The California wildfires - management

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Great essay from Blake Clarkson writing at The Spectator:

How environmentalists destroyed California’s forests
I believe it was John Fremont who once exclaimed in astonishment that one could ride a horse at full gallop in the Forests of the Sierras in California. Well, one can do that again now — not among the towering conifers, but over the ashes.

Right now I’m seeing the mountains I grew up in — where I went to school, where I hung out, camped, backpacked, boated, cheated death and generally formed the foundation of my character — burning down. It makes me sad and angry.

This didn’t have to happen. Once upon a time, forests in California were logged, grazed, and competently managed. It wasn’t always perfect, but generally it worked.

Fires, which are a natural part of that ecosystem, were generally small — not just benign but beneficial. Land management focused on keeping the forest healthy for all involved, whether they were loggers, ranchers, fishermen, hunters, homeowners, or backpackers.

But then things started to change. Groups such as the Sierra Club and National Resources Defense Council began to drive a myopic agenda of protecting environmental interests at all costs. Logging was shut down. Grazing was banned. Controlled burning and undergrowth clearance were challenged and subjected to draconian regulations. Fires were put out as quickly as possible.

So the trees grew closer and closer together. Undergrowth, unchecked by grazing, cutting, or burning, grew thick and tall enough to reach the branches of mature trees.

The forests became thick and overgrown, but man, they sure looked nice and green from a scenic overlook.

Sawmills shut down and the cattle business went elsewhere. Thriving towns dried up and nearly went under. We started importing lumber and beef from Brazil and other places with objectively horrible environmental track records. And the vegetation kept growing.

About 10 years ago, we started hitting a critical point. Forests that once had less than a hundred healthy trees per acre suddenly had over a thousand. Manzanita, dry grass, and other plants began to cover the forest floor so densely you couldn’t walk through it without cutting a trail. All of this vegetation is fighting over a water table that is stressed on an average year, let alone a drought year, and not a lot of the trees are healthy enough to be resilient. Bark beetles and other pests came in, and you began to see entire mountainsides covered in dead and dying trees. We couldn’t have created better conditions for devastating fires if we’d tried.

More at the site - a good analysis of the unintended consequences of doing something that "sounds good" instead of doing something that "does good". It is supremely ironic that the environmentalists would fail to see the complex interconnected web of interrelations that happens in an ecosystem. They focused on one thing and one thing only to the detriment of the whole state.

We had this shoved into our collective faces in 1988 with the Yellowstone Fires - we should have learned from that.

The essay concludes with the following paragraph and the following editorial mention:

I live in Kansas now, where people are generally saner. But my heart still calls those mountains home. And they were killed by the Sierra Club and its allies. God may forgive you, but it’s gonna take me a while.

This article was published under a pseudonym as the author didn’t want to risk his job.

No shit Sherlock. California is a beautiful state but it's leadership is severely wanting - they have been living off the teat instead of working and representing their constituents.

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This page contains a single entry by DaveH published on September 26, 2020 5:31 AM.

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