Climate change fuels California emphasis on preventing fires

The Associated Press ^ | September 23, 2021 | By ADAM BEAM

[Hojczyk]

Most national forests quit logging in the 1980s.....made life a lot easier for the Head Forest Ranger .....no logging roads to build...no BF estimates..they just made it forever wild....so we have forty years of under growth...Plus the bark beetles killed millions of acres

[Chode]

brain science maybe?

[DoughtyOne]

I agree, but the one thing folks can’t answer for me, is how
we had any forests to inherit in the days before we could
muster the manpower to manage the forests.

I buy into the underbrush and fallen tree line to an extent,
but it doesn’t cover all the bases for me.

[ManardG]

Until recently, California ‘’ecologists have successfully blocked clearing dead wood and paid a horrible price. Seems they are waking up.

Deadwood Releasing 10.9 Gigatons of Carbon Every Year – More Than All Fossil Fuel Emissions Combined

https://scitechdaily.com/deadwood-releasing-10-9-gigatons-of-carbon-every-year-more-than-all-fossil-fuel-emissions-combined/

[antidemoncrat]

“Millions of acres of California forest have been blackened by wildfires this summer, leading to the usual angry denunciations from the usual quarters about climate change. But in 1999, the Associated Press reported that forestry experts had long agreed that “clearing undergrowth would save trees,” and that “years of aggressive firefighting have allowed brush to flourish that would have been cleared away by wildfires.” But very little was done. And now fires of unprecedented size are raging across the Western United States.”