In the words of the Steve the BillBoard guy...
"This is gonna cause a $hit Storm..."
Enjoy
Posted on 10/04/2002 9:46:05 AM PDT by EBUCK
In the words of the Steve the BillBoard guy...
"This is gonna cause a $hit Storm..."
Enjoy
EBUCK
That is a load of crap. Selective logging *IS* proper forest management and clear cut forests that are re-planted will be forests once again.
Or a firestorm. :^)
As Gramoa Dave pointed out, it all happened right here on FR! The organization and successful completion of projects like this is EXACTLY why we need to donate to FR : FR is a base of operations for conservatives everywhere. It's a virtual town hall where we can meet to get things done.
If you haven't donated, PLEASE do! If you HAVE donated, stop by and BUMP this thread!
Envirals (Democrats) SHOOTING?? GUNS?? Oh, the irony...
If we were to reduce the fuel risk by removing some of the fuel before a burn, we could manage these fires. The problem is that it would cost a lot of time and money and would upset some powerful people. That means it won’t get done unless somebody can pay for at least part of it by selling logs.
Most of the urban professionals who inhabit rural forests think that a forest choked with brush and scraggly trees is "natural." Their faith in forest preservation is unchallenged by the tragic personal experience of a firestorm. Many share a cultural history of activism against environmental abuse. Their representatives feed off that angst and are now forcing passage of regulations that may eliminate the very forestry practices that can reduce and control the fuel. Because of the restrictions on logging, there are also fewer people with the opportunity, capital, and trained personnel to fight these fires safely.
The public has demanded rules protecting a socialized commons: "clean air." A rule system can only regulate human sources of atmospheric pollutants. "Natural" air isn’t clean. When we have controlled burns with planned ignitions, they cause "air pollution." If it is a wildfire, the media call it "smoke."
Regulating prescribed fire into oblivion may protect CDF and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) from accountability, but it gives us a system that fails its purpose. It is assured to destroy the historic fire balance of the forest and has elevated the risk of fatal conflagration to inevitable.
Environmental activists think they have a better idea of how to manage the inevitable catastrophic fire. Call it "inevitable" and let it burn. It is a policy that has not been subjected to serious scrutiny. When we have conflagrations, there is a real possibility that recovery to pre-suppression condition will be impossible. This is largely because of the threat of exotic weeds and the loss of indigenous species. Conflagrations are a risk to biodiversity through habitat conversion and subsequent species loss. Restoration requires planting and rearing of local natives. One can do irreversible harm to local stocks by going into an area with substitute cultivars. To have a sufficient inventory takes preparation, propagation specialists, and facilities. Sometimes native plants are very tricky to propagate, especially by seed. Animal collection is even more problematic because there are issues of behavior modification. To have replacement native species requires either planning or limited scope.
Would government agencies and environmental activists destroy forest ecosystems over the entire coastal region, put thousands of lives at risk, and waste billions in capital the name of protecting urban air quality and a social preference for shade? Yes. That is what a democratized commons can do.
Every summer in Santa Cruz County, there are many days with temperatures over 90°F. When the wind blows out to sea, the firefighters hold their breath while the RH drops to 15%. There hasn’t been a fire anywhere in the area for over fifty years. The fuel load is vastly higher than that which fed the Santa Barbara fire in 1997 or the Oakland Hills fire of 1991, and the infrastructure is far worse. There is only one road in most residential areas, usually but a single lane, often miles long. These roads eventually lead to State Highway 9, which has but two lanes and in many places neither shoulders nor interconnecting bypasses.
The firefighters don’t dare let one get going. It is almost like an addiction. There is no doubt of an eventual day of reckoning. On days with high fire potential, they fly the bombers full of fire-retardant pre-positioned in the air. Infrared sensors have replaced the watchtowers of old. They keep putting out the skirmishes, but they know that someday, the "inevitable" will happen and a small fire will become a disaster. If the conditions are right, if the wind is blowing hard enough, if the relative humidity is low, if it’s hot, and if the ignition point is remote, they won’t be able to stop it.
