Consider the dead tree.
To the living things of the forest and to the environmentalists who love them, a dead tree is critical infrastructure. A standing one — a snag — may house beetle larvae, which are eaten by woodpeckers, who excavate the softening wood for nests, which are then abandoned and taken up by other birds or small mammals, who raise their own young there. A downed log’s cambium soaks up water and holds it like a sponge, even through drought; as it decays, it enriches the soil. Cycles begin anew.
“There is no more important structural component of a forest ecosystem than a dead tree or a down log,” said Chad Hanson, the director and principal ecologist of the John Muir Project. “Nothing even comes close.”
The federal government sees a dead tree as a sort of time bomb. In recent decades, and especially under President Donald Trump, land management agencies have seized on dead trees as a type of “fuel” powering destructive wildfires — despite a growing body of scientific research casting doubt on this position.