Smokescreen: Debunking Wildfire Myths to Save Our Forests and Our Climate

by Chad T. Hanson

Smokescreen cuts through years of misunderstanding and misdirection to make an impassioned, evidence-based argument for a new era of forest management for the sake of the planet and the human race. Natural fires are as essential as sun and rain in fire-adapted forests, but as humans encroach on wild spaces, fear, arrogance, and greed have shaped the way that people view these regenerative events and given rise to misinformation that threatens whole ecosystems as well as humanity's chances of overcoming the climate crisis.

Scientist and activist Chad T. Hanson explains how natural alarm over wildfire has been marshaled to advance corporate and political agendas, notably those of the logging industry. He also shows that, in stark contrast to the fear-driven narrative around these events, contemporary research has demonstrated that forests in the United States, North America, and around the world have a significant deficit of fire. Forest fires, including the largest ones, can create extraordinarily important and rich wildlife habitats as long as they are not subjected to postfire logging. Smokescreen confronts the devastating cost of current policies and practices head-on and ultimately offers a hopeful vision and practical suggestions for the future -- one in which both communities and the climate are protected and fires are understood as a natural and necessary force.

Genres: Environment, Science, Nature, Nonfiction, Politics

280 pages, Hardcover

Published May 25, 2021

About the author

Chad T. Hanson co-founded the John Muir Project in 1996. He has a law degree from UCLA and a PhD in ecology from UC Davis. His focus is forest and fire ecology.

Reviews

[David Wineberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

The US Forest Service seems to see the solution to any issue with forests as ”the business end of a chainsaw.” That’s from Chad Hanson, in his fairly terrifying book Smokescreen. It doesn’t matter if the issue is serious, trivial or even positive. The Forest Service (FS) is all about logging federal woods. The excuses it comes up with are comically classic evil. But the result is disastrously real for numerous species, while making piles of money for the FS and its friendly neighborhood loggers.

Hanson has been living this nightmare all his life. He is a forest aficionado, become expert. He and his brother once hiked the entire mountain range of the west coast from Mexico to Canada over a five month period, and he still spends all his time in them. Only now it is to document the disaster left by the Forest Service. Especially now that they are using the fashionable California wildfires to excuse more logging than ever.

Recent years have seen reports of many more wildfires, more severe and costly. The media has a whole glossary of terms to describe how bad they are for people and the planet. Pretty much everybody knows that global warming is responsible, and that the answer is to cut down the trees before the fires do. The more the FS thins the forests, the healthier they will be. More resilient. It is just common sense and common knowledge. That’s what we have a Forest Service for, right?

Only none of that is true.

The position of the Forest Service amounts to the Earth not knowing what is good for it, that all fires are bad, and that the solution is to cut down more and more trees, both before and after fires. Basically, they believe there are no ecological benefits to wildfires. It is nature’s unfortunate mistake, endlessly repeated.

But the planet doesn’t work that way. Nothing happens without a reason, and nothing goes to waste. A devastating forest fire is massively beneficial to innumerable native species of insect, bird, mammal and fish. Many plants absolutely require fires to replenish their numbers. It has worked well for millions of years. The Forest Service wants to stop it. Hanson says “Excluding fire from these ecosystems is like trying to keep rain out of a rainforest.” It is supposed to be this way, and it doesn’t work without it.

Hanson shows categorically that there are eight major lies coming out the wildfire situation, and he methodically destroys each of them in turn, with facts, direct experience, scientific research and photos.

I won’t list all the major lies here, but suffice it to say fires are not the cause of deforestation on Earth. Forests grow back, remarkably quickly, and healthier than ever. Deforestation occurs when Man removes all the wood repeatedly, leaving bare soil unable to reforest itself.

Fires are not merely natural, but necessary, especially to fire-adapted ecosystems. Numerous species depend on them for survival. The world-famous giant Sequoia trees need fire to open their cones and spread their seeds. The seeds only germinate and thrive in the mineral-rich ash from fires. The trees themselves are all but fireproof. Scarring their lower trunks means nothing as long as the crown – 200 feet higher up – continues to live.

