Heavy machinery “rakes” Finland’s forest floors after tree cutting, greatly reducing fire risks
Mikko Paunio
President Donald Trump was recently ridiculed for telling California Governor Jerry Brown that the Golden State should do as my country does. Trump critics laughed at what some called his “bizarre” claim that foresters in Finland “rake” areas that have been thinned or clear-cut, to remove leaves and other debris that could otherwise start conflagrations like the recent tragic fires in California.
The Washington Post spread similar misinformation. The Los Angeles Times carried an article by Finnish “green” journalist Anu Partanen. “Finland to President Trump: We don’t rake the forest floor, but we do other things you should emulate,” the headline read. Late night talk show hosts had more fun at the President’s expense.
Ironically, all this happened at just about the time that Finland’s own forest specialists declared that Mr. Trump was correct about what he told Governor Brown. The foresters disseminated that information widely to the Finnish media and public.
As a result, much of Finland’s mainstream news media began ridiculing Finns who posted photos of garden rakes with the hashtag #RakingAmericaGreatAgain. Now the media are saying the self-styled comic activists were wrong to laugh at the President.
Of course, that too is ironic, since many of that same, very green Finnish mainstream media had actively questioned and ridiculed Mr. Trump just days earlier.
Back in America, not surprisingly, the exoneration story has been largely ignored. The media, pundits and late-night comedians had already made up their minds, don’t want to be confused by the facts – and don’t want their audiences confused by facts, either. Here’s the rest of the story: the missing facts, anyway.
One of the most pressing ecological problems today is preservationist forestry principles. This ideological approach prevents harvesting mature (or even any) trees, thinning out dense stands of timber to remove excess biomass (and thus allowing remaining trees to grow better, faster, thicker and taller), or even removing dense underbrush. This leads to an over-accumulation of biomass in trees and on forest floors. It makes forests vulnerable to raging and fast moving forest fires, especially during dry seasons, even more so when winds are blowing.
If these policies are accompanied by active suppression of forest fires over long periods of time – or by policies of not dousing “natural” fires until they become really big and dangerous – any ignition can lead to catastrophic events that cause tragic loss of property and human lives.
The “confusion” over what President Trump said unfortunately came initially from the Finnish side, as even our media thought “raking” meant only light removal of leaves, pine cones and other debris from forest floors. Even Finnish president Sauli Niinistö did not understand that the practice really involves “raking” with heavy machinery that removes extensive amounts of combustible material. Mr. Niinistö simply told Mr. Trump he could rely on advice from Finland to prevent catastrophic wildfires.
In Finland, after clear-cutting a forest area, crews use heavy machinery (similar to what is used in this video) to “rake” or gather tree harvesting residues, tree roots and other material into huge piles. The biomass is then chipped onsite after it has dried up sufficiently, and chips are hauled to local heat-producing plants to generate warmth for local residents.
In addition, throughout the clear-cut area, crews heavily till the soil so that a fire cannot move easily into or through the clear-cut area. This harvesting policy is motivated by the idea that clear-cutting mimics wildfires in pristine forests. Wildfires start a new succession: a new generation of trees in forests. Cutting does too, but without destroying soils and soil organisms the way raging fires do.
When the new succession has started in the previously clear-cut forest, Finnish law requires thinning operations around the best remaining trees, and accumulating biomass is again removed from time to time from these young forests. This again lessens the probability of uncontrolled wild fires, while allowing the strongest, healthiest trees to grow more fully in less confined spaces and with improved access to water, sunlight and nutrients.
There was some sense in Washington Post writer Rick Noack’s suggestion that forest roads can help prevent fires from spreading. They help fire brigades gain rapid access to fires before they get too big to control. They also provide open areas (“fire breaks”) that stop fires at their perimeters, if the fires aren’t too big.
Finland is about the size of New Hampshire and Vermont combined. It has an extensive forest road network (120 thousand kilometers, or 75,000 miles!) – and significantly more trees than 100 years ago, despite clear-cutting being at the center of our wood harvesting policy.
However, Mr. Noack also said, “The forest service in Finland does carry out controlled burns of the forest floor, mostly to clear away underbrush and also promote new saplings.” This is misleading, because it makes controlled burns seem more important than they actually are.
As a recent Finnish morning television program pointed out, the yearly acreage of controlled forest fires is only 200-300 hectares (500-750 acres), which is next to nothing. Moreover, these controlled burns are apparently performed on state lands only to symbolically please environmentalists.
Finland’s last “large” forest fire took place in 1997. It burned 250 hectares (625 acres) of forest in Southern Finland – a tiny fraction of what many U.S. fires burn every year.
