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It's a case of legislation chasing headlines rather than science.

Which, in the case of the misleadingly titled Fix Our Forests Act (FOFA, S.1462), is exactly what the timber industry wants.

Far from "fixing" forests the bill would likely make wildfire danger much worse.

And unfortunately, one of California's Democratic senators, Alex Padilla, is a co-sponsor of the measure. Take action to urge Sen. Padilla to drop his support for this forest-threatening bill!

In the immediate aftermath of L.A.s devastating January 2025 wildfires the legislation was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, where it went straight to a floor vote.

Now it awaits final action on the Senate floor, which could take place at any time.

In recent correspondence about his bill Sen. Padilla cited the destructive effects of the L.A. fires and continued, "As such, our responses to fire mitigation and land management must shift to meet this reality."

The legislation, he said, would "protect communities, advance watershed restoration" and "increase forest health and protect our communities from the risk of catastrophic wildfires."

Sadly, science supports none of these claims.

For starters, the southern California fires were chaparral fires, not forest fires. Forest management had little or nothing to do with the fires.

Far from reducing wildfire frequency and severity, logging and industrial thinning operations (which are tantamount to logging operations) increase wildfire conditions by drying out the forest and helping introduce flammable weeds and grasses.

Moreover, the bill contains nothing to actually protect communities from wildfire damage: It carries no dedicated funding for home hardening, evacuation planning, or defensible-space readiness.

Tell Sen. Padilla not to be taken in by the timber industry agenda embodied in FOFA and to withdraw his support!

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