When fire tears through a forest, it leaves behind standing dead trees and fallen logs that insects flock to to lay their eggs. Birds gorge themselves on the insects. One bird in particular, the black-backed woodpecker, has an unusual mating ritual. The male drills large holes into these dead vertical “snags”, and the female he is courting picks one for their new home together. Other (non-drilling) birds and flying squirrels quickly take up residence in the never-used apartments, providing homes for several times the population of woodpeckers alone.

The Forest Service, for its part, claims these snag forests not only have no ecological role to play, but they are a danger for more fires. The FS claims nothing can grow in these charred woods; they are useless. So they absolutely must be logged and the wood sold for easy profit to both the contractor and the FS.

And that’s only the beginning. The FS goes on to claim that cutting down all the trees is an environmental service that reduces carbon dioxide in the air, because the wood becomes lumber and there are fewer trees left to burn in a wildfire. Unfortunately, the loggers also burn all the limbs, branches and twigs, filling the air with CO2. Also, the percentage of wood that ends up as boards is tiny compared to all the waste that gets incinerated as biomass. The forest does not get to serve its role of snag forest, depriving species of necessary conditions to survive. And when the loggers are through with it, nothing will grow there, removing an important CO2 sink from the global ecosystem. The FS, in its twisted way, claims the snag forest is a CO2 source, with no potential as a sink. It actually declares whole patches of forest as dead and ready for logging because nothing will ever grow there again. Yet when people visit the areas in question, they are always amazed how lush and verdant and alive with wildlife they are – far more than untouched forests. Until the loggers show up.

“Logging-related soil compaction alone can reduce forest carbon sequestration by 30 percent, and reductions of 50 to 75 percent sometimes occur…Typically only 1 to 4 percent of tree carbon is actually consumed in forest fires,” Hanson explains. Looking at it the other way, wildfires leave 95% of the forest standing. Wildfires are nothing like clear cuts and thinning that simply annihilate everything.

Logging produces ten times more emissions than the amount of wood that fire consumes. It is the Forest Service that is the source of the CO2 – not the forest.

Another protected bird is the spotted owl, now so rare it is famous for stopping construction projects by its mere presence. They also flock to snag forests, and far more of them nest there than in unburnt forests. Because the hunting is far better in the rejuvenating snag forest. Taking away the snag forests means removing their habitat. It’s no wonder they become rarer and rarer even though they are endangered.

Counter-intuitively, fires don’t so much attack homes as embers do. Hanson has aerial photos showing neighborhoods in the now-famously burnt town of Paradise, CA where every home is gone, yet the trees come right up to the edge of the development. He says making homes more fireproof would go a very long way to reducing the damage. (By comparison, the standard response is to cut down forests and keep them away from developments and individual houses.) Simple vent covers and finer screens would prevent live embers being sucked into wooden attics where the super dry framework welcomes them. They go up like Notre Dame Cathedral did - in no time flat, right before your eyes.

Also counter-intuitively, forest fires stop. They seem to burn in patches, sometimes huge, but often not. The surrounding forests send their flora and fauna in to reforest the patch’s ecosystem almost immediately, assuming there is something to work with, like rotting wood and rich ash.

Even more counter-intuitively, dense forests burn less than sparse ones. Dense forests are more lush and humid, their trees more mature and more fire resistant, and the winds can’t scream through them like they do in the open space of clear cut or thinned forests. The thinner the forest, the worse the fire. That is science that takes some getting used to because everyone has been brainwashed for so long to think the very opposite.

Thinning is another FS scam. The service claims American forests are overcrowded, overgrown. This supposedly unhealthy situation is somehow bad for trees, and makes fires far more intense than they used to be, they say. This is due in part to fire suppressions, thanks in part to the FS mascot, Smokey the Bear. In other words, Man himself is the cause of apparently dangerously overgrown forests needing chainsaws, because he prevents forest fires. Again, Hanson hits the books to show this is all untrue.

Historically, forests are not denser today, and fires are not more intense. And they don’t spread faster than deer can run, as the FS preposterously claims. The FS is big on the lie that over a billion animals died in Australia’s fires last year, because the fire spread so fast they couldn’t get out of the way. This has become common knowledge globally. Hanson says if that were true, fires would consume millions of acres in days, instead of hundreds of thousands, spreading over periods of weeks as they very visibly do.

