COMMUNITIES NEED WILDFIRE FUNDING FIRST.
[WE NEED TO SHIFT FUNDING TO HOMES]
“High risk of building loss is rarely a federal land-management problem. If the goal is rapid reduction of building loss in WUI wildfire disasters, focus resources on defensible space 20–40 m from WUI buildings within 100 m of wildland vegetation.”
– William L. Baker, Landscape Ecology (2022).
Impacts on Communities
What does the science tell us about community protection?
Increasing Community Risks
Proposition 137 is based on an untruth disproven not just by 100 percent of peer-reviewed science but the laws of physics: the claim that cutting down trees in the forest can “prevent wildfires.”
Contrary to what the public has been told by industry, government, and most media, there is zero science showing that cutting down trees will stop the spread of wildfire to communities. Not even the U.S. Forest Service, which carries out “fuel reduction” across National Forests, will make such a claim.
To the contrary, the Forest Service’s own science both disproves the disinformation that 137 backers are pushing. “Under adaptive management, fuel treatments are not designed to prevent or stop fires but to moderate fire behavior when fire inevitably returns. However, there is a frequent misconception that fuel treatments should facilitate suppression and limit the size of wildfires.”
Even Colorado Forest Restoration Institute at Colorado State University, which advises the state’s land management agencies, has contested the claims underlying 137. A 2024 email from CFRI’s director emeritus widely circulated by land agencies admits, “I’m concerned the Wildfire Crisis Strategy overpromises what forest density redx [reduction] can actually accomplish vis-à-vis the lofty objective of saving homes and communities from catching fire. What additional density redx could have reduced the impacts of the Marshall Fire?”
Yet stopping future Marshall fires—the state’s most destructive in history which burned in grasslands and residential neighborhoods, not forests—is still 137 pushers’ main talking point.
“The most effective treatment distance varied between 5 and 20 m (16–58 ft) from the structure, but distances larger than 30 m (100 ft) did not provide additional protection…” — Alexandra D. Syphard, et al., International Journal of Wildland Fire, 2014
To the contrary, the greatest danger behind 137 is the skyrocketing fire risk to communities it will create through logging forests.
As this U.S. Forest Service funded study from 2021 (and countless others) concluded, “Reduced canopy bulk density can lead to increased surface wind speed and fuel heating, which allows for increased rates of fire spread in thinned forests.” A 2025 study also warns of “increased susceptibility of thinned stands to fire spread from higher sub-canopy wind speeds and increased fine fuels (slash).”
Or this 2024 study from CU Boulder, “We know that the primary mechanism for home ignition is firebrands propelled ahead of the flaming front that land on flammable materials attached to, on, or inside the structure and ultimately consume it.” And another from 2020: “it is well understood that thinning of the forest canopy will lead to an increase of wind speed and solar radiation.”
What does the consensus of peer-reviewed science find actually protects homes and lives from wildfire? Home hardening, as in fire-resistant materials on and immediately around structures, not taking out the forest and making things worse.
When confronted on this, 137 pushers will say we need to do both. Yet this March, State Rep. Tammy Story introduced a bill in the state legislature that would’ve routed some of the overflowing “wildfire mitigation” money towards home hardening grants to low-income, elderly, and disabled Coloradans.
“[F]uel thinning also dries out the surface and ground fuels in these forests through the effects of solar radiation and increases in-stand wind penetration, which can in turn increase crown fire potential.” — Rhonda L. Millikin et al., Fire, 2024
What does the consensus of peer-reviewed science find actually protects homes and lives from wildfire? Home hardening, as in fire-resistant materials on and immediately around structures, not taking out the forest and making things worse.
When confronted on this, 137 pushers will say we need to do both. Yet this March, State Rep. Tammy Story introduced a bill in the state legislature that would’ve routed some of the overflowing “wildfire mitigation” money towards home hardening grants to low-income, elderly, and disabled Coloradans.
In his testimony, the Forest and Fire Program Director for The Nature Conservancy–137’s main sponsor–opposed any home hardening at the “expense” of logging, admitting, “We value this funding.”
TNC’s pressure, amongst the other backers of 137—Western Resource Advocates, Denver Water, and Conservation Colorado—killed the bill and left Colorado’s communities unprotected.
As would Prop 137, if the voters of Colorado allow it to pass.
