El Dorado National Forest, California. (Photo: Katy Grimes for California Globe)
Ringside: Logging Saves Species and Increases Our Water Supply
We have turned our forests into tinderboxes, and that is the reason fires turn into superfires
By Edward Ring, July 31, 2025 2:55 am
There are obvious benefits to logging, grazing, prescribed burns, and mechanical thinning of California’s forests. When you suppress wildfires for what is now over a century, then overregulate and suppress any other means to thin the forest, you get overcrowded and unhealthy forests.
California’s trees now have 5 to 10 times more than a historically normal density. They’re competing for an insufficient share of light, water and nutrients, leading to disease, infestations, dehydration and death. Up through the 1980s, California harvested 6 billion board feet per year of timber; the annual harvest is now 25 percent of that. We have turned our forests into tinderboxes, and that is the reason fires turn into superfires.
How we manage our forests affects our water supply in two critical ways. Massive wildfires consume vegetation and leave soil vulnerable to erosion. As USGS put it after the Caldor Fire, when rains arrive, the unfiltered runoff creates “increased sediment transport in streams. This sediment surge can fill up water-storage space in reservoirs, damage infrastructure, and disrupt water supplies.”
Another consequence of overgrown forests is less runoff. Snow remains trapped atop thick canopy and evaporates. Rain that might percolate into springs to feed streams and rivers is instead consumed by overcrowded trees competing for an inadequate supply of water. A 2011 study by experts from UC Merced reports that 60 percent of the state’s consumptive water comes in the form of Sierra runoff, and that when forest cover is reduced by 40 percent, total runoff will increase by an estimated 9 percent. California’s consumptive use of water, including urban and agricultural use, but not including diversions to maintain ecosystem health, is around 40 million acre feet per year. That means if California’s forests were thinned appropriately, 2.2 million acre feet of water (40 MAF x 60% x 9%) would be added to California’s water supply in an average year.
To some extent, how we manage our forests also affects our energy supply. More runoff translates into more hydroelectric power. And more logging and thinning translates into more biomass fuel. Today, there are 23 active biomass power plants in California, generating just over a half-gigawatt of baseload electric power. That’s one percent of California’s electricity draw at peak demand; not a lot, but enough to matter. Mostly built in the 1980s and ’90s, at peak, there were 60 biomass power plants in California. These clean-burning plants could be rebuilt and co-located near lumber mills. With modern engineering and a reasonable regulatory environment, they might even be able to make a profit without subsidies.
So why isn’t California’s timber industry being revived? The scale of the effort needed to restore California’s approximately 33 million acres of forest cannot possibly happen without involving the private sector. This is a national problem. According to Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities, an organization promoting active management of America’s timberlands, forest growth for the last ten years has been only about half the rate of forest mortality. They attribute this to neglect. And they claim that logging, thinning, and prescribed fire would eliminate overcrowding, eliminate superfires, and restore health and resilience to the forests.
This theory is corroborated by Californian wildlife biologists and foresters I’ve spoken with across the industry. A good example is the performance of the Creek Fire in 2020 that burned 380,000 acres, yet surrounded and spared the 20,000 acres of managed forest surrounding Shaver Lake. This watershed, owned by Southern California Edison, is managed through a combination of selective logging, mechanical thinning, and prescribed burns to maintain a historically normal tree density in the watershed surrounding the lake. And species counts on the SCE property are higher than in the surrounding national forest.
A similar story emerges on privately managed timberland further north. For years, biologists working for Sierra Pacific have tagged spotted owls, the “indicator species” that provoked a crackdown on logging that cripples the industry to this day. But what they observed was counter to the public perception. They found that spotted owls nested in second growth timber and relied on meadows created by clear cutting to find their prey. And the spotted owl counts in these managed forests exceeded the counts on adjacent national forest land.
A growing body of academic work is finally arriving to vindicate the data obtained by field biologists. From Forest Ecology and Management, “Our study demonstrated that the three forest thinning treatments applied in our study area resulted in greater species richness and abundance…,” and from USGS, “spotted owl use of heterogeneous forest environments makes sense in light of historical disturbance regimes of this region, which were characterized by frequent lower severity fire events that generated spatial and temporal landscape heterogeneity.” To be fair, the first of these studies focused on populations of pollinators, and the second was focused on owl populations in New Mexico. More work is required. Perhaps the California Dept. of Fish & Wildlife might take an unbiased look at this, while consulting industry experts who have spent their careers in the forest.
Inhibiting the restoration of a healthy timber industry in California, which would lead to healthy forests and wildlife, is the time it takes to acquire timber harvesting permits. Whether it’s navigating CEQA on private land, or NEPA on federal land, these permits take years to acquire, when it ought to take months. The investments needed to expand this industry require reliable, long-term, expeditious permitting. Sound familiar?
For the sake of California’s water supply, its energy security, the safety of people living in the forests, and the health of our trees and wildlife, Californian needs to revive its logging industry. To make it happen, organizations representing the timber industry need help. Water agencies, power utilities, and associations of firefighters should lend their support.
If nothing else, public perception must change. Responsible logging will not only reduce the frequency and severity of wildfires, and improve the health of the forests. Not only will it improve the quality and quantity of our water, it will create jobs and tax revenue, and help power our electric grid.
It will also enable something counterintuitive and critical to understand: precious and endangered wildlife can thrive in a responsibly managed forest.
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Totally agree……but.
When emotional lefties break something, it is on a Humpty Dumpty scale.
When these hippies used the environmental laws to blungen the logging industry, they succeeded in shutting down all the mills.
