Does that make you an expert?
The forest dept. has mismanaged. The biggest mistake was stopping fires and not letting the fuel burn off. And who's fault is that?
You are mouthing a popular story. It is also false. Fire suppression in California has been going on for at least 60 years. The depression put loggers out of business and Roosevelt was trying to preserve forests. People were burning them to get salvage jobs. Sound familiar?
The real fault is a political management system in general. What was the purpose of nationalizing the forests in the first place (1880)? Why? It pleased commercial Eastern timber interests! It was sold as an environmental program. Why are we STILL managing forests by political caprice? Now the popular whim is to PRESERVE the forest, until it flames into nothingness. Burning it to a crisp with this fuel load is just as bad.
How will we pay to fix it? Who is equipped to do the work?Isn't it just a touch too complex to manage by central planning, much less politics?
With all the homes in the Sierra they have to stop the fires to save the homes.
This is only partly bogus. There has been fire suppression where there are no homes. Fire risk is just as bad in the urban Bay Area as it is up there. Homes are at risk in either case. Why are the houses in mountainous timberland? Did suppression of a viable timber industry reduce the purchase price of the land? Did the incessant promotion of the importance and value of forest recreation by the environmental movement play a part? You betcha.
Why don't homeowners manage their fuels? Controlled burning is being suppressed. Who wants that? The environmental advocates of Clean Air want fire suppression, even where there is no air pollution problem. Some also want to burn the homes! It is good for urban real estate prices. Bankers love that. So do construction companies, multinational timber interests, real estate manipulators, bureaucrats, unions...
There is so much fuel from all the years to Smokey the Bear that the situation is bad. Giving the lumber industry all they want would be a disaster.
Listen up chump. The BIG timber industry doesn't want the National Forests logged and WANTS them to burn. They don't want the competition. It's the small mills that are hurting the most and the big guys want those out of business. Sure enough...
The sierra is the life of California. The bay area gets power from the Sierra, LA gets water, the central valley gets power and water. Lumber and "recreation" are secondary issues.
Another greedy power freak, eh? You just want to control it all to please you, just like everybody else. You just don't want to pay for the service. That's why people want the government to do it.
I agree with thinning, but clear cuts are a major mistake.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends upon the nature of the habitat and the reentry time. I would clearcut an historic meadow in a heartbeat, but that wouldn't be the end of it. The system is really hurting for meadows, but meadow-restoration jobs are a lot of work. Shows what you know.
If any one party gets all they want I would think there is a problem. I agree with the line that if neither side is happy that it must be a good compromise.
You have no business knocking CDF. They have more than their share of bozos, but they have some very good people too who really want nothing more than to a good job of caring for forests. One would think that some of them had a reason to dedicate their lives to forestry. They don't get the freedom to do it, in part because of "experts," like you.
This homeowner just spent a four day weekend doing exactly that. - We had to wait 5 months to do it because the forest manager got all burning cancelled at the worst possible time, leaving massive amounts of unburned fuel waiting like cans of gasoline in inhabited areas of the forest.
It's really amazing that we didn't have more fires than we did this past year. - Well-meaning actions by by people given unwarranted power can have disastrous results.
How will we pay to fix it?"
Once the forests are burned to a crisp by the inferno such as happened two summers ago, there's no salvaging them. It could take 100 years for the soil to return to normal.