It just has to be big enough that it was not their fault. It’s not. It’s ours.
One burning log or panicked driver blocking the highway and all the roads will be choked, bumper to Beemer, with people trying to escape, perhaps thousands of them. The fire trucks won’t get in. The people won’t get out.
They’ll call it an Act of God.
Motive & Means
The obvious question regarding this proposal is: "Where will we get the MONEY, time, individual energy, and expertise to fix a problem like this?"
We are spending the money now, wittingly or not. The Oakland Fire of 1991 cost $1.7 billion. If one looks at residential insurance as a risk management business instead of regulated bank protection, then we are obviously not managing fuel around homes effectively because insurance is not priced according to risk. Were one to consider the total economic cost of a firestorm, homes in an overgrown forest are way underinsured. If one includes the ecological costs, such forests are at astronomical risk.
A firestorm is a capital loss no matter who makes money on promises to pay it back. An insurance policy on a $300,000 structure with a $2,000 deductible costs around $900 per year. This calculates to a replacement payback period less a return to the stockholders (assuming no inflation), of perhaps as little as… 75 years without a loss? One might conclude that it is unlikely that the true cost of risk plus a reasonable profit is reflected by insurance premiums. When considering the impact of fire settlements upon future insurance rates statewide it is obvious that one can play that game only so many times.
Suburban residents in Santa Cruz County are demanding that the Board of Supervisors provide them with either timber harvest rules or zoning laws that maintain the forest on someone else’s land to their liking. For most of them, their liking is a vastly reduced harvest with "no cut buffers" around riparian and residential areas. What they are demanding is for the rest of the State to bear the cost of an unacceptable risk and subsidize thereby their capital gain in residential real estate while the policy does more harm than good.
The real estate industry would find higher property value in a gardened appearance to the forest over and above what they find so attractive now. They surely do not want to deal with the impact of a catastrophic fire. The only reason these forests are a draw for new homebuyers is that they are still there. At the rate houses are being built, and given the accruing fuel load, these conditions won’t last forever. Everybody except the activists seems to understand that.
How disinvested are forest landowners? Where else can you find an industry with billions in assets and no idea within 25% how much that is? Why should some landowners have to cut more trees to pay for permission to do it, while other forests are choking to death and facing eventual annihilation?
Politicians have found environmentalist support to be a direct line to higher office. If they get saddled with a lawsuit the size of Montana for taking the forest the voters will be stuck with a resulting tax bill or fewer services. If the whole thing burns to a crisp, it won’t look good for their future. Would they like to have a way for the lawsuit go away and run for higher office upon a popular solution to a longstanding problem?
Bump!
g
What on EARTH are you blathering about? Thanks to the environmentalists, THERE ARE NO TREES left in the burnt forests, including national monument forests. What grows back first will be scrub and foreign, noxious weeds will now choke out native species in the affected areas, as has been observed in Yellowstone. In addition, the stage has been set in the devastated areas for massive soil erosion, especially if the West has a really rainy rainy season this year.
Thinning trees has been done for thousands of years. We still have forests. Modern forestry management includes the thinning of trees to open up forests to young trees competing for water, sunlight and soil nutrients - just like the tomato plants in your garden, they'll kill each other off when they're packed too close together, thus becoming fuel for MORE devastating fires - allowing SMALL burns to go unchecked because there is less volatile, dirt burning fuel all over, and even PLANTING saplings to replace those native species devastated by fire, disease and pests.
It's the environmentalists who created this mess, not loggers. Get an education, instead of parroting mindless propaganda.
</end rant>
Sheesh....that was supposed to be "he speaks FOR all of us who are fighting for common sense forest management in order to protect ourselves, our wildlife and our forests."
I don't think I can HOLD any more coffee...but I'll try...doesn't seem to be HELPING at all...
Wrong!!! As you can see from this map, it was the preserved section that burnt. You also need to read the information in this post.
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