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i live in northern California. This article describes the reality on the ground: https://www.propublica.org/article/they-know-how-to-prevent-megafires-why-wont-
by olivermarks 6y ago
i live in northern California.
This article describes the reality on the ground:
https://www.propublica.org/article/they-know-how-to-prevent-megafires-why-wont-anybody-listen https://www.propublica.org/article/they-know-how-to-prevent-...
The winter months used to be spent executing forestry management, 'raking' with bulldozers and diggers designed to clear the fuel that builds up on the ground and becomes a major fire hazard in the summer and fall months. (You can easily find video of forestry raking and controlled burns online, the same term is used in the UK). Controlled burns to clear fire roads and areas in order to prevent fie spread complete the winter cycle.
We are now years behind in clearing the undergrowth that are a major cause of fires. Whether it is federal or state land the environmental lobbyists have been highly effective in challenging these ancient practices, believing they harm our planet.
Always keen to cut costs, the state now spends far more seasonally on fire fighting, a hugely lucrative business, than preventative investment in land management. We are at a crisis point but the governor choses to claim it is 'global warming' that is causing these massive fires, when in reality the far greater issue, which could be quickly rectified, is lack of forestry and vegetation management.
We are now in a situation where logging mills have burnt in Oregon, making it even harder to keep up with processing wood and adding to the cost of housing. While California burns we are importing construction timber from Canada.
- mistrial9 6y agothis is factually flawed -- most forest lands in California are owned and managed by Federal Department of Interior and/or large timber interests
- olivermarks 6y agoCorrect. The reality is it doesn't matter who 'owns' land if you're not allowed to manage it for fire prevention because of endless legal challenges. 'major disinfo with an agenda' is not appropriate language on HN. i live in Cal, I am extremely interested in solving the fire crisis and I have no business or political beliefs associated with the timber industry.
- mistrial9 6y agothis is one paper that reads well -- Lessons for California Fire Use from Western Australia ; doi: 10.4996/fireecology.0902014 ; Fire Ecology Volume 9, Issue 2, 2013 in that, they discuss controlled burning among other things.. they reference Dr Scott Stephans who was lead author on 'Drought, Tree Mortality, and Wildfire in Forests Adapted to Frequent Fire' February 2018 / BioScience where it is stated, summary first paragraph : Massive tree mortality has occurred rapidly in frequent-fire-adapted forests of the Sierra Nevada, California. This mortality is a product of acute drought compounded by the long-established removal of a key ecosystem process: frequent, low- to moderate-intensity fire. ... The scale of present tree mortality is so large that greater potential for “mass fire” exists in the coming decades, driven by the amount and continuity of dry, combustible, large woody material that could produce large, severe fires. For long-term adaptation to climate change, we highlight the importance of moving beyond triage of dead and dying trees to making “green” (live) forests more resilient.
- olivermarks 6y agoThank you.
- ironmagma 6y agoWhat would be the agenda? Profits for the death prevention industry?
- jeffbee 6y agoYou are correct. The USFS does not need any kind of state permit to issue timber leases. The reason the national forests in the west are under-harvested is because of economics. It is much less expensive to obtain wood products from industrial tree farms in the US south, or abroad, than it is to cut them in the mountains of the west. Currently, national forest lease activity stands near an all-time low.
- bobwall 6y agoYes, the 'global warming' piece is almost comical in that almost every person in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles, year in year out buy the latest iPhone and every tech gadget imaginable. The carbon footprints of these are huge. To then have the argument that we need to do something about climate change is so hypocritical. Just do proper forest management and keep the climate change for a different topic is my opinion on it. Because, if people really cared about global warming by lowering their usage of things, this is the wrong state to ever even come close to doing it.