OPINION
By Don Amador
Date: Sept. 12, 2020
WILDFIRES CATALYST FOR CHANGE
It seems right now that everything is upside down. Growing up in Northern California in the
60s/70s, there were busy timber towns that employed a lot of people with
well-paying jobs - I know because I worked in one of them. Now many of those communities are ghost towns
that are surrounded by federal timber land where the trees, wildlife, and
property owners have been – or are waiting - for one of the current wildfires
to burn them out.
Many of the same regulatory agencies such as EPA and CA Air Resources Board that govern vehicle engine emissions also have regulations that, for the most part, functionally eliminate the meaningful use of prescribed fire to address excessive fuel loading on Forest Service, BLM, state, and private lands.
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Don Amador has been in the trail advocacy and recreation management
profession for almost 30 years. Don is President of Quiet Warrior Racing, a
recreation consulting company. Don is President/CEO of the Post Wildfire OHV
Recovery Alliance, a non-profit post fire recovery organization. Don is Core-Team
Lead for FireScape Mendocino, a forest health collaborative. Don is also a member of the CA Northern
Regional Prioritization Group that is made up of state, local, tribal and
federal agencies and non-governmental organizations and is tasked with
strategically prioritizing prescribed fire, forest health, and fuel reduction
projects for funding consideration by the Forest Management Task Force. Don
served on the California Off-Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation Commission from
1994-2000. He has won numerous awards including being a 2016 Inductee into the Off-Road
Motorsports Hall of Fame and the 2018 Friend of the AMA Award. Don currently
serves as the government affairs lead for AMA District 36 in Northern
California and also serves as the OHV representative on the BLM’s Central
California Resource Advisory Committee. Don is a contributor to Dealernews Magazine. Don may be reached via email at: damador@quietwarriorracing.com
Thank You Don!
ReplyDeleteFire is a very natural part of the ecosystem. Just like rain, wind, floods, storms etc etc etc. It appears some elected reps have failed history; as, the key lesson here is that humanity must accommodate rather than try to control (fire suppression) nature.
Our CA Guv continues to insist that climate change is the 'why' for the fires.
So, IF: CLIMATE CHANGE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MAJOR FIRES OF 2020 ; THEN, WHY IS IT THAT HISTORY DEMONSTRATES WILDFIRES BURNED MUCH MORE OF CALIFORNIA EACH YEAR BEFORE 1800??
UC Berkeley scientists/profs estimate an average of 4.5 million acres burned in CA each year before Euro-American settlement. By comparison, 2.3 million acres have burned in 2020 -- half the natural average. Paleo hydrology and soil sediment samples should be used to verify the veracity of the UC Berkeley estimates.
California’s hot, dry summers naturally produce fires. Human settlements in the fire prone ecosystems significantly interrupted the natural cycle with fire suppression a century ago. So, the bill is coming due as the ecosystems 'catch up' and return to equilibrium. Its all about the ecosystem fuel loads, which on average are likely greater in the State now than ever before.
Science tells us that fires are in California’s future, and only substantial proactive science-based ecosystem scale management will reduce the human cost. Natural wildland fire use, prescribed fire, forest products extraction, thinning, zoning, biomass conversion, land-use planning and other methods will be needed.
California citizens must insist on ecosystem management change (eg using 21st century forest health science) as a significant pillar of climate change initiatives coming from our representatives in sxcrxmento.
All that's missing is the political will.
Don't forget the other fuel reduction method called "grazing" which turns combustable vegetation into... FOOD!
ReplyDeleteMy wife's family has a labor camp disguised as a vacation cabin in Cazadero, CA, a mere 3 air miles from the SW front of this year's Walbridge fire in Sonoma County. In the past 4 years, there have been 3 major fires in Sonoma/Napa/Lake counties. You would think area residents would be very proactive in managing fuels in and around their homes and properties. But you would be mistaken. Apparently fires don't happen here. On one occasion I happened to be driving by a fire adjacent to CA Hwy 20. Two CalFire tankers on the road shoulder, a CalFire Huey in the pasture across the hwy, a crew gearing up to take on the flames, meanwhile, two dudes in tank tops and shorts using a garden hose to water down the 3 ft tall dry grass in their front yards... D'oh! I don't wish anyone getting burned out of their home but I can't help but think WTF people, put down the cigarette and the BudLight and mow the F'ing grass... Vegetation management takes effort and I have little tolerance for those that do next to nothing.
Funny, COVID and wildfire prevention/mitigation are a lot in common. We all need to take responsibility for ourselves and our property in order to protect each other. Wear a mask. Manage your landscape.
Don,let’s hope your right. One of my colleagues from the almond industry is a member of the Shaver Lake Volunteer fire department. Out of the 12 members, 11 lost their homes in the last week to the Creek Fire.
ReplyDeleteMy colleagues home is still standing at least in part, IMO, because of fuel reduction projects that have taken place the last two years in the forest surrounding his neighborhood. Unfortunately not much work had been done to the West, all of the homes on Pineridge at the top of the four lane highway are gone, one of which belonged to some close longtime friends.
Our beloved Whiskey Falls is decimated, the fire has burned everything North and East of Whiskey Ridge. While I understand wildfires are a natural occurrence in California, the bureaucracy, policies, and environmental monkey wrenching caused major delays regarding the Whiskey Ridge Restoration project. I would be willing to bet that the part of the forest where the “restoration” took place will have minimal long term fire damage compared to the devastation in the areas the project had not yet reached.
I spent my entire spring and early summer working on opening trails, by time we got most of the downed trees cleaned up, it was too hot and dry to ride. Now we have nothing to look forward to in the fall and all our hard work went up in smoke.
The damage caused by catastrophic wildfires is not the result of climate change, it is the result of mismanagement of public lands and environmental litigation monkey wrenching.
SK