Very rural Southern Californian here - SDGE spent 2 years burying our power lines in a huge swath of San Diego back country and it's really paid off this wind season
Yeah, my (admittedly amateur) understanding is that every acre of the chaparral landscape in the LA hills is basically designed to burn every 20-30 years or so (both the Palisades and Eaton fires only really stopped when they ran into more recent burn scars). This is true whether there is climate change or not, and firestorms don’t give a shit if there is a 5 million dollar house in their way. Combine that with Santa Ana winds, also a fact of life since time immemorial, and the place is an inevitable tinderbox.
The only real options to avoid massive losses to fire every decade or two are a) don’t build there or b) aggressively thin and prescribed burn the hills out while their fuels are still green enough to result in a controllable fire. A won’t happen because “location location location” makes the land too valuable, and B is blocked by ostensible environmentalists.
Are there any examples of environmentalist groups opposing controlled burns and other forest management tactics? It really sounds like something that is either made up or grossly exaggerated by opponents.
Upgrades to electrical transmission infrastructure halted to avoid damage to a shrub. Aging power infrastructure has been blamed for multiple wildfires in CA in recent years.
I don't see anything in either of those two articles about environmentalists or environmental groups opposing controlled burns and forest management.
I do notice that Newsweek article's author extensively quotes the Chamber of Progress and Property and Environment Research Center, which are both libertarian anti-regulation groups. The other article is about a Republican congressman lashing out at some bureau of government that was already in the right's crosshairs because their commissioners made negative comments about Elon Musk, which, again, doesn't have much to do with, say, the Sierra Club or randos online.
If your stance is that environmentalists have nothing to do with environmental law (note that my original post said nothing about “environmental groups”), and if you are going to engage in the genetic fallacy rather than providing any contrary evidence, I don’t think we are going to have a productive conversation.
Contrary evidence to what? *You* made the claim that "environmentalists" are against controlled burns, and when asked for proof you shared irrelevant complaints about government regulations being made by groups which exist to attack government regulations.
If environmentalist groups are primarily responsible for the shape of environmental law, then surely some of them have made their feelings on the matter of controlled burns public.
I did find this journal article after some googling which says that controlled burns have been used since the 1960s, so it's not like this practice is anything new which people are still coming to grips with:
The environmental concerns mentioned are potential harm to endangered species, and the danger of clearing space for invasive plant species which are better adapted for fire conditions. The political impediment, and this is likely far more pertinent, are burns becoming impossible in some areas because of suburban colonization, and also citizens being upset when national parks are made ugly by charred areas.
If you want to crow over imaginary internet points because you think “environmental groups” (a word you put in my mouth, by which you seem only to mean NGOs) are massively distinct from “environmental regulations” and government environmental agencies, great. Either way, the fact remains that it’s extremely onerous to use controlled burns as a management tool due to red tape, and you’ve still not provided any counter evidence to that. That is hardly “irrelevant”.
Now, on the one hand they say they support them in principle, but the list of caveats (unless you’re Indigenous) is so long that it comes off pretty NIMBY. It’s mostly a list of reasons they think prescribed burns are misused. They certainly don’t indicate any opposition to the existing red tape for implementing burns. Most relevant to this discussion, they declare that there is already “too much fire in the system” for Southern California chaparral, i.e. they are opposed to prescribed burns in the LA area.
Thanks for providing evidence that "environmentalists", however loosely you define the word, do support the use of fire in resource management, and that the real impediments to greater and more effective use of this technique all involve money and concerns about bad PR should the burn be botched and end up endangering communities.
My understanding is that B is blocked by home owners and HOAs as much as “environmentalists”. Or at least both. No one wants to live somewhere with forest fire smoke blotting out the sun three months of the year which is what would be required to keep the landscape in its natural and more predictably (instead of catastrophically) burning state.
Unless you banned people totally from packing big homes in these hilly wooded areas there was nothing anyone could do to stop them burning.
The crazy winds were blowing burning materials for miles so there is no way to contain the fires as they spread on the ground and via the air.
Imagine trying to use a hose to dose a fire tearing down a steep hill in the bone dry forest being blown by 50 mph winds.
Very rural Southern Californian here - SDGE spent 2 years burying our power lines in a huge swath of San Diego back country and it's really paid off this wind season
Yeah, my (admittedly amateur) understanding is that every acre of the chaparral landscape in the LA hills is basically designed to burn every 20-30 years or so (both the Palisades and Eaton fires only really stopped when they ran into more recent burn scars). This is true whether there is climate change or not, and firestorms don’t give a shit if there is a 5 million dollar house in their way. Combine that with Santa Ana winds, also a fact of life since time immemorial, and the place is an inevitable tinderbox.
