Posted on 11/10/2018 7:04:47 PM PST by NoLibZone
Scientists at the cutting edge of ecological research, Dr. Hanson among them, argue that the century-old American practice of suppressing wildfires has been nothing less than a calamity. They are calling for a new approach that basically involves letting backcountry fires burn across millions of acres.
In principle, the federal government accepted a version of this argument years ago, but in practice, fires are still routinely stamped out across much of the country. To the biologists, that has imperiled the plants and animals — hundreds of them, it turns out — that prefer to live in recently burned forests.
“From an ecological standpoint, everything I’ve learned teaches me this is a good idea: Stop putting out fires,” said Jennifer R. Marlon, a geographer at Yale who was among the first to use the term “fire deficit” to describe the situation. “These forests are made to have fire.”
Efforts to suppress fires began in the 19th century, largely motivated by the view that forests should be seen as standing timber with economic value. By the 1930s, industrial-scale techniques allowed firefighting agencies, including the United States Forest Service, to suppress fires across the landscape.
A handful of scientists began arguing decades ago that this was a mistake. Over the past decade or so, the research has crystallized into a new understanding of the role of fire in forests.
Scientists who want to let more fires burn take pains to make clear that they do not mean to put people’s lives on the line. In fact, they believe the government could make people safer than they are today if it redirected funds into community fire-safety projects.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
This theory is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.
These people are insane.
This theory is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. It shows this Chad Hanson character doesn’t understand the reasons for the things he does.
He’s clearly overtaken by silly ideology, and has tried to rationalize it with what sounds like a sixth grade social studies project.
Guys like Hanson are typically manipulated by whoever is funding him. The ones supplying the cash are somehow clever enough to convince these fools that “forest fires are good.”
Of course they won’t allow logging to do the same thing their giant deadly fires will produce. They are making the forests a rotting disaster.
They have been letting fires burn for decades.
Good to harvest some timber in thinning operations.
Mich. and Wisc. had some VERY nasty forest fires back in the day.
In California they do controlled burns on about 20,000 acres. Needs to be 200,000 or 2,000,000 depending on the brush growth.
That was very simply from careless logging that created massive amounts of fuel.
Bray said it best. Harvesting the healthy mature trees, clear cutting in some areas to create fire breaks, using small planned fires to clear out underbrush, re-planting the clear-cut areas with new trees to re-grow the forest. And going through the forest to collect fallen branches to grind up and turn into Dura-Flame logs or into wood pellets. Effective forest management would keep the forest healthy and free from horribly destructive fires. Also, there should never be a tree near a power cable. If a tree could fall on a power cable then the tree should never have been there to begin with.
Environment Canada estimates that for every acre of primarily coniferous forest burned, approximately 4.81 metric tons of carbon is released into the atmosphere—between 80 percent and 90 percent in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2), with the rest as carbon monoxide (CO) and methane (CH4). In 2006, a record-setting 96,385 wildfires destroyed about 9.87 million acres of forest in the United States. According to the Canadian figure, then, forest fires accounted for 47.47 million metric tons of carbon emissions in the United States last year. For comparison, the nation’s annual carbon dioxide emissions are said to be around 6.049 billion metric tons.
This estimate, however, doesn’t take into account the carbon released by vegetation that decays once the fires have been extinguished. Nor does it include the long-term effects of losing forests, which absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and thus can help slow global warming. https://slate.com/technology/2007/10/do-forest-fires-have-a-significant-impact-on-global-warming.html
Well they managed to chase a lot of forest products companies to hell out so what the hell do they expect?
Cant practice good forest management anymore because of the fire bugs and eco freaks.
They make machinery that can grind that stuff to the ground where they can prescribe burn it in a safe way. But what the hell, cant have somebody grinding that brush can we?
Go to our website ForestsforOregon.net and see what proper forest management looks like.
Dont try and tell that to the fire bugs that infest some of these places. You will be called a liberal, eviro wacko, as well as any other thing they can come up with.
One thousand years ago the United Kingdom was mostly forest. Today it is not. Man has changed the entire bio environment of this Island. The insane environmentalist think we should return to the “normal past” of unrestricted burning of our forests as it is “just natural.” It is natural and most devastating.
I mentioned this in relation to the United Kingdom although the subject is the California fires.
ps
There is more forest land today than 100 years ago. This is due to rational harvesting and replanting of our forest by those that harvest the forests. It is in their interest to harvest and replant the forest.
Every square inch of MI was forest not that many years ago, and would revert back to forest in a decade without tilling.
It takes very little time to go from plowed field to forest.
This power systems Dispatcher agrees with you!
In 2003 the Aspen Fire burned a lot of the mountain and cleared many areas of trees. Fast forward a couple of years and flowers, shrubs, and grasses were everywhere. The air was thick with bees and the scents of growing things. Many of the larger, healthier trees has survived and looked fuller and healthier due to less competition.
“One thousand years ago the United Kingdom was mostly forest. Today it is not. Man has changed the entire bio environment of this Island. The insane environmentalist think we should return to the “normal past” of unrestricted burning of our forests as it is “just natural.” It is natural and most devastating.”
The U.K. Is treeless because they harvested the trees for fuel, housing, and for shipbuilding. It wasn’t forest fires. In America New England was well on the way to being deforested like the U.K. and then the oil industry boomed along with coal and removed the need to burn trees for cooking and heating. The Arbor Society should be thanking God for the gift of fossil fuels.
I agree that logging is necessary and, if done right, has benefits to the forests. That being said many plants have evolved to only propagate seeds after being burnt and grow best in burnt areas. Some grasses, if fire does not burn away last year’s dead growth, can choke themselves off. Also most game animals that people like to hunt and eat cannot eat pine needles.
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