Posted on 11/17/2018 10:28:23 AM PST by bray
The Paradise fire was on private lands.
If someone screwed up the management of the forest it was the nice conservative folks who lived there.
People who advocate for mechanized deforestation are the ones who own the machines.
Only a child would not understand that there are millions of forest acres in the US and the cost to clear them is in the trillions of dollars each year.
The forests did just fine before man ever stepped foot in them.
I had in mind timber forests in the east where the land is flat and they grow pine trees in a grid. But out west I think fire is the way to go. First because of the terrain. And second because the dry season is so long. If we had six months without rain here in Virginia the entire state would be a tinderbox.
The Camp Fire started on Camp Creek in the national forest. It burned through that forest and onto private lands. The problem with Butte county regulations (per my link above) is that their de facto burn ban applies to all lands, private, public, state and federal.
You can blame the libs who believe that some smoke during a reasonable burn season is more deadly than being burned alive in your car. The fact that conservatives got burned up is a bonus for them.
We had one of our biggest fires in a managed forest just a few years ago; the Black Forest fire in Colorado.
The place was heavily populated and most of it Federally labeled as “Firewise”, yet, it burned fast and took out about 500 homes.
We’ve had several of these types of fires in the area. I watched one neighborhood about 5 miles wide on the foothills side of the mountains with VERY few trees burn in a matter of minutes. It was a typical suburb with no forest and only planted trees and landscape. The fire raced through the place. The homes were the fuel.
Being able to clear out 0.1% or even 1% of the fuel in any given area doesn't slow down a conflagration to any measurable degree.
“Do they want to be good stewards of God’s creation or are they going to continue to worship it.”
The forests were never ours to “steward”. To anyone that can do basic math, The costs would be prohibitive.
Why are there so many people that want to live in the forest but then want to kill all the animals and destroy the forest??
To demand we destroy the forests because of these fires is the same logic other liberals use to demand we ban guns.
Who was going to do these controlled burns on this private land?
CARB not CARD I missed the Otto Core Wrecked on that one.
But for people who want well-managed private forests, there need be only a small buffer between natural and managed forests. If a high intensity fire produces an ember storm in the natural forest, those embers will not light the well-managed forest because there will be no ladder fuels. The same embers could blow 1/2 mile and light up some poorly maintained or poorly constructed houses.
Here's a video of the latter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Vh4cQdH26g That same ember storm might singe some trees in a well-managed forest but would probably not light it up.
...do to dense growth...
due to
Private owners would do the burning if they were allowed to. Problem 1 is they need permits and they have to compete for the 6,000 acres of burning allowed at any one time (out of more than a million acres). All fire requires permits, whether natural or manmade; private, state or federal. Problem 2 is they are only allowed to burn when it is somewhat dangerous with high mixing and some wind. When there is no mixing and no wind, burning is banned. Problem 3 is CalFire banned private burning in Butte county in early June, too early for the level of danger.
NO ONE!!!! The odds of getting a permit are essentially zero, and even GOD can’t help you if you do it without a permit!
You’ve never been to California have you?
I tried to teach my kids a little lesson in entrepreneurship. We lived a block from very expensive stadium parking, and had a big open back yard. Gave them some cardboard and had them make signs that offered $5 parking.
The police showed up literally within minutes to stop them.
The lesson turned out to be just how much fun it is to try to run a business in a fascist economy (Fascism means you can own the property/business, but the Almighty State controls what you can do with it. No economic activity is too petty.)
Agreed, but at this point allowing a naturally started fire to burn itself out is totally out of the question. Decades of malignant neglect have insured that the fuel load is insanely high.
After a major fire (are there any minor fires anymore?) removes the fuel load, that area could revert to allowing natural fires to burn every once in a while.
Hard sell to the locals who vividly remember the recent BIG fire.
The ultimate solution is not going to be pretty or simple.
The Spotted owl...they used to clear cut....They would build logging roads into an area and cut everything down...the timber was harvested and trucked out the..remains were burned ...the burning released the seeds in the cones..
They had been doing this for fifty years..The burn area looked like hell four ten years or so til the new growth got a few feet tall...
The envriomental wackos used the Spotted owl to limit timber harvest on National Forest Lands
There are very few wild fires on the private timber company forest..
The really big irony is dense underbrush makes it very difficult for owls to hunt...
The restrictions you posted make sense in Butte County because of the rice fields. If you’ve ever been there when the farmers are burning off the stubble on a calm day you would agree.
There are specific exemptions from the restrictions for burning for fire hazard reduction if done in accordance with local ordinance.
As neat and tidy as it sounds I’m not going to blame a fire with many causes on one air quality regulation that’s been in effect since the early 70s.
I’ll wait until I hear landowners in the area blame it on their inability to do burns on their land.
True in some cases. But in other cases it is just the result of a few years, mainly since the 2015-16 rainy season. 2016-17 was a plentiful rain season as well. A low intensity fire is still possible in many locations in the next month after the rains start, and next spring after the rains stop. The ultimate solution can be a combination of things, not just more fire, but clear cutting, grazing animals, and such to build some buffers.
Wrong, it started in state and federal forests.
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