good topic but ugly truth behind it -- a US Interior agency near New Mexico had a scheduled controlled burn on the books.. apparently they can schedule things multiple years in advance.. but .. the drought got worse and covid hit. The department had personnel and morale problems.. lots of uncertainty.. they stalledxxxxx "waited patiently" for two more years as the drought got still worse but the documents describing physical risk were not updated.
The Federal department executed the burn and it went wild, and is the largest fire in recorded history in that area now, taking out an entire town plus other structures and causing the evacuation of Los Alamos National Laboratories at the same time. you can find the details easily.. there is a 70 page "final report" from the agency perspective. This is reality.
The simple reality is that not only does human incompetence get in the way of safety here, but burns probably just aren't a very viable option.
Historical controlled burns (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_use_of_fire_in...) worked because they happened frequently and kept fuel in check while encouraging trees that were resistant to or even dependent on low grade fires. Fuel loads are dramatically higher than historically however.
Now we've also got massive areas of forest dieback due to climate-driven bark beetle outbreaks. Trees that do survive burns but are stressed by them are more vulnerable to pests, just like drought stress. https://www.fs.usda.gov/ccrc/topics/bark-beetles-and-climate... So controlled burns even done effectively may still result in unwanted tree dieback.
A much safer potential cure here would be a massive increase in targeted grazing on federal land to reduce understory fuel loads, but this is also a nonstarter politically in many areas especially in National Parks. We are still maintaining this myth of virgin wilderness untouched by the hand of man.
State and federal government simply isn't competent enough to handle this given the political realities in a democratic system. Basically what's going to happen is that the most vulnerable communities will get scorched out of existence, and we're just going to have to live with the impact of more wildfires until nature sorts itself out. Americans just can’t psychologically accept being told they don’t get to develop anywhere they want.
> Fuel loads are dramatically higher than historically however.
Yup! I live in the Sierras. Everyone in this thread talking about controlled burns needs to say "California has just spent a century pursuing a policy of fire suppression" a few times.
The fuel loads are insane, these fires have been turning into giant firestorms with their own weather systems in a matter of 2 or 3 hours during the summer. I've watched it happen a few times, frightening. I suspect you can't solve this problem with fire because even if you are burning the brush wet there is still enough fuel to dry the forest out and burn it to ash.
I personally think the state should tell insurers that they only have to provide insurance in wildlands if the home/property meets stringent fire safety rules around defensible space. My house isn't even in the coniferous forest (I live in the chaparral) and it has set backs, greenzones, the works. I get so frustrated when I'm watching news coverage of the fires and the house is surrounded in pine duff and has giant pine trees right next to it.
> much safer potential cure here would be a massive increase in targeted grazing on federal land to reduce understory fuel loads
Yeah, my dad, a California native, who studied forestry at Davis always says that the solution in millions of goats. Ironically this spring the local Sacramento news reported that there was a shortage of goats to clear brush and that was just for commercial landscaping in the greater metro area. So not only is not feasible because of green hand wringing but also because we just don't have adequate goats.
How do we get more goats? Clearly they can reproduce until we have too many goats for the brush that needs to be cleared, but then do Americans like goat meat?
The simple answer is that either we pay for them using the money we would have spent on controlled burning, or we give away the grazing rights for free at least.
Most ranchers who do brush control grazing get paid for doing so. This is the opposite of the federal policy today, where ranchers have to pay for grazing rights on BLM land. Not to mention the fact that some places we used to graze sheep on like Yosemite or Sequoia National Parks have a blanket ban on commercial grazing.
that's not the start of a conversation that finds solutions. Obviously there is lot of hurt and urgency, also there have been a lot of bad bills, also there is a lot of private land grab on public property, also the existing policies have led us here.
AND.. when I read the actual research, there is far more already known, than anyone at the negotiating table seems to know.. so you get bullies and spies, angry side comments and behind-the-scenes demands..
far, far too late to just call the other side of the table uncomplimentary names, if you are serious about this.
Conservation groups like the Mountain Lion Foundation or the Sierra Club are legitimately terrible at advocating for balanced, holistic solutions. They’re the literal definition of special interest groups.
There should be alignment of interests between environmental groups and rural people who don't want their communities destroyed by wildfire. Neither of them want the forests burned down. Instead, these groups pursue a singleminded focus on attacking anything that doesn’t comply with their dogmatic pursuit of wilderness untouched by anything other than recreation.
The Federal department executed the burn and it went wild, and is the largest fire in recorded history in that area now, taking out an entire town plus other structures and causing the evacuation of Los Alamos National Laboratories at the same time. you can find the details easily.. there is a 70 page "final report" from the agency perspective. This is reality.