The FS is in league with the loggers. Loggers fill their committees. Every time there is a fire, the loggers hit the media circuit to promote the reverse theories of thinning and clearing. The beneficent FS then blesses conscientious logging in federal forests - for a fat fee. The loggers come off like environmental saviors. It is Alice in Wonderland for real.

The FS also pays scientists to publish and promote half-truths and outright lies, giving these theories the patina of science. Hanson has dug deep to find where such scientists have cherry-picked a good looking stat, despite the context of the paper saying the exact opposite. Journalists take everything at face value, spreading the lies like, well, a forest fire. Everybody believes the “science” when it comes to wildfires, even though it is completely and demonstrably wrong. Hanson compares it to the playbook of Big Tobacco. Get more people to say it more than anyone else says the opposite, and you win.

It would be easy to assign blame for all this to the Trump administration. It clearly and repeatedly called for more logging in federal woodlands, precisely to provide additional profits to loggers. But Hanson’s research shows that every administration going back to at least Jimmy Carter has been this way and held these attitudes of contempt for federal forests. Hanson himself has been in court and has seen the dismissive ways of judges over scientific reports when it comes to logging. It doesn’t matter which president appointed them. They ignore or dismiss it, just like the FS does when presented with facts contradicting its policies.

One of the FS mandates is community reachout. Committees of FS employees, scientists, loggers and environmentalists are supposed to meet regularly, and the FS is supposed to take their positions into account. But Hanson found that the meetings were always far away, and it was almost entirely those paid by the FS who showed up: employees, friendly scientists and loggers. Worse, everyone had to sign a pledge to uphold FS policies before being allowed in (which Hanson refused to sign), so the FS could claim unanimous agreement on its methods. One way or another the FS is a closed shop, dedicated to logging national woodlands as much as possible. Like something out of Huxley, it is the very opposite of what its raison d’être is.

Sadly, more logging and clear cutting happen in the USA than in any other nation on earth – including Brazil…The United States is the world’s worst culprit in terms of carbon emissions from logging. This despite the laws on the books and efforts of the John Muirs and Theodore Roosevelts of the country.

Forests need more complexity to thrive. What the Forest Service wants is more simplicity: interrupted ecosystems in spacious areas. This makes no sense, and the results are faster moving, fiercer fires, destroyed habitat, and fatter profits for loggers and the FS. These are incompatible, and we’ve known it for a very long time. But here we are, learning it all again for the first time.

Hanson’s passion comes through in every paragraph. He is skilled at skewering the FS for its hypocrisy, thanks to his education as an environmentalist as well as his degree in law. But I suspect it mostly because he has lived this every day— for decades — and has been preparing it all in his mind for just as long. It is an excellent, organized, rational and powerful examination of how America is doing it all wrong.

David Wineberg

For images that go with this, see this same review at https://medium.com/the-straight-dope/...

[Maya Khosla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ecologist Dr. Chad Hanson expertly deconstructs a century-old industrial establishment that continues to massively profit from demonizing wildfire. He provides scientifically proven facts that debunk major myths about wildfire: that the intensity of today’s fires is related to “overgrown forests,” that large-scale commercial logging can decrease fire intensity, and that an increased pace and scale of logging operations (often called "thinning") will contribute to fire-safe conditions for communities located far from such operations. These and many other myths are systematically debunked with empirical data and analyses in Smokescreen.

One of the author’s strengths is his “boots on the ground“ approach, another the empirical evidence published by several hundred independent scientists, most of whom are not supported by the logging industries (mainly timber and biomass energy industries) or by agencies that have deep ties to those industries. Clear examples and photographic documentations punctuate the book; extensive references at the end give curious readers a chance for further explorations.

Smokescreen provides a convincing argument for a “Keep it in the Forest, Keep it in the Ground” paradigm. In all likelihood, readers will be surprised and will close the book with a sense of hope.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

An important book that challenges the common thinking about wildfire myths in scientific, government, and layperson circles. Hanson argues that fire levels are far below historical levels; the main driver of fires is climate change and weather, not “buildup of fuels”; that fire is a natural regenerative force and forests quicky rebound after even the largest wildfires; fires are made worse by logging (both pre- and post-fire); and, most unfortunate all, the current narratives around fire exacerbate the effects of climate change.