The catastrophic fires seen in California and elsewhere are not due to climate change – natural or manmade – although warmer, drier, windier weather can certainly be a major contributing factor. The important point is that foresters must adapt to both weather and climate change, and revise past practices that are now known to cause serious problems. They must manage forests better, more scientifically and more responsibly, with special attention to areas where large populations of people reside.
Governments could also implement new standards for homes built in or near forests. Homes should have fire-resistant roofs and walls, and people should be required to keep brush and debris from accumulating.
Governor Brown and others seem to cite climate change as a way to absolve them of responsibility for ideological or incompetent decisions that help create or perpetuate conditions that spawn horrific, deadly infernos. This must not continue.
One final point regarding climate change. Finland’s official forest studies estimate that climate change (warmer temperatures and more atmospheric carbon dioxide) will help increase annual timber growth from the current 102 million cubic meters (m3) to 130 million m3 by 2050. The current wood harvesting rate is around 72 million m3, and the government announced recently that annual growth increased by five million m3 to a staggering 107 million in 2018.
Finland manages theses forests for timber, wildlife, controlled fires – and protection of nearby homes and people. Its lessons can and should be applied elsewhere. President Trump understands that. His incomplete grasp of Finnish “raking” and other practices led to confusion and ridicule, but should not result in these principles and practices being rejected out of hand.
Mikko Paunio of Helsinki, Finland is a science and policy adviser of the American Council on Science and Health. He has served with numerous national and international climate adaptation working groups.
A couple of questions, because I live in an area with a lot of forest preserve that IS managed with an eye toward avoiding fires. Lots of suburban housing around here. One heavily wooded area is awash in maple saplings that could be removed and transplanted elsewhere.
How many invasive species of plants are removed by Finnish forestry practices and does it help the native species flourish?
Is new growth, i.e., immature trees, dug out and moved elsewhere to anchor soil and prevent erosion?
Is any of this done on privately owned land and does the Finnish government provide any kind of help with that?
Thanks for feedback.
“How many invasive species of plants are removed by Finnish forestry practices and does it help the native species flourish?”
We don’t have problems in the forests with invasive plants. However, Finnish forests mostly based on “farming the trees” (with the exception of natural parks). Basically we tend to have only couple of tree species in the same forest – they are very monotonic in nature. You would probably not use the wording “native species flourish” when speaking of Finnish forests.
“Is new growth, i.e., immature trees, dug out and moved elsewhere to anchor soil and prevent erosion?”
No, we don’t do that. After the clean-cut of forest the new trees are planted. Erosion is of no-issue in Finland once again due to climate.
Disagree. Planted areas are often planted with single species, but in a bigger picture, Finnish forests are quite diverse. At a smaller scale, you might not see the wood for the trees.
Finland has quite many invasive species contracted, and those usually survive both raking and forest fires. Ever heard of Heracleum persicum? Don’t touch it, it will hurt your skin permanently so that you will need to keep it covered from light.
I’m sure you meant to say erosion is a huge problem according to greens who claim the Baltic Sea is spoiled by phosphorus emissions; but Finland is flat and trees grow easily so erosion is much different than in a dry, mountaineous and sandy environment, that is occasionally flash flooded.
Note that the soil will sprout a lot of saplings in any case. Birch (Betula pubescens), aspen (Populus tremula), ash (Sorbus sp), alder (Alnus incana), willows (Salix sp) spread fast on open areas. Later come spruce (Picea abies) and pine (Pinus sylvestris), which are usually planted to pass the normal succession.
Small areas are not necessarily planted, because the natural growth will be very fast on good soils. On weak, sandy soils, grown-up pines will germinate well, as long as the ground was well raked.
One of the problems with clearing detritus from logging operations is cost. All of this material can be run through shredders/grinders and used in multiple products and in agriculture, companies have to invest in extra equipment to gather it and transport it, plus the added cost of complying with multiple layers of various regulations. On the other side of the coin here in the states we have multiple layers of regulations and laws which make it even more costly to clear after logging/timbering and make it difficult to impossible to simply clear underbrush in places such as California, Oregon, Washington and parts of Colorado. It is long past time for a sea change in how we handle this in America.
heres dozer with root rake
https://youtu.be/gXh_HwJaXT8
They do an excellent job clearing ground for mining!
A lot of commentators assume that all the terrain that burns in California is:
Higher elevation Jeffrey or mixed large pine and cedar
Flattish hardwood forest (Finland?)
OR, whatever posters are familiar with.
The areas that burned in the Camp Fire have no economic value for wood products – we are talking about digger pines, Manzanita, Live Oak, and chaparral. It is so rugged with so few existing roads that grooming or otherwise clearing the vast area is simply unthinkable. I know just how difficult this area is as I have tromped across a fair portion of it. Take look with Google Earth before assuming your idea makes sense.
