From the article The Environmentalists Making Forest Fires Worse I learned about Denise Boggs, who seems to be a case study in what very effective altruistic execution looks like when it isn’t grounded in evidence. First, adverse impact:
From 2010 to 2024, California endured more than 8000 wildfires a year that burned on average just under 1.1 million acres of land. In total, over that period, more than 16 million acres burned in California—about 16 percent of the total landmass of the state. These fires burned through endangered species’ habitats, killing millions of wild animals, and threatening endangerment of species like the long-toed salamander and dozens more.
The smoke produced by California’s fires also costs lives. Between 2008 and 2018, PM2.5 pollution from wildfires was responsible for between 52,480 and 55,710 premature deaths in California alone. But the smoke from California’s fires does not stop at the state border. In 2020, about 28,000 premature deaths were attributable to wildfire smoke across the United States, with the majority occurring in western States.
The cause:
To combat wildfires before they happen, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), county conservation boards, and other stakeholders implement fuels reduction projects that can reduce excess dry wood and shrubs, and clear smaller vegetation that allows fires to grow faster and reach into the canopy of forests. Fuels reduction approaches like mechanical thinning and prescribed burns have proven to be effective mitigation strategies to reduce the damage from wildfires on ecosystems and to help firefighters stop fires.
Yet, a small but loud environmentalist minority opposes fuels reduction, instead claiming that California’s forests must be left untouched. They use outdated environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Endangered Species Act, Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and National Forest Management Act in courts to delay, and sometimes cancel, projects that would mitigate the wildfires that destroy the ecosystems they claim to protect, and threaten tens of thousands of lives.
During the period that about a sixth of California’s forests were going up in flames, one single group was busy suing the USFS 24 times. That group, Conservation Congress, was responsible for just under two fifths of the USFS’s NEPA-related lawsuits that were decided in federal circuit or appeals courts in California from 2010 to 2024, and spent $2 million on those lawsuits and 5 more in other western States.
Conservation Congress isn’t just one group, it’s one person, Denise Boggs:
What’s most remarkable about Conservation Congress is not their ability to single-handedly hamstring dozens of USFS projects, but that they are, in fact, single-handed: the organization effectively is just one person: Denise Boggs of Great Falls, Montana.
A long-time forest activist and veteran of the California “timber wars,” Boggs has taken the USFS to the mat on countless occasions, often coming up the loser. But she is determined. Boggs believes that the USFS, in bed with logging companies, is using fuels reduction programs and other fire management to create “loopholes big enough to drive logging trucks through.” It is Bogg’s mission to close those loopholes and save the northern spotted owl.
There are other such special interest groups, although they’re much larger; the article names the Center for Biological Diversity (100+ staff) and the Sierra Club (700+!). In the case of Boggs, her mind-blowing cost-effectiveness, if not sign/direction, seems to be a testament to sheer tenacity + blinding focus + a theory of change that leverages US environmental law (NEPA litigation in particular) letting small groups delay or stop big federal projects with lots of local support (structural pendulum overswing from Jane Jacobs vs Bob Moses?):
The Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club are national non-profits that advocate for and act on behalf of a specific ideological framework that places the abstract entity of “the environment” over all else.
While the Sierra Club has a much longer history—the organization was founded in 1892 by legendary environmentalist and conservationist John Muir—the rest of these non-profits are relatively new projects. CBD was founded in the 1990s by a group of northern spotted owl biologists who sought to protect the species at all costs. Conservation Congress, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, and Native Ecosystems Council are all post-turn-of-the-21st-century organizations founded by activists who grew up—ideologically speaking—during the environmental protests of the late 20th century.
With the exception of the Sierra Club, which has grown beyond just conservation and preservation, these groups are single-issue groups—protect endangered species, no matter their niche, or lack thereof, and ignore everything else.
(In different circles, there is another name for this kind of thing.)
I really like the outdoors, some of my most cherished youthful memories were the multiday hikes across the very SoCal wilderness Boggs’ Conservation Congress aims to preserve. But man, this ain’t it. 52,480 to 55,710 premature deaths between 2008-18 due to PM2.5 pollution from wildfires in California alone and 28,000 premature deaths in 2020 alone(!) attributable to wildfire smoke across the United States and 16%(!) of California’s entire landmass ravaged by wildfires killing millions of wild animals and causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage ain’t it. Gargantuan impact and cost-effectiveness but negative sign.
Evidence grounding matters a lot to ensure positive impact sign, and sometimes naively counterintuitive interventions like “regular targeted forest-thinning and burning are better than leaving forests untouched” are actually correct, and sometimes the evidence says that interventions need to change with the times (especially policy prescriptions) so you shouldn’t get wedded to them let alone build ideologies and tie identities to them. Evidence grounding may not be enough however: your frame/prior for interpreting the evidence matters a lot too. The article argues that Boggs is trapped in a bad prior:
Ultimately, groups like Conservation Congress don’t really claim that fire prevention through mechanical thinning and prescribed burns—or other fuels management practices—are not effective. Boggs simply argues that any and all U.S. Forest Service projects are secretly logging projects. Fire management, to these groups, is a cover-up for a corrupt federal agency in bed with timber companies. To save old-growth forests, they must stop all projects all the time, and forests must go untouched.
From the article The Environmentalists Making Forest Fires Worse I learned about Denise Boggs, who seems to be a case study in what very effective altruistic execution looks like when it isn’t grounded in evidence. First, adverse impact:
The cause:
Conservation Congress isn’t just one group, it’s one person, Denise Boggs:
There are other such special interest groups, although they’re much larger; the article names the Center for Biological Diversity (100+ staff) and the Sierra Club (700+!). In the case of Boggs, her mind-blowing cost-effectiveness, if not sign/direction, seems to be a testament to sheer tenacity + blinding focus + a theory of change that leverages US environmental law (NEPA litigation in particular) letting small groups delay or stop big federal projects with lots of local support (structural pendulum overswing from Jane Jacobs vs Bob Moses?):
(In different circles, there is another name for this kind of thing.)
I really like the outdoors, some of my most cherished youthful memories were the multiday hikes across the very SoCal wilderness Boggs’ Conservation Congress aims to preserve. But man, this ain’t it. 52,480 to 55,710 premature deaths between 2008-18 due to PM2.5 pollution from wildfires in California alone and 28,000 premature deaths in 2020 alone(!) attributable to wildfire smoke across the United States and 16%(!) of California’s entire landmass ravaged by wildfires killing millions of wild animals and causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage ain’t it. Gargantuan impact and cost-effectiveness but negative sign.
Evidence grounding matters a lot to ensure positive impact sign, and sometimes naively counterintuitive interventions like “regular targeted forest-thinning and burning are better than leaving forests untouched” are actually correct, and sometimes the evidence says that interventions need to change with the times (especially policy prescriptions) so you shouldn’t get wedded to them let alone build ideologies and tie identities to them. Evidence grounding may not be enough however: your frame/prior for interpreting the evidence matters a lot too. The article argues that Boggs is trapped in a bad prior: