(MintPress) – Roaring through the western half of the United States, wildfires caught the public’s attention once again as homes and forest areas in states like Colorado were demolished by intense flames. Residents in the path of these fires reportedly grabbed valuables such as photo albums and family Bibles as they fled to the safety of fire shelters. Soot fell from the sky coating nearby cities with ash, as teams of fire crews battled numerous blazes in intense shifts, sometimes 22-hours long, in the hope their efforts would at least stop these fires from gaining momentum.

The concern in the media and on people’s minds was largely focused on the homes and communities in the path of the wildfires, but little attention was given to how the timber industry benefits from these wildfires. A report found that collectively the some 9,000 U.S. based timber companies earn about $10 billion each year. One of the larger timber companies in the U.S., Weyerhaeuser, reported $41 million in net earnings for the first quarter of 2012. In 2011 the company reported earning $6.2 billion over the course of the year.

Timber industry interests

According to Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, and a retired firefighter himself, when a wildfire burns, the fire kills and consumes the small trees and vegetation on the forest floor, leaving the big trees mostly intact. But when the timber industry logs a forest they leave the little trees and dead limbs but take the big trees, making the forest more flammable and hazardous. “The deadliest wildfires are all associated with logged lands,” he adds.

Jim Peña, Associate Deputy Chief National Forest System, disagreed, saying, “Logging is not a determinant of a fatality fire. It’s the fire and fuel conditions in place [that cause the deadliest wildfires].”

The U.S. Forest Service allows timber industries access to unlogged forests both before and after a wildfire passes through. Tom Harbour, Director of Fire and Aviation Management, said the timber sales allow overgrown forests to become more resilient so the fire is not as hot, less damaging and gives the firefighters more of a chance to successfully deal with a fire.

A June 2012 report from the Associated Press (AP) highlights that some in the timber industry argue that the U.S. Forest Service’s policies and federal budget cuts have led to a lack of necessary harvesting in forests. Wyoming State Forester Bill Crasper told the AP that the forests impacted by wildfires in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming were unhealthy and more likely to suffer from “devastating burns” because there are “too many trees per acre.”

The story continues to explain that high fuel costs, low housing starts and other economic factors have led to the U.S. Forest Service to no longer call upon the timber industry to thin forests as much as they have in the past. According to the AP, timber companies have paid about $800 an acre to log lands, but were paid up to $2,000 an acre for services like removing bug-infested trees. The exact value of a tree, though, depends on the size, species and condition of the tree.

Another aspect of wildfires which has escaped the national spotlight is salvage logging, when timber industries haul away the burned trees for their own use after a wildfire has passed through a forest. Salvage logging is illegal in state and national parks, but it is allowed outside of these protected lands. Many applaud the timber industries for their work to clean-up after a wildfire, and turning the charred timber into two-by-fours and toilet paper.

Peña said salvage efforts are done after the U.S. Forest Service has reviewed the damage and decided what sort of efforts will be done to restore the burned area. The sale of timber that has been killed helps recover value lost, which helps in the success of reforestation, he said. However, environmentalists have criticized this technique claiming the removal of the burned flora equates to a loss of shelter, food and nutrients for the forest and animals. “Fire recycles woody biomass into soil and nutrients,” says Ingalsbee.

“Most plants need to be broken down, that’s one of the benefits of the fire- it breaks down dead limbs and logs into ash and nutrients that allow other plants to use them.” Big trees are “essential” to the wild, even when burned, as they provide shelter, as well as nutrients for wildlife species and the soil.

Peña says that the U.S. Forest Service has evaluated and disclosed the environmental effects after a wildfire, but believes that removing vegetation does not adversely affect the environment. Especially in those areas with a significant timber and vegetation mortality rate, salvage logging allows the U.S. Forest Service to recover the timber value and accelerate timber restoration.

“National forests were established to protect and maintain a consistent flow of clean water and provide a consistent flow of timber, it’s a timber reserve,” said Peña.

The heavy machinery and equipment used to haul the trees from the forests pose additional damage to the forest due to the impact they have on the soil. Post fire, the forest floor and soil is very fragile; dragging trees or driving heavy equipment on the traumatized land has been reported to lead to massive erosion and soil compaction, which makes it difficult for the forest to replenish itself, adds Ingalsbee.

“[Some believe] a dead tree is wasted if it’s not sawed up…We need to think beyond our own interests and think about the ecological system as a whole and the richness of bio-diversity.”

Fire is our friend, not foe

Ingalsbee tells MintPress News that the U.S. sees tens of thousands of fire starts per year, ranging in size from a living room carpet to those that are hundreds of square miles. As our climate changes, he says we will see more fires in more states, including north eastern states like New Jersey that don’t typically deal with the amount or intensity of fires in states notoriously known for wildfires such as Arizona, California, Colorado and New Mexico.

