After Recent Unparalleled Wildfires Colorado Looks to Logging to Re-Balance Forests

After recent unparalleled wildfire in Colorado has the state’s Department of Forestry and their foresters are looking at actions to bring the states’ forests back into balance with the state’s population growth and where people are choosing to live. This is resulting in some large-scale clear cutting, which according to Colorado State Forest Service director Mike Lester is needed to create firebreaks in order, “to give firefighters a place to make a stand” and “take out the energy” from inevitable future record wildfires. Lester went onto say when lodgepoles grow back, the surrounding broader forests will gain age diversity, with different species such as aspens popping up amid pines on newly sunlit slopes. “In lodgepole forests, if you want to mimic what happens to lodgepole naturally, you do clear-cuts,” he said. “Lodgepole pines naturally regenerate with forest-clearing fires.” The Wilderness Society has voiced their concerns about the project and the science behind it. Noting that they not opposed to forest management or logging.