Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Question about Forest Management

I'm a forester, but in the South, not the West. However, my understanding from what I've learned is that it's a combination of dry weather, lack of low-intensity fires to consume the fine fuels which are needed to sustain a fire at its beginning, and dense canopies which allow fires to carry through the crowns of the trees. More actively logging these areas, both clearcutting and thinning, would do much to break the fuel chain. Prescribed burning would help, although it is risky and I doubt it could be done on a scale to make a difference. (Obviously, none of this applies to the chaparall fires such as they get around LA.) More people living in and around these forests doesn't help. Many of those folks don't want trees cut and are scared of controlled burns. Activist judges and an increasingly tree-hugger mentality in the forestry agencies also prevents the actions which could reduce the intensity of some of these fires.

Pre-colonial times, the trees were all large and spaced widely apart; frequent, low-intensity fires kept the fuel from building up. Very much like the longleaf pine savannahs of the pre-colonial South. Maybe there is a Western forester on the board who can speak with more direct experience.

I've been the range specialist, or more properly "Range Conservationist." I was effectively a paralegal, and administrative judges made the resource decisions. Unfortunately it always seemed that the common sense thing to do was the first possibility discarded for one special interest or another.



Sadly, all true. People who "feel" this way or that are given voice through funding, lawyers get rich, and natural resources suffer.



I'm just a lowly Range Management major who only got to ply the "trade" for a brief time, but my observations tell me that it's all much like a dammed up river. A certain amount of water has to be allowed to flow. You can close the gates and impound ALL the water for a while, but all that water is going to go downstream eventually and nothing is going to stop it. It's my opinion that excessive fire suppression is proving to be a very bad thing.

Climate alarmists never seem to include sun spots in their calculation.

I'm a forester, but in the South, not the West. However, my understanding from what I've learned is that it's a combination of dry weather, lack of low-intensity fires to consume the fine fuels which are needed to sustain a fire at its beginning, and dense canopies which allow fires to carry through the crowns of the trees. More actively logging these areas, both clearcutting and thinning, would do much to break the fuel chain. Prescribed burning would help, although it is risky and I doubt it could be done on a scale to make a difference. (Obviously, none of this applies to the chaparall fires such as they get around LA.) More people living in and around these forests doesn't help. Many of those folks don't want trees cut and are scared of controlled burns. Activist judges and an increasingly tree-hugger mentality in the forestry agencies also prevents the actions which could reduce the intensity of some of these fires.

Pre-colonial times, the trees were all large and spaced widely apart; frequent, low-intensity fires kept the fuel from building up. Very much like the longleaf pine savannahs of the pre-colonial South. Maybe there is a Western forester on the board who can speak with more direct experience.

True this^^^
I'm no forester, but I have an extensive collection of books and photos showing this county from 1890's up thru the railroad logging days of the 1930's and mining photos. Timber was very big, very sparse with very little understory. If a dummy like me can see this, why can't our policy makers figure it out?
By the way, I am under an evac warning right now..unsure whether to fire up the D-7 and make a couple more laps around the house...or just load up the guns and valuables, hook up the travel trailer and get ready to go.

Run a couple more with the D7. If you have some trees, push them over away from the house. The ones you don't like first.