I am commenting on the plans' recommendation of Alternative
#3 which calls
for thinning to reduce wildfire risk and promote
resilience. I object to Alternative #3 based on the
following:
- The amount of carbon that burns in a fire is greatly
exaggerated in the Draft Scoping Plan, which assumes that 80% of
forest carbon is burned in a fire rather than the 3% that is
burned.
- Thinning does not make forests less vulnerable to fire.
Much carbon is lost immediately when the trees are logged or sent
to a bioenergy plant. Recent fires have shown that it often
worsens fire risk.
- More carbon could be sequestered and stored in forests by
changing forest management – increasing plantation rotation
lengths, eliminating even-aged management, eliminating salvage
logging and letting dead trees remain in-place (storing carbon for
decades and eventually rebuilding the soil).
- More carbon would be stored if PG&E stopped cutting
down millions of trees instead of fixing their antiquated equipment
and bare wire distribution lines.
Thank you,
Cheryl Weiden
Los Altos
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