Replies

“The reason the grasses stay green over summer here is that there are no annual grasses to dry them out”

They won’t stay green with a mere 8 inches of rain that we get. What, are you really a moron that thinks we all plant annual grasses? Again, you are a moron if you think these people lost their homes because weren’t like you. We have nothing but natural grasses here. You talk like a pious idiot.

They won’t stay green with a mere 8 inches of rain that we get.

I can show you grasslands in Utah that do.

What, are you really a moron that thinks we all plant annual grasses?

If you live in the Western US and have annual grasses, they're probably exotic. You don't have to plant them; they were probably imported on cattle, in feed, or on machinery long before you got there. Exotic annuals are dominant over the natives and terribly destructive to the remaining native vegetation.

Again, you are a moron if you think these people lost their homes because weren’t like you. We have nothing but natural grasses here.

I never used the term, "natural grasses." I used the term, "native grasses." I have no doubt that the grasses in your area are naturalized. I do doubt that they are native, particularly if the people in your neighborhood have horses. I don't think you would know Oryzopsis hymenoides from Bromus tectorum.

You talk like a pious idiot.

Again you change the topic. You asserted that my place would burn so hot as to make my house indefensible. That's crap.

Now you say that my last post was about your place. That's crap too.

My original post suggested that vegetation management using native plants around your homes to help make them defensible is quite possible. If your cohorts insist on unprecedented stand densities typical of the American West today, no wonder it blows up. I refer you to Tom Bonnicksen in support of that argument:

If we looked back two hundred years, 91 percent of our forests were more open because Indian and lightning fires burned regularly. These were mostly gentle fires that stayed on the ground as they wandered around under the trees. You could walk over the flames without burning your legs even though they occasionally flared up and killed small groups of trees. Such hot spots kept forests diverse by creating openings where young trees and shrubs could grow.

Fires burned often enough in historic forests to clear dead wood and small trees from under the big trees, and they thinned some of the weak and diseased big trees as well. These were sunny forests that explorers described as open enough to gallop a horse through without hitting a tree. Open and patchy forests like this also were immune from monster fires like those that recently scorched Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, and California.

Our forests look different today. They are crowded with trees of all sizes and filled with logs and dead trees. You can barely walk through them, let alone ride a horse.

Oh, and by the way, there's another reason forests managed by Indians were different, they ate a lot of pine nuts, they coppiced the brush for berries, and they tended patches of vegetation for forbs. There I refer you another acquaintance of mine, Dr. M. Kat Anderson, another one of those professors who has driven hundreds of miles to see our place.

I'm done with your stupidity.