It is not remotely possible to clear or groom thousands of square miles of this rugged slope just to protect the communities on the Westside. Buffers near the towns, better emergency plans, maybe change out 100 year old high tension towers, all of that helps. But the lower west side of the Sierra Nevada, and much of rest of California, is always going to be subjected to these kinds of fires. The fuel load is always going to be there, posed and waiting for dry season and wind events. It will be a painful and costly process for PG&E and other utilities (and for us tax and rate payers!) to change their cultures and stop STARTING fires. But that won’t stop the crazy arsonists which we seem to have.
The terrain you are describing needs control burned regularly to reduce the occurrence of runaway wildfires. Now that huge tracts have burned begin a program to control burn. Oh, and tell the environtards to shove it.
Flat? Yeah, kind of. Only hills, swamps, lakes and rivers.
It’s pine and spruce mostly. ‘Hardwood’ is not something that grows in Finland. Finnish language used to refer to ‘noble wood’ (meaning mostly tropical hard wood species), and the rest was just ‘wood’, or local wood, which meant softwood, or birch, which was considered ‘hard’. Oaks were almost completely collected away by the Swedish kings 400 years ago, and the LIA didn’t quite let them reproduce. They’re still rare all but the very south. But spruce grows, in 30-60 years it is decent-sized, and timber and paper is produced from it.
It is much more possible if one tries, and not says it can’t be done as that would kill the delta smelt or something.
AND raking is not quite the only way to remove way too high fuel load. I think many suggest controlled fires.
What is the cost comparison for correcting California’s forest issues with the possibility of removing fossil fuels from the world’s use? Maybe several orders of magnitude?
There is another factor which may not be so prevalent in Finland. In CA foothills you will notice they tend to build on ridges flanked by deep cuts. No one maintains these gorges and they act as a chimney in a fire.
Also this failure to manage these areas leads to more invasions of borers and such and much more deadwood.
Fear of forest wildfires motivated an expensive clearing of North Vancouver residential forests around 2008. The idea was to remove burnable undergrowth and convert these forests into something looking more like an old growth forest where the canopy would naturally limit the burnables on the ground. I watched crews using rakes and other tools for removal of the chopped undergrowth.
Trump Derangement Syndrome strikes again.
https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/be-careful-tinder-dry-north-shore-forests-overdue-for-a-big-wildfire-warn-residents-and-fire-officials
One must be careful with the term “clear cutting”. The sense in this post clearing and thinning, but in the American West it has another meaning; cutting down the entire forest.
Gordon and then replanting, you left that out. But then again I guess New York city is a clearcut.
Forty plus years ago I visited a state park in Southern Indiana. I still remember walking through this forest in amazement of the pine (fir?) trees that were more than 100 feet tall with no branches until the top 25 feet or so. Each were as straight and as tall as the largest and tallest wooden power pole I had ever seen on the side of the road. The ground below was as clean and as clear as any park and covered with the fallen pine needles. Further the trees were far enough apart that you could drive a car between the trees. The tree canopy was so thick there were few weeds, however, there were occasional woods flowers. All provided by Nature.
CA is in complete denial, again. For those of you that attended public schools in CA, I have a newsflash for you: You are between the ocean and the desert. The ocean provides the moisture to create the fuel, and the desert provides the dry weather to cure and ignite the firewood. Every year you have ripe conditions for wildfire, under every climate that we know of. Blaming the climate is stupid, but that is what passes for logic in CA these days.
Raking is not the answer because the terrain is too rocky and steep. The answer is fuel management, through controlled burns, during periods where the air moisture content is high, and the winds are low. The same moisture that feeds the growth of fuel can be used to control it.
The hot dry winds that drive the fires are a normal aspect of the area, and have not changed in recorded history. You want to be prepared before they happen. That way you have containment, when the inevitable occurs.
As long as making excuses is your solution, you will have no solution. Might as well burn a witch or two, and you will get the same results. If you go that route, start with your elected officials, who were supposed to be managing this situation, instead of spending your tax money on non-citizens.
Russ R.,
The problem with controlled burns is the folks who conduct them. Many of the fires I have observed after the fact have been allowed to kill the trees among which the fire burns. Intellectually challenged gaia worshippers don’t seem to understand that hot grass fires will, in effect, boil the sap in a living tree which will subsequently die from the experience and become more flammable fuel for the next fire.
I think that the Carr Fire experience should lead us to brush and digger pine clearing, perhaps in long swaths, to create fire breaks. The material removed, mulched, could be collected for use in cogen plants. My vision is alternating bare and growing belts that could by harvested on a rotating basis. No, it won’t pay for itself, but the cogen feedstock could offset some of the cost. The real payoff is in fewer fatalities and catastrophic destruction of habitat and homes. Perhaps some of the cost could be born by the fire insurance premiums paid by the people living in the zones. Or perhaps a job for the Civilian Conservation Corps who used to do such work.