Much of Hanson’s book focuses on debunking the narrative that forests are ‘overstocked’ and need to be thinned to protect humans. It’s a myth told in the media, by the US forest service, logging companies, and even well-intentioned but fearful environmentalists. Who benefits most from this narrative? Logging companies and the US Forest Service (who fund their budget with timber sale revenues). They log proactively under the pretense of ‘thinning out’ forests to prevent worse fires in the future; they log after a fire has burned through because ‘nothing is left.’

Yet extensive scientific studies have demonstrated this isn’t true. Logged areas burn MORE during fires and have less biodiversity and plant regeneration afterward; communities near logged forests are at much higher risk of danger. After a fire, a forest is regenerating within a few years and provides unique habit for species that need fire; in fact, these areas become huge carbon sinks as new growth sprouts. Bring logging in, and all those positive regeneration effects disappear.

What struck me the most: human firefighting efforts can’t contain forest fires. When a forest fire is put out, it happens because of a chance in weather and rainfall, not because of anything humans do. We’re dumping billions of dollars and risking people’s lives trying to stop something that isn’t merely a futile effort, it’s something that we actually need more of to keep forests thriving (and forests become huge carbon sinks after a fire). Instead, Hanson argues, our firefighting should focus on protecting local communities. There are cheap and easy steps to prevent homes from burning that have protected structures even in the face of some of the most dramatic fires. When homes burns, inevitably it has been in communities that didn’t stake steps like enforcing shrub removal around homes or mandating vents to the outside be fireproof so as not to suck up burning embers. Let fires burn, Hanson says, to give us more climate resilient ecosystems; meanwhile, throw our energy into directly protecting towns.

Hanson shows that even well intentioned “prescribed burns” are based on faulty science and end up having a negative impact on biodiversity and carbon stocks. Again based on poor data, prescribed burns happen far too often and during the wrong seasons and undo any aspirational positive effects. Really this book is an example of human hubris thinking we can “manage” or “restore” forests and wildlife that would do a lot better if we just left them to their own resilient devices and focused our effort on preventing human communities from burning.

This book was fascinating even if you don’t care about wildfires because it shows the power a narrative story can have on people’s consciousness. Even people who care deeply about climate change see news stories of massive flames and assume this must be bad for the world, and it’s easy to think, “oh, of course we have to prevent this/thin forests.” Research and science can be cited and yet cited/conducted so selectively and inconsistently as to be a lie. Financial incentives for government agencies (and even nonprofits like The Nature Conservancy) drive environmental decisions more than concern for nature. Academics who have spent their lives studying one type of forest struggle to rewrite their understanding of decades in the face of evidence that post-fire forests are not unhealthy, just different. The example of how we think about fires is a demonstration of how the simple narratives that are easy to see and based on a sense of fear lead to more destruction (and logging industry profits).

Three stars because a.) the book too often descends into the author simply giving a blow-by-blow critique of various scientific studies he has an issue with, and b.) he turns around and makes the same cognitive error he’s been lambasting the entire book, that is, not recognizing that the situation is a lot more complicated than it is on the surface. He makes comments like, “we should simply move more food production indoors and let agricultural fields return to forest to absorb carbon,” not recognizing the massive increase in energy that requires and how sustainable agriculture has a huge role to play in carbon drawdown (and related problems like soil erosion). But if you’re a layperson with good intentions who hasn’t studied sustainable agriculture, it’s easy to miss that and think you know what the right answer is – just as he’s spent the whole book pointing out that if you’re a layperson with good climate intentions, it’s easy to accidentally advocate the exact wrong solution for forests. As Hanson himself quotes throughout the book, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe,” (Muir).

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smokescreen is a dense but worthwhile read, exploring the myths that have grown up around forest fires in the US. Chad Hanson uses abundant peer-reviewed scientific evidence to demonstrate that widespread (and costly) efforts to suppress these fires are largely ineffective, and primarily serve the interests of those who profit when publicly owned land is logged either pre-or-post fire.

