My Dad used to run cows up where Valsdad lives, and the photos from the '20's and '30's show that Junipers were not that plentiful back then, pines were a hundred yards apart. I wonder if the oldtimers and the Injuns kept the rangeland healthy by annual burning in the fall...or the result of over enthusiastic fire suppression hadn't started to show it's downside yet? In any case, we are sure paying the penalty for bad policy now. We have 4 seasons here now, fall, winter, spring and fire.
I had a 6 month job in K Falls in the summer of '98, but was a resident of Cali still so I put in for a tag in the Shasta, Tulelake, Tionesta area (X1 now, not sure about back then) and was lucky enough to draw. I hunted around Tionesta/Lava Beds NN a few days. When I moved back this way in 2016 I was stunned at all the 6'-10' junipers covering areas that were open grassland/sagebrush when I was here in '98.
So yeah, I have a sneaky suspicion different human behaviors have had some effect on things like that juniper intrusion that's happening now.