The other benefit of some of this kind of work in Northern California could be the planting of Native Species in the mulched zones that might be less fire prone than the digger pines and manzanita that burn so readily.
As far as raking goes, California still has a requirement to provide defensible space around houses and outbuildings in the forest. Part of the problem with almost all cities in California is the creation of an urban forest environment due to tree and bush planting adjacent to houses. The infamous Oakland Hills fire was a eucalyptus forest fire among the houses. The Camp Fire as it went through Paradise was a brush/grass fire that was wind driven through town wiping out houses, but leaving many of the trees in the Urban Forest behind. We need to enforce the defensible space rules already in place.
PBH
Just because some people don’t know how to do controlled burns, doesn’t make them a bad idea. The public will grow weary of clearing the fuel by hand, because it is dirty slow work, that does not provide a tangible value. The area is too vast to do it by hand, although it is the preferred solution in residential areas, in addition to raking those areas.
Wild fires need a constant source of new fuel, and the wind to drive them into that fuel. Fire breaks give the fighters a “line of defense” that can keep the fire contained, when it is blown into a no fuel area.
There is plenty of opportunity to start your methods in areas around current housing, and try to push it out into remote areas. I think you find a “lack of enthusiasm” for that, which means most of the area needs to be burnt in a controlled manner, on an on-going basis.
“clearing the fuel by hand, because it is dirty slow work,” Which makes it perfect for the 100s of thousands of convicts in Kali. Repay their debt to society by giving service to Mother Gaia! Win-Win.
^ +1
The problem with Kali is that the fires there are unavoidable, and the *more* rain they’ll get, the more fuel grows.
The only way is to collect wood that is collectable, raking or without, and burn what is left from wide enough areas so that random fires don’t ash the whole place. And really, they need escape routes, safe areas and better fire prevention regulation. At such an area, buildings must not change into torches just like bricks are not a good idea in a hurricane.
Adapt to your weather! Adapt to your *past* climate.
Now I have read about 80% of the fires in California are man caused?
About Norway and its climate not indicative to fires, well have a look at Russia, Alaska, Yukon, BC, Alberta the rest of Canada. They have fires, some very large and destructive, so Norway and its climate for reducing fires does not fit.
The coast of British Columbia is a heavily forested maritime climate, not Mediterranean like California is in most areas. This BC area gets lots of rain and snow but can dry over the summer and was the domain of the huge Mars water bombers for fifty years. Guess why those big expensive water bombers where kept around that long? Disclaimer they are no longer used because of turbine powered aircraft and politics, mainly politics.
They have been raking the forest near the south rim of the Grand Canyon. They also know where the good money is.
For all of those not familiar with the West Coast more less where the Camp Fire was I recommend watching Juan Brown on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuTt-wWvREk. Both aerial and ground video of the Camp Fire.
Clear cut logging is done for a couple of reasons. One is that the tree species most desired are pioneer types that require bare soil for seed regeneration and full sun for growth. A second reason is the harvest area needs to be large enough to cover the costs associated with building road and complying with State requirements and to make a profit.
We Finns do something right because Sweden and especially North-West Russia have similar climate and soil as we have but they have much more forest fires.
I worked as a Forester for the BLM back several decades. The use of a “rake” for removing wood waste after clear cutting and put into piles to be burned. Its use was to reduce the amount of burnable material, and prepare site for new forest. We would have never let those shown in in the videos about on any of our clear cuts as the would have piled up too much dirt in the piles. The ones we used had 3 to 4′ finders which let the soil/dirt fall out as the woody material was raked up. Also tree stomps were not removed, left there with root in tack to hold the soil till new forest came. I suspect that is what is used in Finland.
After 10 years of having wood waste (slash) piled and burned, we decide on going a different way. We had the contractor use a roller chopper (a 5-6′ round cylinder with foot line tines sticking out around it and 10 plus feet wide). It allowed the slash to be chopped in place, opened up mineral soil for seeds, and reduce the fire hazards.
I agree that much of the land in CA that is being burned is non-commercial forest land. Too steep or not growing a commercial tree species. When I was in college back the 60’s it was well know that much of the brush covered lands in CA were burning on a 10 year cycle. These are the lands that many have moved into and now have their homes burnt. Though from the pic’s of Paradise, there were homes among trees of commercial size and species.
The photo of the machine rake is not from Finland, but from a University of North Carolina about forest fire equipment.
https://uncwwildfireinfo.weebly.com/
Finland’s President Sauli Niinistro says that Finland does not rake its forests and has no idea where Trump got that idea. He says that Finland has an extensive surveillance system for fires — that’s all.