Posted on 09/02/2009 1:22:11 PM PDT by kellynla
Whatever the case, the alternative which we have just experienced is definitely not the answer.
Probably more than you. I driven past the point of origin of this fire many times. My favorite hike in the world is up Colby Canyon to Josephine Saddle, then along the ridge and the class 3 scramble to the top of Strawberry Peak. I've hiked from JPL up around Switzer Falls to the highway. I've been all through there. At the upper altitudes, on north facing slopes. you got pinyon pines and junipers. In the bottoms of the deep canyons that have running streams most of the year, you've got some scattered hardwoods. But most of it, especially the areas the burned in this fire, mostly look about like this:
The technical name is chaparral, but I think it can safely be characterized as scrub. You can't walk over it. You can't walk under it. You can't walk through it.
Yes. The private outifts that use goats to clear land for government agencies, as is done on a small scale around San Diego and a more extensive scale around Laguna, charge $750 an acre. In this fire, 145,000 acres have burned. To have cleared that land using goats would have cost north of 100 million dollars. What has been spent to fight the fire is about a quarter of that.
To have the entire 650,000 acres of the Angeles National Forest cleared by goats would cost half a billion dollars. And then there's the Cleveland National Forest, the Los Padres National Forest and the San Bernardino National forest, just within a hundred miles, all with pretty similar vegetation. It takes 70 goats four days to go through one acre. That's 180 million goat days to cover the Angeles National Forest.
How many goats do you envision the federal government contracting with?
Thanks.
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