Posted on 09/29/2020 9:50:28 PM PDT by crz
Report from friends on the front lines of the Creek Fire and other fires in CA
Good video. Excelet identification of the problem.
Except that we have advanced technology now, so we do not really need to go all the way back to old Native ways of forest management. We can clean the forest and get some wood out of it too. I agree with this video wholeheartedly, but I think, I would prefer less prescribed fires and more mechanical cleaning than this fellow does. Specially at this moment, when we really need to do something fast!
Or maybe, he is just trying to be somewhat politically correct. The prescribed fires are a lot easier to sell nowadays than massive mechanical forest cleaning. Either way, thinning forest is the solution!
Why not? They riot and burn down cities and blame Trump and “systemic racism” and an ignorant and gullible population believes both lies.
I think these fires are very odd. We’ve always had fires but not this bad.
I can’t help but wonder if they were arson.
I am probably reading too much into it here but the rural areas contain many Trump voters and they are getting hit really hard in election years. 2018 mid terms and 2020 Presidential.
The fires allow California to receive federal aid for voter base maintenance and also really disrupt the lives of republican voters. I would imagine being displaced by fire and losing important documents and all might make it difficult to vote come election day.
Now it means Be Like Me or else....
Never underestimate the evil they will perpetrate to hold up their narrative.
They are allowing thugs to kill innocent people in fiery deadly riots that they call “peaceful protests”.
Timber harvests in national forests began to tank in 1990 - from an average of almost 10 billion board feet a year (for thirty years) to today’s 2 billion.
You know who was President in 1990? - George Bush.
The feds as well as the states have been disasters.
https://www.fs.fed.us/forestmanagement/products/cut-sold/index.shtml
The arsonists should be burned at the stake but the size of the losses is due to three things:
1. The (un)holy grail of absolute fire suppression
2. Total lack of proper forest management by all parties
3. Human encroachment into the resulting hazardous overgrowth and deadwood environments.
In other words, “Stupid hurts”.
In the grand design of things fire is just a part of management. It wasn’t that long ago fires burned unimpeded across vast swaths of the US. The prairie area’s burned so often tree’s didn’t have time to grow. In 2011 we lost 14 square miles of ranch to one fire. Those sections are now some of the best grazing area’s on the ranch. Land quickly becomes over grown and fire is the great cleaner. Old growth forests provide little as far as wildlife needs other than a place to get out of the weather. Any old elk hunter will tell you that a burn is one of the best places to hunt. Fresh new growth rich in food source for wildlife. When allowed to overgrow you cut out the sun reaching the forest floor where the grazing and browsing vegetation doesn’t have enough light to grow. You’re basically left with two resources to correct this, fire or logging, with fire being the preferred choice because of how it helps to replenish the soil.
Because he is two faced.
After groveling to Trump for 2 minutes, about 30 minutes later he went on a global warming rant
Not feds. The state made many decisions and laws that prevented the clearing of under brush and dead trees. Cause it’s green ya know
When you don’t clear out dead trees and brush this will always happen
There are many plants in his region and others out west that actually depend on fire. A slow to moderate moving fire that consumes most (not all) of the ground fuels is a great thing for the forest floor or the prairies. It promotes diversity and new growth without killing the wildlife or mature trees.
I wish more people would watch his video(s) as the old photographs vs photographs today proves his point. I love trees and forests and suspect most people do, but the evergreen trees in dry climates or climates prone to dry summers are NOT the mix of trees in the much more humid environment of the east coast. I think many people on that side of the country simply don’t understand what we have out west.
In the interior of the northwest the pine beetle has decimated much of the forest and when those are full of stressed trees that are too close together with dead trees that last for many years littered throughout it is a recipe for catastrophic fire.
Range fires should happen, not forest fires.
Fire does NOT replenish the soil. It burns the material that would be necessary to build up the soil so it retains water.
Ever hear of mulch?
The left is so mixed up in their own lies they don’t make sense days to day or press release to press release.
New vegetation moves right back in replenishing the organic matter needed to hold and maintain moisture levels and reintroduce needed minerals. With an abundance of sun that takes place usually within a year. Fire does break down some nutrients making them more available and temporarily remove others. Some plant life requires fire to propagate properly. Our forest have been burning for hundreds of thousands of years but for some reason the forests keep coming back. Fire is all part of the cycle. My father fought fires in the North West for many years back in the 40’s and 50’s. I was raised in the Umatilla National Forest in Oregon in the 50’s. I’ve seen first hand how burns recover and how fast they recover. I’ve seen the benefit of burns on native wildlife. An overgrown forest provides little for native wildlife.
The were burning at a regular cycles for hundreds of thousands of years.
That is the reason there was nearly no buildup of materials on the forest floors.
“An overgrown forest provides little for native wildlife.”
That is not entirely true and you know it. For some types of wildlife it may be true, but you guarantee that those types of wildlife were there hundreds of thousands of years ago. You cant.
Matter of fact, the present eco systems were not even there hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Oh, the managed forest fires are one of the tools of forest management, no doubt about it! This video is great.
I am just pointing out that there are other methods of forest management. E.G. in Spain the animal husbandry is used to clean the forest (of the US Southwest arid type). Seems to work against forest fires there.
Forestry is a very complicated science, a lot of factors affect it. Climate is definitely one of the main factors.
What needs to be done is to remove politics out of the equation, admit that “pristine forests” of the environmentalist “good feeling” is not a good idea, stop protecting the trees and not see the forest, and let the science take over!
Especially, stop Gov Newsom laughing at forest fire, while promoting global warming.
Forest can be managed under any climate.
If Gov. Newsom instead of giggling while looking at the tragedy, sponsored “Forest management under Climate change conditions” seminar, he may be unto something! But fat chance. He does not want any forest management, climate change or not.
It is even worse than that! The burned out areas are extremely prone to erosion. Not just because there is not vegetation to hold the water, but also that the sterilized soil has a change of chemistry, which makes is even more prone to erosion. If you get a rain storm after a fire, the erosion is incredible! We had incredible erosion damage in Superstition Wilderness, when there was a rainstorm after the fire last year. The Apache trail is closed for at least 5 years until they can even fix just the trail.
I have seen the presentation, it takes few years until the soil returns to normal normal level of erosion. By that time, the soil may be gone. Then it may take few thousands of years until there would be any forest.
We really need to take the “science” high ground out of them! What they support has nothing to do with science, but all with the touchy-feely “save the tree” idiocy. True forest science advocates scientific management of the forest.
Unfortunately, the true forest scientists are tied up in law suits from the “environmental” lobby and scared to death by the “environmental” activists.
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