, several thousand acres. It could
be a small cut, it could be fifty one hundred
(15:40):
and two hundred acres.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Again, you're going to want.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
To walk the ground and see what it looks like.
And then you can also design your cutting systems, as
I did when I was working as a forester in
British Columbia in the world Boreal forest. We used to
design things like leaf strips around rivers or streams. You
could leave certain areas around, you know, native heritage sites
(16:05):
or any sort of sensitive area if there's a wet
depression or a wetland or something like that. Or you
can design all of this into your cutting pyramids and
you can say, look, this is a value we want
to retain or protect, and you can just design your
cut to do that thing, whatever it is you want
to achieve. So yeah, that again broad prescriptions coming from Denver,
(16:32):
or for even worse, from Washington, d c when people
haven't been out there looking at what's actually on the ground.
Those broad prescriptions from people who haven't been out there
and haven't seen the ground generally get it wrong.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Well, Jason, I was just cruising Alaska and or you know,
cruising the Inside Passage in Alaska, and you can see
on these these hillsides next to the Inside Passage where
there have been obviously massive mud slides that have taken
out all of the tall sproofs there. But you can
also see the new plant life that is taken hold
(17:09):
in those landslide or mudslide scars, or you know, or
snowslide scars. It's to me take the environmentalists up there,
like this is truly what nature does when given the chance.
Because nobody's gonna put out a fire, nobody's going to
find stop a mud slide. This is how it's supposed
to work. So what can what can the average citizen
do to encourage.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Better forest management?
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Because I'll tell you right now, in Colorado this the
the level of concern about forest management outside of those
directly in the forestry area is almost zero. Our politicians
don't pay attention to it, they don't talk to it.
They pretend like this is just how things are going
to be and there's nothing we can do about it.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Yeah, well, people should definitely at least get educated, get involved,
talk to whether it's your elected officials or whatever. You
should be doing that because out of those forests, anywhere
where there's.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
A slope, and there's one or two slopes.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
In the state of Colorado up the side of a mountain,
the water that comes off of that is almost assuredly
supplying the water that you will drink or use for
your you know, in your home. Any of those sorts
of watersheds, if they are not managed properly and they
burn and you have an intense burn, then you can
start having things like you're saying, the mud slides and
(18:30):
that kind of thing, So that could directly impact your life,
in addition to other ways like you're saying, also the
smoke and the particulate and all that sort of stuff
that you're breathing in right now, or being evacuated if
the fire gets too close to your house. All of
those kind of things impact people directly where they live.
(18:54):
And it doesn't only have to be in fire season,
because again, like you said, if there's a slide.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
As dead timber. Once those routes start.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
To decay, they're not holding the soil together anymore. So
in a wet spring you could have a bad mud
slot or something like that. So if people don't encourage
their state agencies to manage those forests properly, or in
the case of federal lands and federal agencies, then yeah,
(19:22):
you could be facing those problems going forward.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Jason Hayes, a Senior Research Fellow of Energy and Environment
at the Heritage Foundation, Thank you so much for making
time for us. This is a problem that's not going
to go away anytime soon. I just figured we'd get
some better information then you're getting here in Colorado.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
I appreciate your time today.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Yeah, thanks for having me on anytime.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
All right, Thanks Jason, We will be back.
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