James Woods on Fox -great interview.
The root cause.
Not because of a Century of ‘Rat politicians?
[Reagan excepted]
The far-left Mother Jones caught onto this years ago. Of course, now the lefties blame Trump, instead.
It burns one way or another. Best to control it.
But boy they sure kept Trump from winning CA. You have no home but boy you SHOWED Trump. IDIOTS. Trump has been talking abt this for years.
Ping for later. Mother Jones is to the left of the left, but they are not entirely useless.
“On the right side, however, Berleman had set a prescribed burn just this spring.”
You cannot prescribe burn all of the state every year. There is just no way to do that. How much of the land area can be prescribe burned each year? 5%? 10%? 25%?
Doing a prescribed burn every few years doesn’t do anything. The weeds are annuals and grow like...you know what.
And the wild weeds and grasses grow to 4 to 5 feet tall every year by late May. Weed growth is stopped after a prescribed burn in late spring, so the grasses will be a lot smaller in October. But the following year they will be 4-5 feet tall again in May as if you had done nothing the year before.
I’m not saying don’t do prescribed burns. But I wonder just how effective this strategy is.
When the first settlers arrived in the West, they noticed that if the normal droughts and lightening storms didn’t strike fires, Indians would light them in the hills every year. It rousted lots of game and cleared the brush.
Almost all of the common grasses in southern California are non-native species from Europe and the Mediterranean, including wild oats, bromes, and ryegrasses. In general, native grasses were perennial species that lived through the dry summers. Unlike native perennials, non-native annual grasses germinate in the winter and complete their life cycle before summer. Their dried tissues can provide fuel throughout the summer and fall fire season. Mature grass seeds that fall to the ground in early summer will escape damage from high fire temperatures.
From AP / KTLA TV (Los Angeles)...
‘Little Arson Grasses’: Non-Native Species Making California Wildfires More Frequent, Study Finds
Nov 4, 2019For much of the United States, invasive grass species are making wildfires more frequent, especially in fire-prone California, a new study finds. Twelve non-native species act as “little arsonist grasses,” said study co-author Bethany Bradley, a University of Massachusetts professor of environmental conservation.
Wherever the common Mediterranean grass invades, including California’s southern desert, fires flare up three times more often. And cheatgrass , which covers about one-third of the Intermountain West, is a big-time fire promoter, Bradley said. “I would not be surprised at all if invasive grasses are playing a role in the current fires but I don’t think we can attribute to them directly,” Bradley said. University of Utah fire expert Phil Dennison, who wasn’t part of the study but says it makes sense, said, “In a lot of ways, California was ground zero for invasive grasses. Much of California’s native perennial grassland was replaced by Mediterranean annual grasses over a century ago. This study doesn’t look at invasive grasses in the areas that are burning in California, but invasive grasses are contributing to the fires there.”
Experts say the areas burning now in California are more shrubs and grasses than forests, despite what President Donald Trump tweeted over the weekend.
“This is a global problem,” said University of Alberta fire expert Mike Flannigan, who wasn’t part of the study but said it makes sense. “I think with climate change and human assistance we are moving to a grass world. One region they should have mentioned is Hawaii where wildfires are increasing in large part due to invasive grasses.”
Invasive species are spreading more because of climate change as warmer weather moves into new areas, said study lead author Emily Fusco, also of the University of Massachusetts. New England and the Mid-Atlantic are seeing new invasive and more flammable grasses, Bradley said.
The study in Monday’s journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences looks at the connections between a dozen species of invasive grasses and fires nationwide, finding fires occur more often in places with the non-native grasses. But the study did not find a link between invasive grasses and the size of the fires.
Four of these species, including cheatgrass and common Mediterranean grass, are in California. These grasses get dry and then watch out, Fusco said.
Flanagan noted that invasive plants that are not grasses also feed the wildfire problem.
While most outside experts said the study was important, wildfire expert LeRoy Westerling at the University of California, Merced said that with wildfires the size is key so this study is less valuable because it measures frequency.
Wow. Who saw this coming? Not me.
Maybe the world really can be saved?
By the way...
Western and Pacific Canada have adopted the same suicidal forest management as California.
Here in Seattle, we have been breathing Canadian smoke from smoldering summer forest fires for the last decade.
Canada, of course, blames CO2 and Global Warming.
Consider that most Calif tribes consisted of around 60 individuals. Then consider how the 20 or so grown men of that tribe would be able to control-burn a fire set in forests or heavy brush in steep terrain without the use of water, chainsaws or heavy equipment. More recently, a Forest Service project of controlled or ‘cultural burn’ on Yuruk tribal land of over 1/2 million acres only managed to burn 80 acres over 5 days. Burning the undergrowth of a 1/2 million acre forest every 5 years would be impossible to accomplish without uncontrolled burns or a huge workforce.
When George McClellan led a survey party following an indian trial through the Northern Cascades for a Pacific Railroad route, his party found ““Most of the way led through a burnt forest” (Cooper1853) or, “These mountains have been burned over, so their appearance is bald and barren”. Indians burned millions of acres, destroying trees and the topsoil their roots held; trees replaced by wild strawberries, grass or blackberry vines that could grow in poor soil but did little to control errosion and mudslides.
By burning all the seedlings and young trees off, there were no new trees to replace older, diseased trees which were more likely to burn. Tribes would start forest fires to chase game out, but the same game relied on brush for camoflauge of their young and on lichens, buds and tender new growth essential to their winter and early sprint diets. By burning grasses which game such as buffalo, deer and birds needed for food, they allowed weeds and low-nutrition grasses to grow. A park-like but sterile environment. Tribes also used fire to burn out their enemies or to clear an area for their village, burning a new area each time they exhausted the resources and needed to move. Overall, tribal conservation efforts seemed to be more in line with preserving berry growing grounds and promoting oak over other tree species than the health of the forests and fauna around them.
I wonder if Kamamala Harris is still considering running for Governor of California. ROTFL! Probably will want to “spend more time with her family.”