Finding investors to build new logging mills when we have such an infantile, emotional electorate is going to be hard.
Now that these emotional hippies have retired into the hills, and as their insurance rates soared and danger is all around them, Now….. they want something done.
To add to the …..Emotional hippie rant.
Funny thing…. The newest mill (Tahoe Forest Products) was built in Carson City, by an Indian tribe, to salvage trees from the Caldor Fire.
The forestry service and the environmentalist argued over the salvaging of the trees so long, that when they finally agreed to the salvaging operation, the trees had already begun to crack and split.
This made the trees practically worthless to mill. This information came from a forester I spoke with on Mormon Emigrant Trail.
In October of ’92, I was in on the salvage logging of the Cleveland Fire in the El Dorado National Forest. Half the burn was owned by Mich-Cal Lumber Company, (now SPI owned) and half was national forest ground.
Mich-Cal was logging its ground within two weeks of the fire on an emergency clause and by the following spring had replanted half their land. By the following spring the rest of their 12,000+ acres had been logged and replanted.
The Forest Service, on the other hand, didn’t have the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed on their paperwork and didn’t begin logging until July of ’93. By then much of the Fir wasn’t worth cutting and the Ponderosa Pine wasn’t far behind. Three years after the fire the Forest Service was looking for volunteers to come help them replant their land.
In my opinion, the Forest Service has been dysfunctional since I began working in the woods in the late ’70s.
So, Ted, you got to experience the foolishness of that time
That was exactly what the Forester who worked for SPI said about the Caldor Fire.
He said, look around and see where our planting stops and Government land begins.
Back in ’92’ at least the Pollack Pines Mich-Cal and Wetsel-Oviatt were still open.
My father worked fir American Forest Products Martell, that later became Mich-Cal.
The Caldor Fire is its own sad story. A district ranger for the area that covered Grizzly Flats had worked for ten years on a huge fuels reduction and management plan to reduce the risk to the town. The project was funded and ready to go a few years before the fire but it never happened because the higher ups didn’t want it to. The loss of Grizzly Flats is because of the mismanagement of Forest Service administrators of both the forest’s Supervisors Office and their bosses in Washington, D.C.
Like I said, the Forest Service is completely dysfunctional. The horror stories never end.
Spot on Alex!
I call it the “spotted owl syndrome”.
Even our glamorous Governor is afflicted with it.
In 1990 the left passed a bill outlawing the cutting of trees because of the spotted owl. I wonder how many of our forest friend have been killed in the resulting massive forest fires, not to mention the billions of dollars and live lost.. Thus the management of the forest went to the government at a cost to tax payers. Nineteen of the largest 20 forest fires has happened since 2000. As Edward explained in this article, the private sector could come in and thin the forests and pay the government thus saving the tax payers millions of dollars. It’s logical but we all know liberals only deal in emotions.
Dennis. Yup..
The government (State/Federal) are the largest land owners and obviously that land is NOT taxed and generates NO revenue.
Theodore ‘Teddy” Roosevelt set up the National Forest Service to manage natural resources. The funding would come from “Timber Sales”….Our National Park’s infrastructure was largely paid by logging revenue. Also, “Teddy” made it so a percentage of Timber Sales went to building schools in these rural communities. This really made a difference during the depression in the 30’s.
40+ years ago, I worked a short time in the woods, both logging and on a ski resort clearing runs.
That was the time when the old foresters, grey haired and usually former loggers and timber cruisers were replaced by overly educated Eco-nazi’s. The old guy’s couldn’t wait to retire.
Since then these over educated people, (mainly from the Bay area) along with the Sierra Club etc. broke a system that used to Conserve the Land.
Those damn hippies now moved up to the forest and wonder what happened.
Logging revenue paid a large chunk of fire fighting, not to mention a lot of logging companies and their equipment could be mustered on short notice to fight fire before the fires got too big.
Now the tax payer funds clearing, thinning, and fire fighting.
Nonsense: The clue is their focus on money, not sustainable management, which is why our deer and elk population in CA has collapsed… more from the same kind of minds. So if you want TRUTH, then here you go: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0hPWPQHtRUrnq6QUEjpNqDvtKsoqzvYv4LKbrERXpkiAauRB2pwVpPxrAFVzcevnul&id=100094700363082
Scientific studies have found the cattle grazing destroys grasslands, native plants and watersheds.
Scientific studies have found that Buffalo grazing vital for restoring and maintaining healthy grassland ecosystems.
Scientific studies have found many things…and logging is ugly……….. I believe there needs to be a balance’.
” focus on money, not sustainable management ”
I agree there…..Back in the 1980’s there was an over selling of timber, much of it being chipped and shipped, to the port of Sacramento to be shipped over seas.
Reagan was accused of over selling timber to make up for trade imbalances, I think it was more likely that the Forest Service wanted bigger salaries, new pick-up truck and a new microwave in the break room.
Environmentalist’s used the endangered species act to bludgeon the entire timber industry. While a correction was necessary, I think it was an emotional over correction. It is a shock to walk into a clear cut and see the devastation.
Why did California Department of Forestry change it’s name to just…Cal-Fire?
Any other scientific suggestions?
Horses don’t browse on native trees, myriad mountain brush species (living and dead) or beetles. Like democrats, they are quite fond of ignoring property lines and blocking highway traffic during commuting hours. Naw, let’s wait and see how the wolf packs and frog crossings do first and then proceed.
Mr. Ring – After being closed for years, the cogen plant in Oroville is scheduled to reopen soon.
And I should have mentioned earlier. Your article is excellent.