[palmer]

Maintaining healthy forests can be done many ways. One easy way that California prohibits is prescribed fire: https://www.arb.ca.gov/drdb/but/curhtml/r300.pdf Note that those "air quality" regulations apply to all land, private, state or federal. Note also that those Butte county regulations only allow 6,000 acres to be burned at any one time. That means the few weeks to a month or two at the end of the rainy season, before the hot and dry season, is not nearly enough time to burn the more than a million acres in Butte county.

Furthermore CalFire was putting out fires early in the dry season instead of setting fires in areas with dangerous buildup. They learned nothing from the Napa Valley tragedy. They also banned private burning in Butte county in early June while it was still safe to do so.

The blood is on their hands, mainly CARB and the county AQ board. They decided that a little smoke for a few weeks was too high a price to pay for the needed removal of brush, much of which grew in the 2015-2016 rainy season. Instead they burned scores of people alive. I think the current estimate of over 1000 missing is an overestimate. I am hoping anyway.

[bray]

Go to that website and you will see a forester say those prescribed burns are the worst thing you can do.

[morphing libertarian]

http://www.pushback.com/Wattenburg/articles/NowTheyHaveBurnedLosAlamos.html

For me this is the definitive writing on managing forest fires. Dr. Wattenberg had let night radio show from the bay area. He worked at Lawrence Livermore Lans and was called the smartest man you can talk to for free (on the radio).

The state of Cal ignored him on gasoline additives and clearing underbrush from forests, He died 3 months ago, but his work is on the internet.

[bray]

The best one is gone. He explained how they had a sanctuary forest set with the latest burn methods and the fire went right through it and stopped in his managed forest.