In an effort to prevent forest fires, the federal government has committed nearly $5 billion in the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to thinning forests on about 50 million Western acres over the next 10 years. But, as Stephen Robert Miller explains in FERN’s latest article, published with The Washington Post, that thinning creates piles of sticks, chips, and other debris—called “slash”—that creates its own fire risk.
“The challenge now is what to do with all those piles of sticks,” Miller writes. “Some environmental scientists believe they have an answer: mushrooms. Fungus has an uncommon knack for transformation. Give it garbage, plastic, even corpses, and it will convert them all into something else — for instance, nutrient-rich soil.”