The only real options to avoid massive losses to fire every decade or two are a) don’t build there or b) aggressively thin and prescribed burn the hills out while their fuels are still green enough to result in a controllable fire. A won’t happen because “location location location” makes the land too valuable, and B is blocked by ostensible environmentalists.
Are there any examples of environmentalist groups opposing controlled burns and other forest management tactics? It really sounds like something that is either made up or grossly exaggerated by opponents.
https://www.newsweek.com/controlled-burns-california-forest-management-los-angeles-fires-2012492#:~:text=The%20reason%20California%20hasn't,More%20David%20Swanson/Getty%20Images
It takes literally years to get controlled burns approved and the planning and permitting process consumes 40% of the Forest Service’s annual budget.
https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/article_1503a696-d44e-11ef-b47a-d33f63461d1d.amp.html
Upgrades to electrical transmission infrastructure halted to avoid damage to a shrub. Aging power infrastructure has been blamed for multiple wildfires in CA in recent years.
I don't see anything in either of those two articles about environmentalists or environmental groups opposing controlled burns and forest management.
I do notice that Newsweek article's author extensively quotes the Chamber of Progress and Property and Environment Research Center, which are both libertarian anti-regulation groups. The other article is about a Republican congressman lashing out at some bureau of government that was already in the right's crosshairs because their commissioners made negative comments about Elon Musk, which, again, doesn't have much to do with, say, the Sierra Club or randos online.
If your stance is that environmentalists have nothing to do with environmental law (note that my original post said nothing about “environmental groups”), and if you are going to engage in the genetic fallacy rather than providing any contrary evidence, I don’t think we are going to have a productive conversation.
Contrary evidence to what? *You* made the claim that "environmentalists" are against controlled burns, and when asked for proof you shared irrelevant complaints about government regulations being made by groups which exist to attack government regulations.
If environmentalist groups are primarily responsible for the shape of environmental law, then surely some of them have made their feelings on the matter of controlled burns public.
I did find this journal article after some googling which says that controlled burns have been used since the 1960s, so it's not like this practice is anything new which people are still coming to grips with:
https://fireecology.springeropen.com/articles/10.4996/fireecology.0302003
The environmental concerns mentioned are potential harm to endangered species, and the danger of clearing space for invasive plant species which are better adapted for fire conditions. The political impediment, and this is likely far more pertinent, are burns becoming impossible in some areas because of suburban colonization, and also citizens being upset when national parks are made ugly by charred areas.
If you want to crow over imaginary internet points because you think “environmental groups” (a word you put in my mouth, by which you seem only to mean NGOs) are massively distinct from “environmental regulations” and government environmental agencies, great. Either way, the fact remains that it’s extremely onerous to use controlled burns as a management tool due to red tape, and you’ve still not provided any counter evidence to that. That is hardly “irrelevant”.
Here’s an article from the Ecological Society of America detailing multiple challenges to using prescribed burns, which it considers “underutilized”: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/fee.2687
Here’s the Sierra Club position on prescribed burns: https://www.sierraclub.org/prescribed-burning-public-lands#:~:text=The%20Sierra%20Club%20supports%20the,wildfire%20safety%20buffer%20for%20communities.
Now, on the one hand they say they support them in principle, but the list of caveats (unless you’re Indigenous) is so long that it comes off pretty NIMBY. It’s mostly a list of reasons they think prescribed burns are misused. They certainly don’t indicate any opposition to the existing red tape for implementing burns. Most relevant to this discussion, they declare that there is already “too much fire in the system” for Southern California chaparral, i.e. they are opposed to prescribed burns in the LA area.
Thanks for providing evidence that "environmentalists", however loosely you define the word, do support the use of fire in resource management, and that the real impediments to greater and more effective use of this technique all involve money and concerns about bad PR should the burn be botched and end up endangering communities.
My understanding is that B is blocked by home owners and HOAs as much as “environmentalists”. Or at least both. No one wants to live somewhere with forest fire smoke blotting out the sun three months of the year which is what would be required to keep the landscape in its natural and more predictably (instead of catastrophically) burning state.
NIMBYs in general, sure, but how do the HOAs play in? Most of the relevant land is publicly owned.
Hmm maybe it’s indirectly through voting and lobbying. Do HoAs lobby?