On the other hand, he cites considerable evidence that hardening built structures and taking preventative steps to make the ground immediately surrounding them less welcoming to rogue flames does actually work. These turn out to be the most effective steps we can take to minimize the destructive impact of wild fires, which are a long established evolutionary process that is healthy for natural forest regeneration.

This is one of those books that ought to be more widely read, but given the dense science and policy discussions found throughout these pages, it's a something of an intimidating tome. Despite that, the scale and impact of the problems Hanson discusses make it well worth the effort.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am declaring this book a reference book, and have purchased it. I am never going to “finish” Smokescreen because every time I have to get after the U.S. National Forest Service or the Wayne National Forest for using bamboozling language to confuse the public, this is the book I depend on. Smokescreen alerts you to the code words or phrasing used by the logging industry, the USNFS, and state forests so you can be aware, and the gives you the language tools you need to express your opinions on logging.

[Lily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just was in a fire program and went through the basics. I’ve also worked within national forests and only been taught of the importance of fuel reduction, the reason for our big fires being the lack of it. I’ve looked at a snag forest and felt sadness. I’ve thought about good fires vs bad fires.

This book was extraordinarily interesting to me because it unveiled a whole slew of, yes, myths, that changed my perspective on wildfires and the management public lands have been advocating for in regards to them. The truth about USFS thinning and conservation projects, the necessity for beetle kill and wildfire origin snag forests, and how the intensity of fire has always been heterogenous, a mix of high and low and inbetween. No good fire no bad fire, a necessary part of the landscape!
Hanson is excellent with backing up his statements with many sources and studies and kept a consistent call to action through each chapter. I think anyone working in public lands and their management should check this out.

[RYAN PHAM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Laminated hardcover

Apparently, even though clear cuts have stopped being called clear cuts, they are still happening under the guise of ecosystem management. The logging industry has the habit of using the idea of forest fires to promote the idea of thinning to eliminate forest fuel. However, in the process, they are interfering with the natural snag forest creation process, which provides animal habitats, breeding grounds, and slows forest fires, due to the water content of felled trees. If anything, forest thinning tends to accelerate forest fires since it turns forested areas into something akin to grasslands, where fires spread fastest. Also, forest fires tend happen naturally, at varying degrees, rendering snag forests a natural part of the ecosystem that the logging industry finds inconvenient.

[Lada · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought I was lightly but correctly informed about wildfire management, even in a Mountains 101 course the instructors pointed at old photographs of sparse forest and warned about decades of fire suppression leading to too much "fuel" buildup. I thought the National Forest Service was not doing more prescribed burns (which I believed were needed) because their incentives were misaligned: there's no reward for doing the burns, but if they go badly... However, the NFS according to this book has a much bigger incentive problem: a large part of its [word I seem to not be able to include in the review, starts with r] comes from logging, and it works hard to increase logging pre- and post- fire. Which the author says only makes fires spread faster and the forest regenerate more slowly or not at all (he says this quite repetitively throughout the book).
This is a book that draws from a lot of science (including the author's own), and is written by someone who deeply loves and understands the wilderness, is alarmed about climate change, and has battled political forces that dominate in a system designed to extract carbon from forests for profit rather than sequestering it there.

[Melissa Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me by someone through work, and I read it right away. I appreciate the ideas presented in here about fire ecology and policy. I have experience in this field, but wanted to know more. A very heavy read in the current day, but also has points that bring me comfort as well.

I love forests, and love to read about all aspects. It really rounded out my understanding of natural processes in fire adapted ecosystems, like where I live.

[mouse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exposé that made me feel despair and also motivated to do good work
forest service? more like forest disservice
sometimes the conclusions and statements Hanson made felt sensationalized in the same way he critiques

[Judd Street · Rating 2 out of 5]

Review link forthcoming.

Very difficult book to rate. It's got some great content, but it's one-sided telling means it really needs the cautions associated with a 2-star review in my review decoder (i.e., reader beware and read with care).

[Danielle]

I was provided with a free copy of this book for review for bUneke Magazine. My review can be found in the June issue or on their blog.