California is managing its forests — but is the president managing its federal lands? The Great Fire of 1910 — believed to be the biggest fire in recorded American history — burned 3 million acres across Washington, Idaho and Montana and killed 86 people.
The agency ordered that all forest fires be extinguished as soon as possible, minimizing flames that for centuries had renewed the forests. Forest Service policy. It also helped remake U.S.
The government stranglehold on what had been naturally regenerating ecosystems marked the beginning of forest mismanagement practices that continued for decades,
leaving 21st-century California in the midst of what one state commission has called "an unprecedented environmental catastrophe." The topic has been pushed to the forefront by an escalating string of deadly wildfires — including last year's Thomas Fire in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties,
the largest in state history; the 2017 blazes that blackened much of the wine country in Napa and Sonoma counties, killing 44; and last month's Camp Fire,
which has killed at least 88 people and destroyed nearly 14,000 homes, both records for wildfires in the Golden State.
The question of who is to blame has been a touchy one, particularly since President Donald Trump heaped blame for the fires on "mismanagement" by California officials and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke called out "radical environmental groups" that he said "would rather burn down the entire forest than cut a single tree or thin the forest." The irony is that 57 percent of California's 33 million acres of forest are controlled by the federal government.
And even the timber industry, which Trump's team appears to be trying to support, has slammed the U.S. for investing far too little in the priceless wild space.
Almost everyone who works in and around the state's forests agrees that more needs to be done to limit runaway "superfires" that kill humans and leave entire ecosystems in ruins.
But disagreements abound, including among environmentalists, about what's most important: Focus intently on "prescribed burns" as the truest path to regaining an ecologically pure past? Bring back a time before the protection of spotted owl habitat or a salmon run could stunt a logging operation? Slam the door on new development on the suburban/wildland boundary,
where fires do the most damage? Public officials from the state capitol in Sacramento to Washington, D.C., are pushing policies intended to reverse the old ways — reducing an over-abundance of trees and other fuel and placing tighter controls on human development in fire danger zones.
The new rules will increase controlled burns, ramp up logging and brush clearance and further buffer new home development close to wildlands.
But experts say it will take decades to restore health and balance to forests in California and the West. "This is a big job.
It's not going to create change overnight," said Jay Ziegler, external affairs director for Nature Conservancy in California. "It's going to have to be 10-year commitment, a 20-year commitment and beyond.
If we don't change the status quo on forest management, we will continue to lose forest land at an alarming pace." "If we don't change the status quo on forest management,
we will continue to lose forest land at an alarming pace." Creating solutions is complicated by the array of overseers of wildlands — a tangle of federal, state and local agencies and thousands of private owners.
A permit to cut or burn any parcel might stall if public officials can't answer concerns about air quality, water purity, wildlife preservation and cultural and historical preservation.
The result is that brush and trees choke much of California's open space, the fuel left tinder dry by years of drought that has been worsened by global warming.
Insect infestations, particularly by the ubiquitous bark beetle, have killed vast swaths of pine and fir forest.
With an estimated 129 million dead trees, California has established a Tree Mortality Task Force.
Scott Stephens, a University of California, Berkeley professor of fire science, said the fire cataclysms of the last two years seem to have ended a long era of inattention.
"We will start to change the trajectory," he said, "so we won't have tragedies like we had in Paradise." WHAT WENT WRONG IN CALIFORNIA The state's determination historically to squelch fires quickly has left forests choked with trees.
One researcher in the Sierra Nevada range found records from 1911 showing 19 trees per acre in one section of the giant Stanislaus National Forest, compared to 260 trees per acre a century later.
(The study counted trees more than 6 inches in diameter.) California's timber industry also has been greatly diminished.
Companies made 4.5 million board feet of lumber in 1975 but only one-third that amount in 2016, a change environmentalists viewed as restoring needed ecological balance and companies saw as unduly restrictive.
The skinny, tightly spaced trees and heavy brush created conditions that fueled so-called "crown" fires — in which flames could climb quickly climb from undergrowth into the forest canopy and then hop from tree to tree — usually powered by high heat and fierce winds.
Half the damage from the 2013 Rim Fire came in just two days as flames whipped through the upper reaches of the forest, blackening 410 square miles in and around Yosemite National Park. The Camp Fire began Nov.
8 in National Forest Service land and, powered by 50 mph winds, dashed into Concow, Magalia and Paradise, where firefighters said it morphed into an urban firestorm — blitzing from home to home, with less dependence on fir and pine for tinder.
A debate continues over why the fire was so deadly, with one camp arguing for better forest thinning and another pointing to the need for armored homes and more "defensible space" around structures.
But even a key lobbyist for the timber industry in California — tasked with expanding logging in California — said it's wrong to point to one cause, or fix, to the problem.
"We have had climate change, so temperatures are hotter and there's less humidity and the fuel is drier," said Rich Gordon, president of the California Forestry Association.
It would have been positive [to expand tree thinning and timber harvests] but there are a lot of factors. "And there is more fuel to burn.
I don't think that would have completely eliminated this problem." WHAT CALIFORNIA HAS TRIED SO FAR Last year's devastation in the wine country — with 44 dead,
subdivisions obliterated and classic California oaks turned to blackened skeletons — spurred California to its greatest wildfire safety reforms in memory. Gov.
Jerry Brown signed a series of bills in September that will streamline regulations for thinning forests in fire zones, allow limited removal of some larger trees and force cities and counties to plan better defenses for individual properties and communities.
The measures also promised $1 billion over five years to clean up thousands of acres of deadwood, chaparral and forest — California's biggest-ever promise of money to reduce fire fuels.
Gavin Newsom will have to assure it's actually allocated each year. But the money is only pledged; the California Legislature and incoming Gov.
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