Monday, November 06, 2006
Replanting Forests after Wildfires Unnecessary
A recent article about reforestation suggests that areas burned in recent wildland fires have failed to naturally re-grow conifer saplings, and implies that intensive post-fire logging and artificial replanting are necessary. However, even a cursory site visit to the Storrie fire, which was highlighted in the article, reveals that abundant natural conifer seedling and sapling growth is occurring on the burned national forest lands -- even in patches where most or all of the trees were killed by the fire -- as I have found in numerous field surveys.
