Former second in command of US Forest Service questions agency’s accelerated push to thin forests and log big trees in response to fire, insects and climate change. Felling forests, Jim Furnish says, is not a strategy to save them
Author Archives: Jim Furnish
Jim Furnish was deputy chief of the U.S. Forest Service from 1999 to 2002 and spent 34 years with the agency. During that time, he helped usher forth critical reforms that brought the Forest Service into the modern age, using science as a guide, moving away from treating forests as commodities there to be liquidated and rewarding ecological thinking. He was one of the principle architects in protecting 58 million acres of roadless lands essential to wildlife, clean water and wilderness character.. He is author of Toward A Natural Forest: The Forest Service in Transition. He currently is a consultant.