Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire A Cattleman's Lament- I cry for the mountains and the legacy lost The Bear Fire

It’s easy to talk about wild fires On the macro level as beneficial, and natural, and inevitable. And that’s all well and good, but on the micro level, at the individual, the family, the animal level, it’s an unimaginable horror.

My heart breaks.

I hope some of you folks read the linked article the gentleman wrote. It's very informative.



Interesting wording there "filled with lobbyists, consultants and regulators who wouldn’t know a sugar pine from a fir" and very true.



I tend to agree with the author except for a relatively minor thing. Mr Daley says they've failed miserably in the past 50 years............I personally say more like 100 years, and guess what folks, we've have a number of "right" leaning administrations in the last 50 years, and a lot of these megafires happen in states that aren't "California".


There's a lot more there folks, a really interesting perspective from the folks that live and work there.

That is sad.

That is sad.

I had a lot to say on this when I posted. Since I have no experience as a Farmer, Rancher or Forest/Wild lands management. Figured I just STFU and let you folks that live/lived this life have the stage.

For what its worth It appears the Trump administration is trying. Whatever that means.

https://www.npr.org/2019/06/12/7317...king-to-overhaul-forest-management-rules

I hope he is well insured.

FatCity,

as a hunter and fisher, no doubt you've seen what's going on out there in the course of your lifetime. I'm pretty sure anyone of a certain age has seen what suppressing ALL fires has done to the landscape.

And I've mentioned more than once on this forum, seems like every fire season, that a big part of the issue is MONEY and who's going to pay for the changes necessary.

From your link, (my bold) :



Commercial logging will help, as it can provide some funding as long as BLM, USFS, or State Forests, get a fair price for the stumpage. But a big big big part is the understory and chaparral type brush providing fuels to get these fires going. No one wants to eat the cost of dealing with that. The agencies don't have the budgets to do it themselves, there's no commercial value in it, and as pointed out in Mr Daley's story, the ranchers and foresters can't set fires on the way out as was done in the past.

More roads might provide a bit of help, but that's not a panacea either. More roads work for fire suppression and that's apparently not what's needed.

Daley's story also noted something known in the west here for a good number of years, over twenty in just my experience. He mentioned streams and springs flowing again after the fire removed the plant life that was sucking them dry. I'm looking out my window at an army of junipers less than 10' tall marching into the sagebrush/grassland where I live. And I wonder how much more water would be available to our well during a drought year if BLM had the funding to remove them and restore this area to pre-juniper encroachment grassland? And if the spring up the hill would still be flowing? And maybe some water in the creek here in the valley. The little reservoir down the road is about dry.

So Fats, if you have something to say, say it friend. Last I checked this is a relatively open forum....... sort of.

My hunting area. Sad time.
Opening day for d-3 is tomorrow.......
Fuc kin sucks.

I have been saying it for years. It was only a matter of time.
Management has been nonexistent.
Just a sad time up here and I feel for those that lost loved ones, property etc......

My child hood friend had his parents cabin burn down. I spent many days there with him.
Very somber feeling.

Hunting was getting me excited last month and now I’m not even packed up, guns are collecting dust.

I may venture out tomorrow morning but I just don’t have the drive to now.👎🏻

Thanks Geno. Still for you and many others this is your wheelhouse.

1970's 9th grade science teacher Mr. Dereschuck, WWII Marine hero of Sugar Loaf Hill battle Okinawa, taught me how California's flora and fauna were born and evolved out of fire. As well as how our disruption of that process would lead to major problems in my lifetime.

Good luck fester. Won't be heading out till end of Oct.

Thanks Fat.👍🏻
Same to you.

We have a friend who lost a bunch of cattle the same way in range fire in central BC twenty-some years ago. It was a tough time for him. We grew up part of a logging family; in a time when Smokey the bear was a symbol of the western woods, to us. We grew up thinking that protecting the resource, for the benefit of the companies and the people who worked for them, was the best thing to do. It wasn't until much later that we came to be told differently and, even then, varying opinions were controversial. It is sad to see the legacy of our generation's misguided actions. It would have been easy to reduce the hazard we see today.
Even today, the creation of an agency like the CCC, where people who have been negatively impacted by the covid response could EARN money and work for the country, rather than just accepting free money to stay home, could do some good for the country and for the people. When young men were no longer being drafted to go to 'nam, they could have been drafted to help manage western forests. My thinking may be a little simplistic but it's mine! GD

Taken after the Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise and Magalia.

very sad deal........

couldn't imagine it

Very sad. The plus several hundred thousand acre fires that came through West Texas years ago took a lot of cattle and the lives of a cowgirl and cowboy trying to save their cattle.

It moved fast through the tallgrass prairies and other fires hit the mountains around Alpine.

Obama refused Red voting Texas the use of military aircraft to drop water and fire retardant in the mountains.

May he rot in hell along with his proponents.

Obama refused the state disaster declaration requested by Rick Perry as well. No disaster funds.

Bet CA gets some this time.

It would take a biologist to really say how it will turn out, but the Bear Fire (actually the August Complex) is in geography and climate that may not recover in a hundred years. Forested green slopes enhance precipitation, actually gather it from the Pacific weather fronts that roll onshore in the winter, been that way for 500 years or more, going by growth rings. Once a catastrophic fire of this nature happens, first comes grass closely followed by brush. They do not suck the moisture out of the onshore weather fronts. Total rainfall goes down sharply, soil temperatures go up, killing conifer seedlings. The brush and grasses are even more prone to burn in an endless cycle of brush and fire and well below average precip. The big counties to the south of the August Complex are Mendocino and Lake, predictors of what will happen, they were well timbered in the 1920's and then the fire/brush cycle began, now they are hot dry brush covered mountains, good to neither man nor beast, waiting to explode about every ten years. The annual late fall arson of the Indians and cattlemen kept the forest, grasslands and streams healthy...but the Forest Service had a better idea. And now we pay for that idea. 471,000 acres as of Sept 10th, and still counting.

That is a big watershed

Watch out for floods downstream........

Good luck guys. My brother and I hunt in/around Sawmill Tom Creek in D-3. Don't know what were gonna do this year. Had a real nice developed camp right near Sawmill Flat, I'm sure it's toast. I guess they've re-opened parts of Plumas Nat'l Forest but all fires are banned.


https://www.fs.usda.gov/plumas/