For this particular event I think the extreme weather conditions are a greater contributor than forest mismanagement, which yes, has happened for over 100 years not just in California but throughout the entire US. But both are factors.
As far as the feds vs the state… much of the forested land in CA is federal land, so ultimately I do think they have to take responsibility. On the other hand, since proper forest management hasn’t been standard practice in the US since the genocide against Native Americans, there’s no clear delegation of responsibility here. I’m sure the state could get federal approval to take actions in forest service land, but they generally lack the budget.
In general, CAL FIRE and the USFS both know what needs to be done in order to manage our forests better, and they are already taking these actions on a small scale. People who levy this criticism often imagine that professional government foresters are just idiots who don’t understand their own field, but this is far from the case. The reality is that there’s just no way these agencies can do fire prevention activities on a large enough scale to solve the problem. Again, they would need much higher budgets to focus on these things, and might need to abandon the focus on fire-fighting activities since this is where the vast majority of money goes currently. They would also need the ability to do controlled burns without worrying excessively about the consequences like they do now.
Overall I don’t think there is really a realistic path to better forest management in the US unless there are some major political and cultural changes. I think empowering individuals to do controlled burns without a need for major oversight from the state or feds would be one change. Bringing back large herbivores to control tree density might also help without a need to huge amounts of human labor but this is far more speculative.
Do you feel the problem has been significantly addressed in Australia? Here there is a lot of talk about controlled burns but there is also a lot of public and bureaucratic resistance such that hardly any gets done compared to the scale of our landscapes.
One significant obstacle is rules around clean air. This is a difficult topic because for geographical and climatological reasons, California is very vulnerable to poor air quality, and pollution here kills thousands of people annually. So I’m not exactly enthused about loosening rules around air quality when the problem is already so dire, but on the other hand, much of that fire will happen one way or the other, so maybe it’s better that it happens in a controlled manner.
For this particular event I think the extreme weather conditions are a greater contributor than forest mismanagement, which yes, has happened for over 100 years not just in California but throughout the entire US. But both are factors.
As far as the feds vs the state… much of the forested land in CA is federal land, so ultimately I do think they have to take responsibility. On the other hand, since proper forest management hasn’t been standard practice in the US since the genocide against Native Americans, there’s no clear delegation of responsibility here. I’m sure the state could get federal approval to take actions in forest service land, but they generally lack the budget.
In general, CAL FIRE and the USFS both know what needs to be done in order to manage our forests better, and they are already taking these actions on a small scale. People who levy this criticism often imagine that professional government foresters are just idiots who don’t understand their own field, but this is far from the case. The reality is that there’s just no way these agencies can do fire prevention activities on a large enough scale to solve the problem. Again, they would need much higher budgets to focus on these things, and might need to abandon the focus on fire-fighting activities since this is where the vast majority of money goes currently. They would also need the ability to do controlled burns without worrying excessively about the consequences like they do now.
Overall I don’t think there is really a realistic path to better forest management in the US unless there are some major political and cultural changes. I think empowering individuals to do controlled burns without a need for major oversight from the state or feds would be one change. Bringing back large herbivores to control tree density might also help without a need to huge amounts of human labor but this is far more speculative.
Even in Australia we had to have a couple of major bushfires before we got serious about management
Even now knobs still complain when backburning is to be done
Do you feel the problem has been significantly addressed in Australia? Here there is a lot of talk about controlled burns but there is also a lot of public and bureaucratic resistance such that hardly any gets done compared to the scale of our landscapes.
One significant obstacle is rules around clean air. This is a difficult topic because for geographical and climatological reasons, California is very vulnerable to poor air quality, and pollution here kills thousands of people annually. So I’m not exactly enthused about loosening rules around air quality when the problem is already so dire, but on the other hand, much of that fire will happen one way or the other, so maybe it’s better that it happens in a controlled manner.
Here’s an article that goes over some of the hurdles here in California: https://www.newsweek.com/controlled-burns-california-forest-management-los-angeles-fires-2012492