The biggest climate change, Ingalsbee predicts, is in regard to snow pacts: not only will snow fall later in the season, but will melt faster and earlier, thereby extending the wildfire season. “The concept of a fire season is obsolete. We now have [wildfires] almost year round,” said Ingalsbee. The wildfire season in the western half of the U.S. has already extended about two months as compared to past wildfire seasons, resulting in physically exhausted fire crews and a depletion of resources before the fires are controlled.

For those in the direct path of one of these wildfires, the idea that fire is a natural phenomenon is the furthest thing from their minds as they watch their homes erupt in violent flames. But nature is not solely to blame for the catastrophic loss of thousands of homes – humans are also responsible. According to an I-News Network report, 1 in 4 homes in Colorado, or about a quarter million people, are located in a red zone area or an area most at risk for wildfires. Colorado NBC affiliate KUSA reported that the largest fire in Colorado history, the Waldo Canyon Fire, demolished 346 homes and is responsible for two deaths.

But it’s not just where we live that has made us vulnerable to wildfires; it’s also the result of the effects of climate change as well as our fear of fire. Ingalsbee says fire prevention schemes have jaded people, and he adds that even the title “firefighter” indicates our fear. “One day we won’t have firefighters he says, but fire rangers…We’ll manage fire like a friend and work with it.”

In order to “fire proof” forests and thereby lessen any damage to homes and forests, the George W. Bush administration established the Healthy Forests Initiative in 2002, which sought to cut down large trees in hundreds of acres of land, which Ingalsbee says is not scientifically sound or feasible.

“Unlike homes, forests cannot be made fire proof,” he said. “All indigenous people used fire and benefitted from a relationship with fire,” Ingalsbee says.

“It’s a pyrogenic planet. There’s plenty of lightning and it’s [humans] that have to adapt and change…When lightning strikes and ignites a wildfire, we should work with it and steer it in ways that we would like the fire to go instead of stopping it dead cold,” he says, adding if the wildfires threaten homes and communities, then we can take a stand.

Battling the blaze

In an effort to minimize the power of wildfire flames the U.S. Forest Service intentionally burns about 2 million acres of land each year, mostly in the Southeastern region of the U.S. These “prescribed fires” burn vegetation in ideal weather conditions in an effort to manage the ever-growing vegetative species. But for some, like Ingalsbee, the idea that humans try to stop fires and then later start prescribed fires that are more costly and use more resources is nonsensical. “We should let nature take the lead,” he says, “it’s free.”

News coverage of the larger wildfires in Colorado showed firefighters using a piece of equipment known as a terra torch. This ignition device, Ingalsbee says, shoots out a flaming jelly diesel fuel and is used by firefighters to attempt to “get ahead” of the wildfire and contain the blaze.

These “backfires” as they are known are supposed to burn out the vegetation and fuels before the larger wildfire pulls the man-made fire in and then eventually burns out. Ingalsbee says unfortunately many of these back burnings start a whole new fire, since they only work in optimal settings, and generally produce the most severely burned areas of a wildfire.

“Anytime you fight a fire you damage the land,” warns Ingalsbee. “The assumption is the damage is less [by the terra torches] than a [natural] fire would cause, which is untrue.”

A retired firefighter himself, Ingalsbee says the crews in the field are educated, tech-savvy individuals who feel they are doing their service to the public. Orders to use equipment such as the terra torches, comes down to the crews in the field from top leaders in the fire industry. Fire crews are also sometimes instructed to use equipment known as wacker machines to cut the fire line in forests. However, these machines operate by snipping trees at their base, de-limbing them and cutting them so they fit in the timber trucks. “That’s not stopping a fire,” says Ingalsbee. “That’s unacceptable.”

In response, Peña said that the use of wacker machines is rare and is done as part of the suppression effort, not “timber sale management.”

“After the fire is out wacker machines move the logs to a particular spot for salvage later on. I’ve never been associated with suppression with the eye towards salvage logging,” he said.

Restoration of forests would create more jobs than the timber industry, really?

It’s not just the environmental impact of wildfires that is neglected, but the economic aspect of wildfires is also overlooked. While many associate the timber industry with jobs and profits, Ingalsbee says that restoring and preparing a forest for wildfire would create a lot of jobs, at least the same amount if not more than the timber industry, and the large profits would not go to corporations.

A 2010 study by the Ecosystem Workforce Program from the University of Oregon, Eugene, found that a $1 million investment in forest and watershed restoration in Oregon would potentially create between 15 to 24 jobs depending on the intensity of the labor. The study also found that 1.4-2.4 times more money would circulate in the Oregon economy as a result of these additional jobs. It is important to note the study also found that because many of these forest restoration jobs are in rural areas due to the nature of the work, urban areas may not see any economic effects.

The U.S. government does recognize the potential job and economic growth associated with forest restoration investments. The USDA posted studies on its blog that found about 23 jobs are created per $1 million spent on restoration projects. However, what constitutes as forest restoration and why it should be done is where differences are found. For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s website calls for restoration to be achieved through “tools such as timber sales,” while the previously mentioned Ecosystem Workforce study includes actions such as planting trees and shrubs in addition to the removal of brush and small trees.